This whole Don Imus issue has confused the shit out of me. Talk radio is full of that kind of, um, talk. Anyways, it all feels like the first episode of the latest season of South Park. Sometimes, South Park can crank out a new episode in response to a very recent event, but that didn’t happen here. This episode aired weeks earlier.
As for how or why this Don Imus issue exploded in the way that it did - I just don’t understand (and now I feel like Stan Marsh at the end of that South Park episode). There are so many similar things said all the time by many radio “personalities.”
Media Matters has an excellent post up chronicling the many slurs of Glenn Beck, O’Reilly, and more: It’s not just Imus.
The response to the whole Imus situation just seems wrong: a cause celeb on which everyone can jump. The latest distraction. How the hell did it get so out of hand? Who did it really offend? Why this “nappy headed ho’s” statement? Why not “ghetto slut” (Boortz)? “Turbanned hoodlums” (Savage)?
Imus is probably far less offensive than many of these other radio people, and neither his firing nor all of this special attention is going to make anything better. Nor did it solve anything. It just provided everybody with some bullshit theater.
Posted by Jeff Shell at
11:41 AM
