I wish I could remember who said it, but: "No free speech gets you Hitler. Free speech gets you David Duke."

The line by which we judge such radio jocks is obviously arbitrary. I remember the Greaseman (whom I used to like from time to time) got sacked when he made the comment "No wonder their kind get dragged behind trucks..." I consider Greaseman to be less of a radio-asshole, but that comment still got him bagged, while Imus has been making waves with harsh zingers for I-don't-know-how-long.

*nod* You speak the truth. Can't disagree there. Furthermore, last I checked, the Greaseman was back on the air, somewhere in the Bahamas iirc.

"*But I've got to wonder: he's been an asshole for years. Why are we only just noticing now?"

After the Ann Coulter "faggot" incident, it was noted that she had made gay slurs against people before and it had been ignored. I hold out a small hope that it is getting less and less acceptable to be a bigot in public in the USA. It's about bloody time.

As far as free speech--sure Imus has a right to be an asshole. And the public has a right not to listen to his show or to patronize the sponsors who support him, and to tell his bosses he ought to be fired. He can still spout all he likes, but no one's obligated to give him a mike. That's not censorship, that's the free market. The public can and does reject a lot of products.
(I think Im probably preaching to the choir here.)

Yes, I did, and yes, you may! Thanks for asking. I cropped it from a piece the Village Voice did several years ago on gay marriage. I don't know the artist's name, unfortunately.

But I've got to wonder: he's been an asshole for years. Why are we only just noticing now?

I keep making that comment. It seems no one really did notice until now.

I put it down to the idea that, in general, human beans, they not so smart, and even less observant most of the time.

The whole point of freedom of speech, if you ask me, is because it makes it easier to spot the assholes on the horizon.

Truer words were never spoken.

The question in my mind is the public airways. He used the commons to brand young female athletes as whores. Sure, he has a right to say ugly stuff like that. I have a right to call him on it, and demand that he stop doing it.

Freedom of Speech doesn't mean that you get to say any damn thing without being called on it.

I think we can demand that he stop doing it.

What we can't do is pass laws to put him in jail for what he says. Or commit violence on his person for it. But tell him to cut it out? Sure. Refuse to support him financially? Absolutely. Tell other people to also refuse to support him financially? You bet.

"We" aren't only just noticing, but perhaps his 'hole is a little larger now that some of the other asshats have fallen from their self-righteous positions that blocked the Imus-view. The one thing about American media is that there is and never will be a shortage of shouting sphincters who not only oppose *your* view, but fail to maintain any logical, critical discourse underneath their strident diatribes. Just my $.02, Canadian of course.

We can hope -- but it seems he managed to out dance the sexual harassment, while Limbaugh is actually revovering from his drug scandal. Now...if Rush had been doing meth or crack (thinking of Mayor Marion Barry in D.C.) or if Bill had been taken down while being done by a transgender hooker, then they might be gone.

The right is always real good about allowing their ilk to be penitent and take a few lashes before returning to the stage. %*$(#*!!

... But I admit that I find him amusing at times. He's far less irritating to listen to than Mark Levin.

I agree that Imus is an asshole. I also agree that free speech reveals the truth and allows us to make informed choices about who we pay attention to.

But honestly why are so many people surprised that an old white fart like Imus is intimidated by some athletic young Black women with swagger and spouted off? Is this a big shock? A lot of men can't deal with strong, athletic women. You wouldn't believe the crap you can run across on online sports message boards about female athletes. If you want a snapshot of American male insecurity, talk to Joe Average about the WNBA, for instance.

The thing nobody is saying is that LOTS of guys feel the same way Imus does. He was just dumb enough to say it out loud. :-(

I think CBS should can Imus.

He's always going to be a rich white man.

And forever after these women are going to be stuck with that name.

Imus should be canned and "persuaded" to donate a years pay to a charity of the Rutgers team choosing.

The guy is a husk supported only by his own hot air.

Yeah, and the thing I can't stand is when people - and it is usually the guilty party - says we need to heal and move on. Is that not code for "I can't stand the heat and I want to get the fuck out of the kitchen?"

When people don't take responsibility for their actions and behave as if they are entitled and above the law, that really gets me.

Oh, and just because 10% of the kids at your camp for ailing children are black doesn't mean you get to insult their sisters, mothers, cousins, etc.

Imus sucks. Period.

The problem I'm having is that he said it once. Al Sharpton went on CNN and repeated it half a dozen times, and that was just one interview. If Imus had said the N-word, it would not have been rebroadcast on every news outlet, let alone repeated by Sharpton. And Coulter's slur was rarely repeated - more often (that I saw) refered to as the F-word.

I guess they feel repeating a slur against women is acceptable. I don't find it so.

I'm also having problems with the coach (just now speaking as I write this) saying the Public University women are doing God's Work and such. They may very well be nice young ladies, but Blech.

Oooo!

The whole point of freedom of speech, if you ask me, is because it makes it easier to spot the assholes on the horizon.

*lusts after as a .sig line*

May I quote you?

HEE!

Being a benighted outlander from frigid Canadia, I'd never heard of the guy until the foo-faraw today... and I'd have been perfectly happy to carry on not hearing about him, thank you.

-- Steve isn't much a fan of any shock-jock radio "personality" he's heard. They're too much like the obnoxious trolls on the Intertubes to make for comfortable listening...

There are times when drunken driving is viewed with alarm; and then the cycle moves on, and most people don't worry about it. There's a similar cycle for gambling. (Note: a bit under a century ago, Nevada became the first state to outlaw all gambling.)

Maybe there's also a "being an asshole in front of an audience" cycle.

Also, there's definitely a turn of the political cycle(s). Conservatism is going out of fashion; and maybe "Oh, you're just being politically correct" is no longer as strong a counter to complaints about rightwing assholes. Maybe it will become respectable to be a leftwing asshole.

The whole point of freedom of speech, if you ask me, is because it makes it easier to spot the assholes on the horizon.

Especially now that we have Googleschaden (a neologism that Jon Carroll called to my attention) to make it easy to find out what people have been saying when they weren’t worrying about what a widespread audience would think.

Why is everybody noticing now?

Because you do *not* piss off people from New Jersey. ;)

But seriously, I think it's about time Imus got called on the carpet for being an asshole. Yes, I cherish freedom of speech. But freedom of speech doesn't give media figures carte blanche to be bigots without having to face some kind of push-back. (And I would say this even if I weren't a huge women's basketball fan who saw UConn play Rutgers three times this past season.)

I have a friend who wants to marry Mel Thomas. It's pretty funny.

In the past Imus has been politically incorrect in a couple of different ways -- going after political figures, or being over-the-top obnoxious to guests, they were meant to be 'humorous.' Not defending him -- I've always thought he was a complete tool, even when not saying racist and sexist things for a laugh.

The comments about the Rutger team seemed to be of a different quality -- he managed a hat trick -- not only was it sexist, and racist, it was completely unfair and dismissive of the athletes he was describing. He disrespected them as people of color, as women, and as student athletes. Those women made it to the national finals, while being students in good standing at an academically rigorous institution.

Imus is just a fabulously rich old jackass who sits on his ass and shoots his mouth off for a living. I'm sure he's said lots of other offensive things, but this seemed just so mean-spirited and wrong and unfunny.

And despite the fact that this was mostly on liberal talk shows, I think I have heard more intelligent comments on the situation here than anywhere else. Bear truly has the best commenters anywhere.

This was a good thread. I've seen some intelligent discussions of this already, but here was sometehing new. I'm pretty tenuously connected over here and hardly recognize anybody, but I'll be friending this journal anyway now. It's weird, in lj-space, this was a pretty distant connection, yet matociquala lives not 10 miles from me, and is the first livejournal I've seen by someone else from Connecticut that's worth reading (beside's my wife's).

(I stopped listening to Imas in the late 90's. I think that is how he got away with it for so long, most of us who were offended by him, just stopped listening, so didn't hear how bad he had become)

I didn't really ever listen to Imus, except just enough to decide he was an asshole. I don't think he's actually any worse now than he used to be. I think the reaction of the culture is changing. I often find it painful to watch older movies now where the racism and sexism can be so thick you can cut it with a knife.

There's an interesting racism dynamic about this story as well, and something related to the "Why is this only happening just now?" question. About 4 days ago, somebody (african american) published an article somewhere basically calling out NOW and other mainstream feminist organizations for not saying anything about this comment. an excerpt was posted in a couple of anti-racism and feminist communities on lj, a bunch of people wrote letters to NOW, and lo, they issued a statement. Suddenly Imus is apologizing.

So the interesting dynamic is that there were complaints, which were largely ignored by Imus and his bosses until a big, mainstream white feminist organization got involved, and suddenly it's an Issue[tm].

I'll be shocked if Imus gets fired. Much of his audience thinks anyone who complains about this is just a hypersensitive loser, and probably thought it was funny. People who understand why that comment was offensive already don't listen to him.

He was always an asshole.

TK

Ya gotta watch more C-SPAN. When he made an appearance at the White House Press Corps Dinner back during the Clinton years, he made a complete, obnoxious ass of himself.

Until then I hadn't even noticed him.

That said, I agree with your thought about the 1st Amendment. Everyone has the right to stand out in public and yell "I'm a jerk!" It makes some things so much easier. (And after all, isn't that what Faux Noise Channel is for?)

I do like that vision of the First Amendment as an asshole-early-warning system. It's so much more than that, but it does that too.

When I was visiting my mother over Easter, we caught part of the hand-wringing and head-shaking on public television, and I had to explain to her who Imus was (she only listens to NPR and baseball games on the radio), and what he'd said.
She feels his next stop should be apologizing to the team's mothers, and then having his mouth taped shut while they tell him how they feel about it. "And then if his mother isn't dead he should apologize to her, for making people think she raised him to act like that!"

She is stern but just.