My last word on Don Imus
Two things:
1. I've seen many letters to the editor, blog entries and comments, and other commentary that demonstrate much confusion about free speech in regard to . At no time during this episode was Don Imus's freedom of speech ever in jeopardy. The First Amendment protects your freedom of speech against government control. Anyone else is perfectly free not to listen to you and not to provide you a medium for your expression. If government had attempted to silence Imus, I would have been on the front lines defending his right to call anyone a "nappy-headed ho."
2. No double standard exists in this case. One standard holds, re: hip-hop use of similar terms. That standard is economics. To understand this you must understand who is the customer for a newspaper, TV or radio station and what is the product. This will be difficult for some journalists to accept, but the customer is the advertiser and the product is the eyeballs and ears of an audience. Journalism is simply the stuff the owner thinks will attract the eyeballs and ears the customer wishes to reach.
The customers for hip-hop and rap music are apparently happy with the product. The customers for Don Imus's show apparently became unhappy.
And, if you think the opinion press has not taken hip-hop to task for its quality of speech, think again--and do a Lexus search. Or take a look at the current flap over the whole "no snitchin" thing. And if you think Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton played political roles in this--ignoring similar language in hip-hop--well, duh! What did you expect from these guys? Partisan politics is not about intellectual consistency. It's about winning.
Posted
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Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 4:49 pm under
