On April 11, NBC News announced that it was dropping MSNBC's simulcast of Imus in the Morning in the wake of the controversy that erupted over host Don Imus' reference to the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos." The following day, CBS president and CEO Leslie Moonves announced that CBS -- which owns both the radio station that broadcast Imus' program and Westwood One, which syndicated the program -- has fired Imus and would cease broadcasting his radio show. But as Media Matters for America has extensively documented, bigotry and hate speech targeting, among other characteristics, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and ethnicity continue to permeate the airwaves through personalities such as Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Michael Smerconish, and John Gibson.
And of course, as recent commenter's to my Imus posts (here and here) have noted, the rap music.
I have mixed feelings. I'm glad Imus got fired, I never liked the guy and I see nothing funny or redeemable about the tirades his radio show seem to be based on. He's a national media figure and he picks on a college sports team? That's a bully.
But I also believe in free speech and the players here, Imus, CBS and MSNBC are all private (i.e., not tax payer supported) actors. If they want to air and support such speech -- as abhorrent as I find it -- it's their right.
What seems to have happened is that both MSNBC and CBS couldn't keep Imus and look their other employees in the eye. I'm sure the loss of sponsors and the threat of losing sponsors was a factor too...and that is as it should be.
The problem is that there is such an appetite for racism and sexism as found in the list from Media Matters. And that' s not just an American problem. Several years ago at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival which features various cultures from around the globe, I remember seeing a performance from another country where the jokes from the lowlanders trashed the highlanders. It seems to be human nature to ridicule the "other."
And it's not just entertainers...our politicians have learned to "cash in" on prejudice and appeal to the baser instincts in all of us to get our dollars and votes...that's what the whole anti-same-sex marriage thing is about.
But it evolves. In my earlier post I mentioned Amos and Andy. Somehow we went from there to the Huxtables. Hopefully the Imuses of our day are headed for the same trash heap of history as Amos and Andy, because no one will "buy" it.
In other words, if someone is throwing hatred into the public square, I will back their right to do so, but I won't shed tears if it brings about their ruin.
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