This morning on CNN Howard Kurtz pulled the "what about the rappers! that's where the word ho comes from!" stunt. What this has to do with Don Imus calling the Rutgers Women's Basketball team whores for no apparent reason other than the crime of being mostly black I do not know. In any case, we're seeing a pretty quick creep of this collective responsibility thing. Because many of the women are black, and rap is a black thing, and some rappers use the word "ho," it's absurd to focus on Don Imus calling these women a bunch of whores without pointing out that other people have used the word ho in other contexts. Or something. I really can't follow the logic.
The thing I really don't get about this Imus thing is the mad rush by people to come and defend this guy. We've heard some dumb shit from people trying to explain away these comments, but using this "he wasn't the first to say it" defense is some weak sauce. For some reason, people aren't distancing themselves from Imus like ESPN did from Rush Limbaugh, or like the cast of Seinfeld did from Kramer. What is it about Don Imus that makes people feel he should get different treatment from those lepers?
Let me, then, contradict myself somewhat by saying that Imus should not be fired primarily for the racial insensitivity of his comments. Don Imus ought to be out of a job because, as a steward of the airwaves, it's irresponsible and kind of dangerous to be making personal attacks on the air. Although it's not illegal after the corollary to the Fairness Doctrine expired, it's an abuse of the power of the mic. The Rutgers women's team can't simply respond in kind with their own broadcast or by calling a press conference -- and now they've been slandered for pretty much no good reason and with no ethical means of protest available to them.
This kind of one-sided fight is why we shouldn't be talking about what Imus said so much as how he said it. Here we are bickering over the words that left his mouth instead of talking about how he even got close to a microphone with those words in the first place.
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