2007 April 16
Copyright © Brian Wright
The Coffee Coaster™

Imus in the Mourning:
Mass media reveals its sad priorities

Does anyone remember the adage, Sticks and Stones?

Bill Maher introduces his show last night (Real Time on HBO) with a skit selling a pill called "Getoverital," which one takes for relief after hearing something offensive: from Imus, from Rush, from Ann Coulter, from Michael Richards, from Rosie O'Donnell, from Bill Maher.

Remember how Maher was canned from ABC because of his misconstrued comments about the physical courage of Arabs who fly airplanes into buildings?

I'll state my opinion by reference to the Ann Coulter incident: Gratuitously and with smirking malice, she called Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards a faggot. (A lot of papers dropped her, which I think is perfectly appropriate. She has attracted hardly any attention.) Afterward, Bill Maher, in the context of lampooning Coulter, applied the term occasionally to some well-known men.

IMHO (in my humble opinion), gangsta rappers—who spew venomous, misogynistic, racist, annoying crap (hey, new word: gangsta crappers)—are in the position of Ann Coulter; only they don't attract mass protests or calls for chastisement. In their twisted universe, nappy-headed ho is a euphemism for women.

Not being an expert on Imus--the few times I've heard him, he comes off as Rush Limbaugh with marbles in his mouth—I speculate his spur-of-the-moment "nappy-headed hos" was intended to make fun of the rappers' worldview just as Maher's use of faggot was mocking Coulter's view. Who knows?

If that's the case and his apology is genuine, then there is no malice and I don't think people should stop listening to him for that reason alone. Look, if you don't want to listen to him, don't listen to him. But don't draw any attention to him... or to yourself. Don't make him into a phony cause.
Al Sharpton, get a life.

My Velda sent me a link to this fine column in the Kansas City Star by Mr. Jason Whitlock, a black journalist. Talk about laying it on the line: rejecting victimhood and asserting rational values is the most constructive approach.

What about the cultural and moral issues?

By elevating what someone says or writes vs. what someone does into news—no, by elevating an insignificant utterance of some bafflingly elevated celebrity into news—you distract people from real issues.

On the night all the networks led with the Imus infraction, major actual crimes against humanity and other broad issues were left uncovered, such as:

• The massively destructive war on drugs, which by the way
   results in a horrifically disproportionate wrongful
   imprisonment and oppression of minorities
• The occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and the continued
   government coverup of the depleted uranium humanitarian
   disaster
• The commission and coverup of the 911 crimes
• The battle for energy alternatives and enabling farmers to
   grow hemp to create a vibrant new economy saving
   businesses and farms
• Various states, especially Michigan and Ohio, facing huge
   budget deficits while they pay for prisons rather than
   schools
• Extraordinary rendition and torture by the US federal
   government, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and
   status of efforts to restore civil liberties and Constitutional
   federal government in the United States
• The status of efforts to impeach the Bushoviks for their
   highest crimes and misdemeanors, particularly in regard to
   preemptive war, lies for war, and use of WMDs
• Realistic solutions to multiple environmental problems
   exacerbated by the current regime
• Progress of realistic incentives for birth control ((hopeless)
   babies having (helpless) babies), which lie at the root of
   immigration issues worldwide
• How we're proceeding toward noncoercive methods of
   government financing and elimination of the Federal Reserve
   Bank, deep-sixing the income tax, and ending all corporate
   privileges (private laws)
• How we're doing tackling the sacred cows of state-forced
   schooling and welfare systems, status of freedom
   movements in those vital areas
• Health and radical life-extension developments
• Status of space exploration initiatives, particularly those
   outside the bureaucratized environment of NASA
• In general, data points on how well the species is evolving
   toward reason and rational spirituality—away from
   primitive inhumane superstitions
• Progress in combating genocides around the planet,
   not just the celebrated ones in East Africa, but the slow
   strangling of peoples by the Israeli government in Palestine,
   by the US government in Iraq, by the Russian government
   wherever, and by any government X in country Y (or X)
• Where we are in the spread of the Sacred Nonaggression
   Principle meme, how quickly we can "incentivize" the power
   people to lay down their bonecrushing machinery and get
   off our backs and off our fronts

Well, I could probably rattle of another dozen or two vital stories I'd like to know about. But that's enough to get Katie, Charles, and Brian started tonight: a real newscast. What a shocker that would be!

I will admit the media is doing a fine job in general covering the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking into baseball, a truly racially significant story happening this week.

Stacked up against real news, what some sad schlock jock beyond his prime says about nappy-headed anything doesn't amount to a bucket of cold expectorant.