Here's a somewhat long and rambling but good post on the Imus story.Making Carefully Nuanced Distinctions Regarding the Totally Unacceptable. After a background describing the code that politicians use to talk to their racist base and some other interesting things, he ends with:
"I kind of hate to be part of what James Wolcott calls a big public pile-on, but I have to admit thinking that the final outcome was pretty satisfying. I'm something of a free speech absolutist, but I also have some belief in the wisdom of the marketplace, and this was an example of it working rather well, I think. Imus is not a first amendment martyr; he wasn't hounded and clapped in chains and driven to unemployment like Lenny Bruce, he was informed by a couple of major media conglomerates who had been paying him a fucking fortune that they had come to the conclusion that any continued association with his disgusting self was no longer something they wanted to explain to their stockholders. He won't starve, and he probably won't even be gone for as long as some of us would like. But at least his admirers will have to live with the memory of him spending the week crawling on his belly, whimpering and licking every boot he came across in his pathetic bid for forgiveness, a most gratifying commentary on just how much of a ballsy anti-P.C. outlaw the jowly cretin and most of his ilk really are. No, the public excoriation and humilation of Don Imus will not rid the country of racism. But surely a country where the Don Imuses are never publically excoriated and humilated would be a worse place to live."
2 comments:
Well, I agree with the last sentence. I have a feeling, however, that incident is some strange, random and it does not signify much. Yesterday I decided to check out local radio-fashist Jay Severin and, surely enough, he was right there lamenting what happened to Imus. But it should not take long before he starts talking about "ragheads" and "wetbacks" with great support and acceptance of local callers. Moby put it well, IMO, the problem still is that "that some kinds of hate speech(anti black, anti jew)are deemed unacceptable, but other types of hate speech(anti gay, anti arab, anti latino, etc)don't seem to upset anyone. that's a weird double standard, no? shouldn't all hate speech be deemed equally offensive, regardless of the lobbying power and media-savvy of the demographic being offended?"...
Yeah I completely agree. I'll add that even though some hate speech is unacceptable, there's still a bunch of it and it's common in some circles or acceptable in code. The code part shows it's not the words that are the problem but the (I don't want to say thoughts) sentiments. I think that's why this story happened, it wasn't that he said a stupid thing (as so many apologists are saying), it's that it was obvious that he meant it. Humans seem really good at separating us vs them, on a variety of forms, but really bad at realizing we're all human.
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