Blabber Radio
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One can be charitable and forgive Imus his lapse of judgment, intelligence, and decency, just so long as he rots in hell for all eternity. It's not that he was so unutterably tasteless that bothers me, it's that he represents a firestorm of rudeness that has exploded across this country. Actually, it's worse than that, he and the jabberjocks like him and Limp-paw and the aptly named Michael Savage are to a large degree responsible for it. They've made it okay for people to act like barroom boors on Tuesday night, their brains switched to idle and their mouths at full rev. Just the other day some passengers on a Northwest airliner awaiting departure heard the pilot screaming invectives at someone on his cellphone. They complained to the cabin attendants, who conveyed their discomfort to the man. He turned his rage on them with a torrent of obscenity, and had to be forcibly removed from the cockpit. Flying has become worrisome enough without having pilots with uncontrollable stress levels. And life is complicated enough without our being surrounded by people whose opinions and manners are formed by mindless morons.
posted by John M Crowther @ 7:16 AM
7 Comments:
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This "Imus" foulness is bothering me even greater than those related to the Mel Gibsons, Jerry Falwells and others of their ilk.
I'm soon to start my 7th decade. Although it took until the late '60s for me to develop a social consciousness, I did.
My fairy-tale hope since then has been that the world would become a kinder place as I matured.
Forty years later I perceive that societies' (American and other) xenophobic, ageist, homophobic sexist and more-than-somewhat mysgognistic attitudes, amongst others, have simply been driven underground.
That saddens me. My saving grace is knowing that there are those who also strive for a better and more graceful world.
I don't listen to don Imus but as someone well into his 7th decade I am struck by the fact that phrases that used to be restricted to the the streets and gutters are now apparently accepted. One of the conservative pundits ,Anne Coulter, described John Edwards as a faggot. Actually Sheldon my take is somewhat different. I think the average person is much more tolerant than when i was growing up,but the level of public discourse has plummeted. Roger
I have no idea who Imus is (possibly because I live on the other side of the planet)... but suspect that I wouldn't like him much anyway. Yes... standards have slipped.
Now it's up to each and every one of us who still place value on a graceful life to attempt to "live it". It will be hard... (and no-one promised us that anything worth having would be easy)... but we can try.
Thought provoking stuff John. I won't be flying Northwest anytime soon! Great cartoon... as usual!
I am sadden by the fact that Imus felt free to utter these words, that the team is allowing it to overshadow their achievements and that it has gotten much more attention than it deserves. These people like Imus, Stern and Savage, whom I have only heard on an ad are not worth our wasting our time listening to them.
Great cartoon, John C and you certainly captured his likeness very well. Sad to think that this man is a millionaire because he has been allowed to say shocking things for so many years. When did we become such a cruel world?
I couldn’t agree with John more that we are living in sorrowful times: the air-waves are filled with hours and hours of hatred. Personalities and callers spewing forth bile day and night attract the ratings and the ad dollars. That Imus or someone else (Bill Mahler) occasionally get punished for the outrageousness of their remarks is no indication that anyone in the business of selling air time is going to stop television and radio from profiting from America’s insatiable need for meanness. (And it can be argued that in a free country perhaps no one should.)
What is more appalling than only hearing the voice of the haters is the almost total absence of other more modulated speakers, other voices from intelligent and insightful commentators on the moral and political scene --Gore Vidal or Alexander Cockburn, for example.
Where are they when we surely need to hear from them on a daily basis?
And equally appalling, prof, is the parade of presidents, presidential hopefuls, governors, legislators, respected journalists, authors, and business leaders who appeared regularly on the I-show, promoting themselves and keeping their mouths shut about I's spewage of hatred. Just this morning I heard David Brooks, NY Times columnist, Public Broadcasting pundit, and frequent guest on I's morning show, defending his brand of "humor."
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