Thursday, April 12, 2007

About the Imus controversy...

To all those ganging up on Imus as if he's the epithomy of racism in America—for calling a dominantly black basket ball team members "nappy-headed hoes"—while it'd be easy to join you because I personally don't like Imus, you're obviously comfortable calling for censorship, something I'm not comfortable with. Censorship flies in the face of the Constitution, the way I see it. Imus wasn't calling for actions against black women. He insulted them. Bad call. If you want to censor the airwaves, vote with your dial. I have long decided that Imus, Limbaugh, Hannity, Stern, and a whole bunch of others have every right to be assholes and that it's my right to tune them out. That said, I welcome the discussion about race and who can and cannot use certain words, because America isn't done yet with its past. Maybe it will lead to liberating the word "nigger," "niggah," and all its derivatives, currently held hostage by members of the black community, sanitized for your protection with the nomer "N-word." Being Caucasian (you know, from the Caucasus, where the white people come from), I can buy rap music with lyrics containing these words, but not sing along in public. How idiotic is that? How racist is it that black people can say "nigger" and white people can go to jail for it? Chris Rock can say nigger, bitch, and ho 500 times in his show and get away with it. Should he be banned? Everyone in the audience is laughing, because it can all apparently be taken with a grain of sugar. So why not Imus? Ask yourself, have you alway been politically correct? Even in your thoughts? Stop censorship. Accept we are all assholes at times.

I just learned that Imus has been dropped by MSNBC. Is this the beginning of the great sanitazion of the airwaves? I bet not. Imus did not break any laws. The aforementioned assholes will stay on, trumpetting their bigot attitudes to their bigot audiences, protected not just by the First Amendment, but by those profitting from or aiding and abetting bigotry, for political reasons or otherwise. Racism is as alive in America as it's ever been, and as long as no one is actually hurt by it, we have to acknowledge that it can be pretty funny as well, as evidenced by Martin Lawrence's, Chris Rock's, David Chapelle's and a host of comedians ability to cater to their audiences' sense of humor and relevance. If Imus had had the ability to wrap his remarks in a comedic sense, something he utterly failed at, he'd still be bazooning his sour commentary at MSNBC, a broadcaster that like many other broadcasters has failed to give equal air time to non-white talk show hosts...