The Media Is The Massage

Finally, the Imus flap is over, to no one's great relief, except maybe Imus. A minor uproar in the American social dialogue has closed, and has seen the fall of a broadcasting icon, as well as the near death of a governor.

Not much positive comes out of this mess, except perhaps the vow by Al Sharpton that Imus will only be the first to go. Praise God if Sharpton keeps this vow, but Sharpton has been a little less than diligent in filling his promises. Lots of mouth, little action, and the scale is more than counterbalanced by how badly he has hurt the African American community with his own hijinks.

And I say that as someone who very nearly voted for him for governor a few elections back.

See, here's the thing: the media gets away with what it gets away with because, in truth, it sells. Imus was not a radio personality. He was a vehicle through which GM and GE and Staples and others pushed product. You listened to Imus and for free, you got more advertising pushed at you. Imus knew this and was not afraid to utilize this equation to his advantage, legally even.

Imus had been on the air 35 years or so, between his New York and Cleveland gigs (among others), and has been fired before for unbecoming conduct, usually centering around the fact he was an addict and just never showed up for work. He must have been doing something...well, not right, but profitable, for big corporations like RCA and Viacom, and later, GE to take chances on his behavior.

Roll the dice. For the last twenty years or so, people have managed to look the other way, or even offer enough grudging support to keep him on the air, toiling in the name of Mammon.

IF the firing of Imus creates an opening that leads to the wholesale clearance of "personalities" from our airwaves like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and Ann Coulter (among many others), then I say "Huzzah!" for in truth, Imus was the least among these and probably the easiest to get rid of.

After all, technically, his was a sports show, and partisan politics was a secondary topic. His listeners were less rabid enthusiasts of his views than the Dittoheads and Hannitybots, and put up less of a fight.

These other, filthier, more disgusting proselytizers for perverse pulchritudes, espousing viewpoints of "correctness" that would be more at home in Stalinist Russia than America, won't go as quietly as Imus did.

But go they must, if we are to be true to this mission of making the airwaves safe for democracy. Al Sharpton seems to be vowing to take this boycott movement to the advertisers, taking a page out of the neo-conservative playbook of "if we don't like something, we'll force it off the air," a la Terry Rakolta, and Focus on Family.

I don't see it happening, because what should come out of this incident, the dialogue that really needs to be held, is about respect for people, for differences, for tolerance. And moreover, for understanding that this nation is undergoing an unstoppable transformation from a bastion of white male uberpower, shifting the balance of the world's resources --both physical and ethereal-- to a minority (on a global basis), to one that recognizes that people of all nations and cultures have an equal say in the future of this planet, and that this planet cannot be artificially divided into arbitrary political boundaries.

Ironically, it was the founding of the United States that signalled this evolution.

The media will b a powerful tool in this. We've seen the slow evolution on our TV screens (and its not nearly enough and not nearly fast enough) of anthropologic evidence of this transformation. Right now, it's mostly token gestures, but in the not too distant future, we'll stop seeing tokens and start seeing reflections of the world as it exists outside of our isolated island of immunity from the world's reality.

Firing Imus may, oddly enough, be the trigger for this, but given the power of his voice, if he had truly seen the light (and I suspect he has), silencing that voice may eventually do more harm than good.

tags technorati : Imus media

Imus In The Mourning

I stopped listening to Imus a while back. It just became egregiously difficult to listen to the crew of idiots he surrounded himself with in order to take some of the heat off himself in the creative process. People like Bernard McGuirk and Sid Rosenberg (cousin of Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota) were atrocious, unfunny and frankly, pretty sad, clearly there only because they'd be dumb enough to give voice to straw men that Imus, as an "opinion maker," was too scared to say himself any longer. And then, they'd piss him off by taking things too far.

Comes last week's debacle. I'm sure you've at least heard something about it, but let me copy over a transcript from Media Matters (video available there, as well):

From the April 4 edition of MSNBC's Imus in the Morning:

IMUS: So, I watched the basketball game last night between -- a little bit of Rutgers and Tennessee, the women's final.

ROSENBERG: Yeah, Tennessee won last night -- seventh championship for [Tennessee coach] Pat Summitt, I-Man. They beat Rutgers by 13 points.

IMUS: That's some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and --

McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos.

IMUS: That's some nappy-headed hos there. I'm gonna tell you that now, man, that's some -- woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like -- kinda like -- I don't know.

There's more, a misreference to a Spike Lee reference (give them credit, they've at least watched one black man's films), but you get the drift.

Imus has made his career out of being outrageous, and I'm fortunate, yes, fortunate, to have been able to listen to him from way back in the early 70s. From his "1200 Hamburgers To Go" days, through his "Dr. Billy Sol Hargis" bits, right up until he started hammering Bill Clinton for having sex in the White House.

I think that's when I stopped listening to him, realizing he had sold out his comedic roots and was starting to shill for his best friends, the Republican National Committee.

Too, he started "featuring" guests like Laura Ingraham, Joe Tacopina, Ann Coulter, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, and Bush The Elder, and while I have no problem listening to the responsible views of the opposition, there was more than a hint of the bile and hatred that conservatives feel for the likes of me in those "guests" (well, maybe not Bush).

But here's the thing: he was, and at times still is, funny because he is who he is. In many ways, his comedy and persona informs this blog and my outlook on life. "You don't like me? Fuck it. There are 6 billion other people on this planet, and I don't need you to like me. I have to like me."

Was this joke offensive? Yes. Was this joke funny? No. And having done live radio, my suspicion is that this ended up being a riff that blew up in anyone's face before cooler heads could prevail. We saw into Imus' heart, and there's a dark spot on it.

Having listened to him all these years, I don't think he hates minorities, but on the other hand, I don't think he's the poster boy for National Brotherhood Week, either. I think he just hates most people, flat out, and any time he can find some way to mock them, he will and he's not particularly kind about it.

His "humour" is not limited to minorities: he's made fun of public figures all his career, white, black, woman, man, and if Rutgers hadn't been a black team, I'm sure his cracks would have been about their possible sexual orientation. He's done those kind of jokes before about women's tennis, without this kind of outrage (not that this outrage is unjustified, but I find it curious that suddenly this is the focus of the anger).

Too, the fact that Al "Steven Pagones raped Tawana Brawley" Sharpton and Jesse "Hymietown" Jackson are mixing it up with Imus makes this outrage nearly defensible: if comedians ought to be responsible for their public statements, then certainly people with aspirations to be public servants ought to be doubly so.

From the appearances I've seen, his two hours of being Al Sharpton's punching bag, his many appearances on network news, and his own MSNBC show, Imus looked genuinely confused, and I suspect that he's had an epiphany about himself. His apologies seem genuine, and if he learns something from this incident that's more than papered-over humility, then so be it. It's up to Jesus to forgive him, and maybe so should we. After all, "Thy will be done"...

He's handled tougher truths about himself, as I can attest.

Imus will serve a two week suspension, which I think is an appropriate, if light, punishment (personally, I would have made it thirty days and he should have to shave off that ridiculous mop he calls hair as a reminder of his commenting on other peoples' appearance).

Ironically, this suspension is postponed until Monday morning because Imus is headlining a radiothon fund-raiser at his home station, WFAN in New York, for Tomorrows Children's Fund, the CJ Foundation for SIDS and the Imus Ranch.

None of which specify "whites only". Only sick kids.

Imus
Al Sharpton
Jesse Jackson
Rutgers women's basketball