Of No Use Whatsoever
One of the great things about having a personal blog is that you can comment on anything you wish. Whether you have any credibility in the subject or have any business even proffering an opinion doesn't matter. It's your blog and if you want to go off... well people know where the back button is.
So it is with this post. I've got no real business commenting on this but I feel like it anyway.
I've been watching Don Imus flail and thrash around after his "nappy-headed hos" comment about the Rutgers women's basketball team. Imus claims he was trying to be funny. I don't know, I didn't hear it. I've never heard Imus on the radio and I've only occasionally surfed by him on MSNBC, though I'm certain had I heard the comment, I wouldn't have thought it funny.
Now let me be clear. I don't like talk radio. And my going-in opinion is that if you're a talk radio personality, you're pretty much of a dickhead. Don Imus, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, or Diane Rehm, I don't care who you are or what you talk about, if you're in talk radio and you're talking to me, we negotiate up from dickhead.
So had the "ho" comment come from a normal human being possessing some semblance of conscience, it could only be viewed as racist, mean-spirited, cruel, and undeserved. But it didn't. The comment came from a talk radio personality. That's what those people get paid to do. Make base, contemptible comments posited as humorous, trenchant observations. Imus was just doing his job... validating the thoughts and prejudices of his small-minded listeners.
For now, Imus will don the brown helmet and make the mea culpa rounds. People will lament the coarsening of society and wag their fingers at the medium. Some people will be understandably - and properly - angry and indignant. But I don't see Imus losing his job over this. The whole thing will probably attract listeners.
Listeners who should be ashamed of themselves.
K-
Sorry I didn't get to this earlier when I first saw it. I agree with your high regard of radio talk show personalities. Imus has been suspended and I think they'll try to shove him out the door now. CBS and MSNBC are not likely to stand by him and that's pretty much what it would take to save him at this point. He'll turn up somewhere.
Very well said. I never would have heard of him were it not for MSNBC.
Maybe I'm more cynical about talk radio, Rob, but I think he'll wear the hair shirt for two weeks, then be back on the air spouting platitudes about better discourse.
Marie, I guess I'd heard of him but it's one of those osmosis things. Not sure where he came from.
K-
I'd make a distinction between Imus, Stern and their ilk -- ranters and baiters -- and those who actually try to foster some sort of rational discourse (these used to be the staple of talk radio, decades ago, and you can still find them on places like "Talk of the Nation" and local stations like KGO (which does have its share of jerks, true) in San Francisco.
As far as Imus, a colleague from the East Coast told me about him about ten years ago, and sometimes we'd listen on the drive in to work. I was never impressed, on any level, except that such a mediocre intelligence -- or the persona of same -- could prove so popular. These folks are all bellwethers for Bush and the kind of "discourse" he prefers. The fact they're tolerated, let alone celebrated, explains a lot about why so many people lap up Bush's moron act.
Well stated, Dan. I'm surprised there aren't more women incensed over what he said. Or am I missing that?
K-