Imus and the outrage

Imus said some nasty things a week ago and the entire planet and half the galaxy was all over him like white on rice. What part of, "shock jock" don't these people understand? Isn't this exactly what we require from the gad flies of our world? They say outrageous and sometimes offensive things and then we weigh in and accept it or reject it. Isn't that exactly what Imus did? He acts exactly as he always had but now it is he as well as what he said that is condemned. There is no rule that it's OK for someone to do or say something depending on what culture, race, religion or ethnicity they are. Now we seem to be revising that belief with, if a white man says it and you are offended then it must be a bad thing. That's not a bad rule. I'm certain others could think of many more such rules to substitute or include.

The thing that hit home for me was how Imus' words had such an impact on the media consciousness that it had an impact on the Rutgers Woman's Basketball Team. What drove it home for me was how much not like the words Imus used these girls were. It was a wow moment. These girls were all American classy, articulate, mature, focused, disciplined role models for everything that breathes. Intension or not, isn't that called irony? A test might be, if you were any of these children's parent, could you be any prouder of them, their accomplishments and their reaction to this Imus thing?

Now we should think what made us so hot about this. In the beginning few of us knew anything about the Rutgers Woman's Basketball Team or the young woman that populated it and yet it was very disturbing. If we could stop right there and work on why we had those feelings and why those Imus words were from now on unacceptable. I think that would be a far better way of working this to make us all better people and citizens.

I only wished we could separate these two real things and address them directly. The Imus persona is a grumpy old nasty rat bastard with a heart of gold. What about writers who say offensive things in their fiction. Is this going to be out of bounds? Are we so sensitive that life becomes less free and not more open and accepting? Does maturity dictate that we think carefully about context and those times when things are, "no matter what." I fear that attention span has constricted to such a point that we can only think of things superficially and need to find the next thing. Nothing gets resolved, our focus turns elsewhere. Hey its a new week coming up lets go look for another young, blond, missing white girl...What do you say?