Imus Fallout: What About Rosie O'Donnell, Ann Coulter, Bill Maher & Rush Limbaugh?
Alexis, host of of a Sirius radio show, expressed that the firing of Imus for 3 seconds of demeaning on-air remarks seemed wrong to her. Ms. Stewart is entitled to her opinion, of course. I happened to disagree.
And rather than ask "Why?", many, including Ms. Stewart, are asking "Why now?"
Instead, my question is "Why NOT now?"
What About Rosie, Rush, Bill and Ann?
The same could be asked about other brash media celebrities. Ann Coulter. Rosie O'Donnell. Howard Stern. Rush Limbaugh. Bill Maher. Even radio psychologist Dr. Laura Schlesinger.
Don't forget the late comedian Lenny Bruce, who tested obscenity laws in 1960s America. And then there's irreverent comedian, atheist George Carlin, who delights in offending the sensibilities of the establishment.
Celebrities and entertainers being outrageous to attract attention is a time-honored Amercian tradition. Don Imus didn't invent the shocking sound bite.
Most liberals are deeply offended by Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and the like. And conservatives generally can't stand MSNBC's Keith Olbermann or CNN's Christiane Amanpour. At various times, CNN's Anderson Cooper and MSNBC's Chris Matthews have suffered from offending both conservatives and liberals.
And then there are big-name movie stars who overtly take political stances. George Clooney. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Tim Robbins and partner Susan Sarandon. Fred Thompson, who is mulling a 2008 Republican run for the White House. Even heartthrob Brad Pitt. And wasn't there once a U.S. president who used to be a B-movie actor?
And let's be honest, Democrats. This past week, I've felt just as irritated by the shrill, cheap hysterics of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson as I was by Don Imus.
(We all got the message the first, second and third times, guys: Don Imus uttered offensive words. Imus has been duly punished, and the Rutgers students have gracefully accepted his apology. Can we now move on? )
But Why Don Imus? Why Now?
But why Don Imus? And why now, when he's been spewing objectionable, frat-boy stupidity for years?
My answer continues to be: Why not?
Drive a car too fast on the freeway, and you always run the risk of a ticket. It doesn't matter if 20 other drivers were cruising faster. You were wrong, and it was your time to get busted. Same for Imus. Make hurtful, discriminatory remarks, and you run the risk of being called for it. Imus got busted, and he deserved it. Period.
Should Ann Coulter, or Rosie O'Donnell, or Bill O'Reilly, or Keith Olbermann also be terminated by their media employers for their smashmouth comments and insensitive, fire-breathing brand of broadcast entertainment?
Maybe. But their time apparently hasn't yet arrived.
And that's ONLY because their media employers view the benefit of retaining these mouthy celebrities to be higher than the cost of keeping them on the air. Translation: They bring in the big ratings and the big advertising revenues. Commercial broadcasting is neither church nor courtroom; it's a business... a very, very lucrative business.
Celebrities have every right to say their piece, and we have every right to listen... or not listen.
But the time inevitably comes when an outspoken celebrity takes it a step too far, and consequences ensue:
* ABC cancelled liberal comedian Bill Maher's show in 2002 after he made a demeaning remark about U.S. cruise missles and the 9/11 terrorists.* Author and conservative media personality Ann Coulter was roundly, swiftly criticized when, at the 2007 Conservative Political Action Conference, she used a derogatory word to describe 2008 Democratic hopeful John Edwards.
* Actors Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbin were scrubbed from a long-planned 2003 appearance at the Baseball Hall of Fame, due to their public involvement in anti-Iraq War causes.
* And in April 2007, Don Imus lost broadcasting gigs when he described the Rutgers University womens' basketball team in racist, misogynist terms.
But What About Freedom of Speech?
Which brings me full-circle, back to Alexis Stewart's belief that the firing of Don Imus for his unfortunate words is an inappropriate prohibition on Mr. Imus' freedom of speech.
The First Amendment right to freedom of speech is a personal legal right.
It's NOT a guarantee of employment. Nor is it a shield from consequences of others reacting to one's obnoxious exercise of their First Amendment right. To speak out controversially is to take a risk, and that risk could be loss of employment.
Broadcasters have every right to fire an employee for injudicious remarks made on-air or off. And I wish broadcasters would do it more often... thereby putting the public interest ahead of corporate profits.
But don't hold your breath. In corporate America today, profits are king, and controversial figures who blather extremist chatter are ratings winners and powerful revenue generators for their employers.
The real hypocrites in this Rutgers basketball team mess are the greedy MSNBC and CBS execs who claim to be shocked, SHOCKED that Mr. Imus would mutter such offensive remarks.
The unvarnished truth is that Don Imus has been saying similarly hateful speech for years, and MSNBC and CBS didn't do a damn thing about it.
And Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson... despite how tiresomely they've behaved... forced the broadcasters to fire loose-cannon Imus.
Offensive Media Celebrity Noise
Why Don Imus? Because he deserved it.
Why now? Why not now?
Will this cause other media celebrities to censor their mean-spirited, discriminatory words? Gosh, I hope so.
Is that a violation of their free speech? Gainful employment and exercise of free speech are two separate concepts, and are usually in direct conflict with each other.
Does this mean that Rosie and Ann and Bill and Rush might now feel pressured to tone down their enflamed rhetoric? I dream of the day when we all stop and listen to others, rather than race to smear, blame, distort and defame others.
For to smear, blame, distort and defame is a distraction from addressing the massive challenges facing our beleaguered nation today.
Besides being uncivil, unkind and morally wrong, offensive media celebrity noise distracts, not adds, to the American conversation.
Related Reading
Profile of Rosie O'Donnell, Liberal Activist & Talk Show Host
Profile of Brad Pitt, Activist & Film Actor
The Politics of George Clooney, Actor and Liberal Activist
Recommended Reading
Don Imus and Free Speech , by Tom Head, Civil Liberties
Run, Imus, Run, by Susan Heathfield, Conservative Politics
Imus: What Took So Long? Why Just Imus? , at Better Living: Thoughts from Mark Daniels
Comments
Allow me to post an oposing viewpoint I found that articulates my feelings.
In the Imus Crucification We Failed as Progressives
By Ali Eteraz
In law school I had the distinct honor of taking a free speech course with a former ACLU lawyer who in the 1970’s defended the rights of a bunch of American Nazis to march through a city with a heavy population of Jews that had survived the holocaust. My professor was a Jew.
My professor, one of Philadelphia’s most famous progressives, who was profiled by the FBI many times, taught me that the first amendment was not something to bring out only when a President curtailed the rights of citizenry. Rather, the first amendment was an idea: that more speech is better than less speech.
Every Progressive that has justified firing Imus because his speech is hurtful, incendiary, ignorant or bigoted, has violated every single Progressive principle towards speech that I have grown up to value.
Cenk Uygur, who is a radio personality himself, agrees with me:
The first amendment doesn’t apply to someone like Don Imus because the government isn’t prohibiting him from saying what he said. But the concept of free speech does apply to him.
Free speech doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It must be protected not just by the government, but by society. We must be open to different and objectionable ideas. We must even allow them to be broadcast over the airwaves.
There is no more proverbial street corner where you can broadcast your ideas. In order to effectively deliver your ideas to a significant audience, you must broadcast them.
It’s hard to see what society gains from allowing Imus to call people racist names. But if we push for people to fire him, will we prevent others from having an open dialogue about race that can eventually lead to positive change?
Remember, society is quickest to shut down the voice of the rebel or the outsider. In other words, the liberal. The Southern establishment had no interest in hearing from Martin Luther King, Jr. Many would have considered Malcolm X’s diatribes racists. Should he not have been allowed on television or radio?
I am not saying that Don Imus is Malcolm X. I’m saying that you need to allow a Don Imus so that you can get to a Malcolm X.
Progressives have always been about dialogue and discussion. How did we turn into supporters of suppression?
Now that Imus is fired, everyone will think that “nappy” is the new n-word (which blacks can say to one another but no one else may use). Meanwhile, some radio stations will add the word “ho” to their blacklist (but not really).
How does that get to the root of American racism? It does not at all. Maybe people believe that Imus is the head of the snake of American Racism. This is absurd. The real heads are Limbaugh and Coulter. Besides, what does targeting the head get anyone anyway? Don’t Progressives ourselves blame President Bush for merely targeting the “head of the snake” when talking about terrorists and doing nothing at all about the roots of terrorism?
We Progressives have struck at the head of racism and we have eliminated any chance of addressing the deeper underlying causes.
There are rumors that a black actress is going to be in a film called Nappily Ever After. [Halle Berry, forthcoming 2008]. We Progressives should have taken our disgust with Imus’ comment to inquire whether we are OK with such a film. We should have taken our disgust with Imus and inquired whether or not what is passing for mainsream hip hop [ i.e. Jay Z's "Money cash hoes (WHAT)"] today gives to using words like “bitch” and “ho.” We should have taken our disgust with Imus and inquired whether a film like Black Snake Moan, in which an older black man chains a “slutty” white girl to cure her of her promiscuity (as if all white girls are promiscuous), was a racist film?
We didn’t do any of those things.
We fired Imus.
Now we’ll dance in the flames.
Racism remains unaddressed.
On top of that, we just established precedent that it is OK for radio hosts and talk show hosts to be fired if we disagree with what they say.
I am ashamed to be a progressive right now.
Cenk Ugyur, sorry buddy. I guess all I can say is, don’t piss people off when you talk, otherwise we progressives will have to take you down as well.
Ali Eteraz, 26, is an international finance and human rights lawyer. During law school he worked on litigation against US defense contractors involved in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, and since represented plaintiffs defrauded by Wall Street. He is the founder of Eteraz.Org: States of Islam, a think tank and interactive web portal dedicated to cataloging and taking action on legal and legislative reform in the Muslim world (soon to be available in Urdu, Farsi and Arabic). His essays have been published in Counterpunch, Killing the Buddha, The Revealer, and Identity Theory. His personal blog, Unwilling Self-Negation, was a 2006 finalist for an International Best Of Blogs Award. He is currently working on a book about children and Islamic militancy tentatively entitled Prophets in Dust.
His blog can be found at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-eteraz/
I’m PTBartman and I approve this message
Whose to say what rhetoric is “inflamed” or not inflamed? you arbiters of enforced behavior? you legislators of good taste? you might have an opinion as to whether someone “ought” to be fired or not for whatever perceived indiscretion, but really it’s none of your business (beyond your vigorous insistence that it ought to be) if you’re not a decisionmaker in the particular enterprise in question. Actually, and to shift the focus a bit since the rights of acerbic political commentators to speak are now being preposterously called into question, the more extremes examples of public discourse are rather tame in our current age compared to those in the early days of the Republic when freedom really meant freedom, and restrictions imposed by libel laws were regularly tested. Actually I think political discourse could use a little more heat, not less. It’s salutary. Let people go at it. The truth will out. And once the truth is out, good behavior will return on its own without being forced on everybody. Sometimes outrage and targeted invective and cutting sarcasm are the only weapons against relentless truth-baiting and illogic and insidious innuendo. As for the radio personality being discussed here (to return to the chief topic) I voted him out years ago when I stopped listening. I knew he was a jerk long before all this noisy fanfaronade of hyped-up indignation forced me and rest of the country to have to listen to the wretch all over again. What is sad to me, is that the tone and level of the “indignation” tells me that people who claim to be shocked actually ACCEPT the tenor of these remarks, that they have a long way to go before being comfortable living in a multiracial setting- and that’s their dirty little secret they’re trying so hard and loudly to cover up. Get a life.
Sharpton and Jackson only decry racist comments when they are not making them. They are the black racist version of Imus. It amazes me that people accept their inflamatory comments without calling them on the carpet and demanding action against them.
You seem to gloss over their behavior because it gave a result that you think was good.
If people listen to Imus, he obviously has a market. If his comments offend too many people, he obviously loses that support. MSNBC have a right to do what is in the interest of the company, and furthermore have an obligation to give listeners what they are willing to pay for.
That Imus is gone is not good or bad if the market decided they could not support him. That Imus is gone is definitely bad if it is because people who took offense use political power to shut him up.
I remember years ago (early 70’s) listening to Jackson talk to a mostly black audience and I was struck by his candor and willingness to blast the hypocrisies on BOTH sides of the racial divide. To my mind he has never recovered that admirable, King-like strain of honesty and has gone off on a lamentable power trip and into decline. But I think racial demogoguery has lost its fizz in recent years, and new voices promising better things are on the ascendant.