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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Patricia Trinchero who wrote (104704)	4/14/2007 10:34:27 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 362466

EDITORIAL: Imus should have been fired long ago theheraldbulletin.com Published April 13, 2007 Don Imus said something incredibly stupid. Insensitive. Hurtful. Incendiary. Racist. Sexist. ... Did we say stupid yet? When the radio personality referred to the Rutgers University women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos” it was so wrong on so many levels. His words also exposed what is wrong with our society on so many levels. Let’s start with Imus himself. He’s a shock jock -- or he was until he was fired this week. He made his living by shocking people with his comments. He contends that his words were meant to be funny. Evidently, many people found the content of his programs to be entertaining. That, in itself, is a sad statement: that he had a huge audience, huge enough to compel TV and radio networks to carry his program, huge enough to attract major companies to advertise on the program. According to former MSNBC colleague Keith Olbermann, Imus’ off-air words, as well as his on-air ramblings, often unfairly attacked people — public figures, non-public figures, co-workers, etc. Olbermann said Thursday on his sports talk show “The Big Show” on ESPN Radio that Imus had been known to call female co-workers “whores.” That he wasn’t taken off the air before the flash point of his Rutgers comments is an indictment of those who supported him in radio and TV management and through corporate sponsorship. He should have been removed long before. Some argue that the Federal Communications Commission should step in and silence slanderous radio personalities such as Imus. But the last thing we need is more government censorship. Media outlets should police themselves and hold their programming to an acceptable social standard, resisting the urge to rake in the cash that can come from someone who appeals to an audience that feasts on such base fare. And it is the responsibility of listeners to let media management know about it — loud and clear — when offensive material airs. Now to another troubling aspect of the Imus fallout. When Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other grandstanders rushed to vilify Imus, they fanned a firestorm that swirled around the Rutgers team. Let’s imagine that what Imus said had been somehow lost in the teeming sea of media voices. The Rutgers team would have gone on happily celebrating its banner season and looking forward to the next one. It will be a watershed moment in our society when racist comments are ignored as merely the banal drivel of small-minded men. As it is, these young women — the innocent victims in all this — will be remembered as the team that was called the nappy-headed hos. That may be the greatest crime in this entire scenario, that the targets of the comments will be inextricably linked to them for life. Thankfully, the players seem to have the character and maturity to deal with it. And those are qualities that were lacking in many other quarters of the Imus affair.