Should Don Imus be strung up by the balls?

I'm a liberal who stands opposed to any violation of our constitutional right to free speech, yet I'm in favor of the firing of Don Imus. How is this not a contradiction?
To me, we have the constitutional right to express unpopular points of view; but we have no right to use the public airways to insult classes of individuals. I would never call for the censorship of Rush Limbau, no matter how much I detest his odious nonsense because his nonsense amounts of an ideological point of view that he has a right to expound. Racist insults do not amount to an ideology, even though they may reflect one. We have the constitutional freedom to present arguments in favor of the oppression of people (that's why I am a member of the ACLU), but we have no right to oppress people. It's Imus' behavior that unacceptable. If he were to write a book justifying that behavior, I might buy and read it.

There is no contradiction. The government didn't silence him. His boss fired him for being an idiot. This happens everyday and has nothing to do with free speech.

What contradiction? The government didn't judge what he could or could not say, his employer did.

I don't mind him being fired either. Or I don't think I don't. Again, have to think more. I lived through the hollywood stuff, fairly close to home, so it sends a certain chill. I'd rather have competitive - and how hard would that be, given that he doesn't seem to be funny, on a quick take - comedy about racist piggies.

Well, I hope all you nappy-headed hos are happy, now.

There is another disconnect that JLN is missing . . . you have a constitutional right to express yourself, but you have no constitutional guarantee that your expression will be broadcast to seventy million people. Ol' Imus can go stand on a street corner and rant about happy-headed hos to his heart's content.

I wouldn't recommend doing that around here. :wink:

I was kinda hopin' he'd run up to Harlem and do that . . .

I don't mind Imus being fired. I fear strings of firings all over the place in a wave of correctitude/economic fear. Been there.

Happy-headed hos sounds much better. They seem content with their lot in life.

Thanks for the correction, folks. I am aware that the Constitution was designed to protect us from King George and his equivalencies rather than our neighbors. I just overlooked the distinction in my effort to distinguish between the our rights regarding ideas and our rights regarding actions.

I wish JoefromChicago would contribute here. The topic is ambiguous for me, loaded as it is with subjective ethical considerations. I'd like some of the legal precision Joe can offer.

I agree with the comment about Imus boss firing him for being an idiot. He has been warned a few times for his idiocy before. Now his sponsors took it further and put things in their own hands. Legally there is no suit that would have a leg to stand on. I don't need a lawyer to point out the obvious. His incompetency for not executing common sense and applying decent standards for broadcast caused him to get fired.

As the famous American Britney said, "Oops, I said it again"

awe, you really know how to hurt.
All I can say, I pity your children.

Have some more caffeine

What happened to the nice quote boxes?






Looked like an art deco vulva.

For my own interest I'm going to gather my admittedly meandering posts in one place. Already I see things to talk with myself about in one direction or another, but I'll post it anyway. I see I need to go back and catch up with more on the PC thread.

2602877 PC thread
I'm following Free Duck's train of thought...

I'm not sure, myself, that no whitey ever can say such a thing, say, about a longtime pal where respect is clear beforehand, in some kind of personal taunt trading, but I'm creeped out with the "company he kept", just like blasts in pathologic blood smears... the get along sling **** thing reveals a lot, if only getalongness.

On the other hand, I don't listen to Imus, though I've heard him once or twice, years ago, and I'm not sure - there might have been an element of the sardonic going on there. I don't pick that up, though. But maybe that was the tenor of it. Is this even not so much or not entirely anti-black, but anti-Les with overtones of racism?

Further, it has been in the news here fairly recently that Gov. Richardson and Imus are back on good terms. Richardson has trouble enough without a notable supporter virtually electrocuting himself.
This brings up showbusiness as such, and its mix of hyperbole and comedy and the serious.



2602899, PC thread
So... me, for example. I got all mad at Slappy years ago for digs about midgets. At some point I caught on that was in the humor forum, doh. But I still don't like the digs, even out of the humor section; I just get over myself, in that I also think, at the same time, that anything can be fodder for humor, and maybe healthier for it.

Was this a humor toss or a deeply felt bias expression? I don't know, as I'm no Imus expert. In any case, molto stupido, missing antennae.

I just noticed BBB's comment, which fills me in a bit.



2607370
I've been working my way around the block on this, re racism, comedy venues, rap songs, shock-jocks, free speech, hate speech, and cable. The context for me is that my niece is a black female nineteen year old athlete; she likes hip hop, and classical music, and much else. She is most on my mind. Haven't talked with her yet about it, will report, if appropriate, when I do.

Til now, I find myself agreeing with Squinney's remarks.

2607606
I'll agree with that, JL, assuming that market forces do the job. My sticking point on censorship, which some folks seem to want, is the fine hairs, if there are any, between racist speech, usually made by a racist, but possibly not (and when not? I dunno, I 'm thinking about it, and even if it is, at what point does it qualify as hate speech), and hate speech, which I trust is a no even on cable tv, and how these relate to free speech in general, a precious currency under stress from many quarters.



2607630
Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.



2607672
To continue my talk with myself, I think rap and hip hop have a self celebration aspect that I can understand. I don't listen to it since I don't like misogyny when I hear it and I don't like the sounds particularly, but I don't really want to blast a whole aspect of music, much less shut it down. And I see Set's point, or what I took to be his point, somewhere back there on one of these threads, that there is a historic background difference between race stuff coming from 'whites' and 'blacks'.

I would not like for comedy clubs/performances to be stultified. I wouldn't have missed Richard Pryor, for example, for the world. Then there's Lenny Bruce. People have struggled to be free to talk.

So back to Imus, having only listened to him once or twice while driving to Pomona years ago, I didn't know until this thread about the cultural/racial dumps he's done before, given links or clips by BBB and Snood.

As.sinine in the totality. The market will play out on him one way or another.
But, y'know, on a2k we deal with some very biased folk, and the general consensus seems to be a matter of dealing with the stupidities, by arguing or mocking, before any kind of censorship.

I would have liked the Rutgers' team to have been a tad more like Squinney suggested, taking Imus on in the interview more. I'm trying to imagine my niece "having her life ruined by his comment". She would have had an articulate riposte and made him look even more stupid.

I didn't see the event though, so that is second hand info.



2607758
I don't mind him being fired either. Or I don't think I don't. Again, have to think more. I lived through the hollywood stuff, fairly close to home, so it sends a certain chill. I'd rather have competitive - and how hard would that be, given that he doesn't seem to be funny, on a quick take - comedy about racist piggies.



2607798
I don't mind Imus being fired. I fear strings of firings all over the place in a wave of correctitude/economic fear. Been there.

I do find it curious that this particular celeb on this particular instance is being strung up -- but, like a number of other folks, I never found him the least bit amusing, only listened once or twice when I couldn't find anything else on the car radio and didn't want to drive in silence.

I continue to be bemused at the sorts of things that get the "public" dander up and those that don't. So Don Imus is an unfunny bigoted a$$hole. To tell the truth, this was probably the funniest thing I've ever heard him say -- but I've got a taste for the distasteful and absurd, and I can't recall ever having heard him say anything at all, though I know I've listened... So his former employers suddenly became aware of this in the past week? No. But people who don't listen to the show on a regular basis were suddenly made aware of it, revenues were threatened, and he just had to go.

Anyway, I'm glad it's all over, so we can turn our focus back to Anna Nicole's baby daddy, where it belongs.

I do see the not-so-well-hidden issue here that could be co-opted by the likes of Rev. Al Sharpton where a modern-day Mccarthy era witch-hunt could start. Sharpton has proven himself to be the type to use this as club on the media and try to whip up an hysterical reaction.

Jackson and sharpton would shrivel and die if the cameras didn't run like their hair was on fire everytime one of them says "boo". The Imus issue was driven by much more substantial things than those two, and to focus on them fans a hungry fire and misses the point entirely...

As to the "victim" status of the Rutgers women's basketball team...

Was the comment cruel? Yes. And possibly not as much for the racist and misogynist overtones as for the intimation that they were ugly. If you look at the extended quote, you see that Imus was drawing a direct comparison to the Tennessee team, whom he referred to as "cute," and who are predominantly black (pic below). Whatever choice of words, the underlying feeling was, "These women are fugly." That he chose to express this sentiment in the way that he did may reveal a lot about Imus's attitude toward race and gender, naturally...

At any rate, Coach Stringer at Rutgers has garnered an enormous amount of positive publicity for herself and for her program from the incident.

Look at those pale white girls smelling like milk and all.