But I’ll add a few thoughts, anyway. The firing of Don Imus is a demonstration of the plethora of standards for what you can and can’t say without getting into trouble with the editors of mainstream media and certain of America’s opinion-makers. What Imus says doesn’t even compare with the language that many people use in entertainment (and, though no one will admit it, in private, as jokes or as heartfelt sentiment). That broadcast networks and advertisers give the time of day to thug-hustlers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton–especially Al Sharpton–demonstrates just how many people and institutions value the almighty dollar over pride, doing what is right, and standing up for principle.
It also demonstrates how few people and institutions take any sort of consistent action on what is most precisely called the matter of invective and demographic minorities. Display a crucifix in urine and upset Christians and the left comes running in defense of the artist. Say something ugly about a minority and the left is happy to see you get shut up.
Imus spoke in what is, like it or not, the mainstream of morning radio broadcasting.
The Rutgers team and their defenders should have dismissed Imus and gone on instead of using it for a platform to whine about racism. (Then again, that’s what people are taught to do by the politically correct left, isn’t it.)
The free market will save Imus for the same reasons it pummeled him today. Someone will hire him as soon as this thing slides down the memory hole, and he’ll make money for some other radio station chain.
By the way, none of this was censorship, of course. Censorship is government stifling of expression. But the left whines all the time (the Dan Rather affair, the Dixie Chicks story, the anti-war movement’s complaints) about people paying a free-market penalty for free expression. Yet where’s the left defending Imus now that he’s paying? Oh for the days when the ACLU defended the Nazis marching in Skokie, Illinois. You know, back when we had a principled American left….
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