Don Imus
April 13th, 2007 by md
I am torn. While I think what he said was terribly insulting and degrading, I am a pretty radical free speech advocate — even the ugly stuff. Ultimately, as a private owner of the radio stations, CBS gets to decide what kind of programming they put on. I think Imus sucks for so many other reasons that I am fine that he has been fired. But to say that what earned him his pink slip was one now-famous comment would not adequately capture the context of his entire career of being annoying and bigoted, not to mention low ratings. I wish that there had been a deeper commitment on all sides to discuss what these words “nappy” and “ho” mean, rather than a rush to purge anyone who steps over a PC vocabulary-line. Both words have deep roots in historical and contemporary contexts of both white and black America. It would be good to talk about that in a respectful and honest way. But instead we got a sideshow and TV / radio executives parroting PC pablum.
Maybe the greatest annoyance of the whole drama was the Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton show. Neither man has the moral or behavioral credentials to argue that someone should be fired from his job for saying something that most people find apalling and rude. No matter: large corporations are much more influenced by what Messrs. Jackson and Sharpton say and do than by their own code of what’s right and wrong. Their decision to fire Imus — first MSNBC’s then CBS’s — was so drawn out that it’s clear that the companies were reacting more to the press coverage than they were motivated by their own standards or judgments. (I know, shocking that there’s gambling in this establishment…)
OK. So here’s my prediction. Imus will be on satellite radio within the year and a guest on Howard Stern within three months. I am not saying that I think this is a good outcome, just that it is likely. There is now so much “attention capital” built up around Imus that the only rational economic solution is that someone will try to monetize it. I think Mel Karmazin is the kind of person who would be willing to commercialize Imus again. Imus today is an idle, wasting asset that fits Sirius’ medium beautifully. I think this is one of the most compelling aspects of Sirius’ non-music positioning: they are a subscription outlet for voices deemed outside the bounds of “public airwaves.” Private airwaves will continue to get more interesting.
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[...] Spock’s public debut a couple of weeks ago at the Web 2.0 Expo generated some more material for the debate about gender politics on the Web. Apparently (the story is roughly reconstructed in Tim O’Reilly’s post and subsequent comments), the team demoed the product by showing their results to searches for bloggers (men), drunk drivers (men), politicians (men), Foo Campers (men), and swimsuit and lingerie models (women). This was really more adolescent than one would expect at an industry forum, and probably not the smartest choice in light of Kathy Sierra’s recent experience with double standards for women in the Web community (not to mention death threats). The discussion on Tim O’Reilly’s blog continued for the next two weeks, was spammed by some troll who couldn’t think of a better use of the engine than searching for “slutty whores” (well, at least the infamous Don Imus “nappy-headed ho’s” wasn’t necessarily a tautology), and was heavily moderated by Tim, who, no matter how outstanding a peacemaker he’s become, is probably by now sitting awake at night wishing that people would grow up without his loving care. [...]
I agree with the “torn” -free speech vs negative comments on hard working talented young women.
as someone who works with teens every day – I will have to vote for eliminating negativity towards young people who are very plugged into life-historical study of terms would be worthwhile