Thank God For Don Imus

 by Phillip Ellis Jackson  

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Don Imus is an idiot, but not for the reasons everyone thinks.

Every once and a while those who write political commentary are handed a real gift.  The things we’ve said on different subjects converge in a sort of cosmic Woodstock, where seemingly disparate points blend seamlessly into a simple illustration of everything we’ve been saying.

Such is the case with Shock Jock Don Imus, who just took a career-ending kick to the groin by saying something far less stupid than his normal morning rants.  Belittling Janet Reno’s Parkinson’s disease (“I don't know how she gets that lipstick on looking like a rodeo clown,”) didn’t get him fired.  Referring to Jews as “boner-nosed,” “beanie-wearing Jewboys” and “money-grubbing bastards,” didn’t cost him his job.  Calling NBC correspondent Gwen Ifill a “cleaning lady” didn’t get him canned either, nor did calling the sitting Vice President of the United States a “war criminal” among other highly insulting terms.

No, it was utilizing hip-hop slang that did him in.  He picked on the wrong people (student athletes) who were the wrong color, utilizing language that’s okay for one group of people to use frequently and make records with, but is offensive when employed by a ROWG (Rich Old White Guy).  And that, by God, is where we draw the line!

This morally-relativistic double standard allows me to point to my August 2006 essay on moral relativism, "What kind of car would Jesus drive to take his girlfriend to an abortion clinic?," and reiterate a key point.

An action is either morally right, morally wrong, or morally neutral.  It isn’t “right” for one person, “wrong” for another, and maybe-right or maybe-wrong for a third depending on their mood that day.  Right or wrong on a fundamental moral level is not a man-made judgment.  It’s ingrained in all of us, by God at the moment of conception, as part of the universal moral code, that it is wrong to deliberately bring harm to an innocent human life.  Choosing pasta for dinner over fish is morally neutral.  Calling anybody a derogatory name simply to make fun of them and cause them harm is wrong.  Not wrong on Monday but okay on Tuesday, or wrong because you’re white but okay because you’re black, but wrong period. 

So why wasn’t Don Imus fired for saying what he did about Janet Reno?  He wasn’t disagreeing with her policy, which is a legitimate topic for satire.  He was making fun of her disease.  And what about the “Jewboys” he offended?  Attacking corporate CEOS for their policies and practices is fair game.  Attacking them because they have “boner noses” isn’t.

Not only was Imus not fired for saying these things, he was elevated by the political class as a spokesman for middle-America.  Politicians from both parties and all races flocked to his program, as did news commentators like Tim Russert and news reporters like David Gregory.  Why did they not take offense at the “boner-nosed Jewboy”-spewing Imus, but only deserted the “nappy-haired hos”-Imus because he supposedly crossed some line?

Part of the answer, I believe, can be found in another essay I wrote back in September 2006: "Off to the Races: The Perplexing Politics of Political Correctness."  Democratic Senator Robert K. Byrd — the same Robert K. Byrd who was the Exalted Cyclops of his local KKK Klavern, who voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and who is the only US Senator to have opposed both black Supreme Court nominees — got a pass for uttering the “N-word” on national TV in 2001.  Five years later a Republican Senator, who used a word few (if any) Americans had ever heard of to reference the ethnic heritage of a young man harassing his campaign, was universally condemned as an unrepentant racist.

Like the Imus “ho” controversy, this was a manufactured outrage whose flames were stoked by Jessie "Hymietown" Jackson and Al "Tawana Brawley/kill Jewish white interlopers" Sharpton.  Their excuse for their own actions?  Well, you see, Don Imus made his remarks over the public airwaves, while they just used bullhorns to incite crowds to violence or spoke candidly about their dislike of Jews.  So you see, there’s no real comparison.  Imus is a horrible man.  They are civic and community leaders speaking on behalf of an oppressed population.  Like the calories in a birthday cake they have a magical dispensation; their words don’t count.

All of this reminds me of the BS that surfaces every once and a while where some individual asserts that black people can’t be racists because to be a racist you must have power, and blacks don’t have power.  Ignoring the egregiously stupid reasoning that generalizes from group status to individual status (some blacks have actually come to hold positions of authority in business and politics, and amassed personal fortunes, believe it or not!), to maintain that something is only right or wrong/good or bad if “power” is attached to it is more relativistic garbage. As I explained in my September 2006 essay:

Today, those who don’t immediately separate human beings on the basis of skin color, sex and religion are called ‘racists,’ while those who categorize every person by their race/sex/religion/gender preference are said to be the enlightened ones.

My prescription for dealing with idiocy of this nature has been reinforced once again by the public splitting of hairs with regard to Imus’ and others' use of derogatory language toward minorities and women. 

It all boils down to a simple formula. When we meet someone for the first time, we tend to put that person into a category (young/old, black/white, attractive/ugly, educated/uneducated, etc.) so we can have an initial frame of reference.  We use that frame of reference to then begin a longer-term (and more precise) evaluation of them.  The trick is to put each person in the proper fundamental category so that all of our subsequent evaluations are meaningful.

Now, most people divide up the world incorrectly.  They want to hire someone "young," marry someone "beautiful," only listen to someone "from the right school," and so forth.  Thus, for example, by focusing only on a young person for a new hire, they miss interviewing older, potentially better candidates.  Not only do they limit the pool of people they could hire/marry/take advice from, etc., they maximize contact with someone who could potentially injure them or lead them astray.

I've avoided this by focusing on the proper fundamental question when I first meet a person.  I still see the same young/old, pretty/ugly, etc. attributes as everyone else, but I base my initial judgment of their worth on another variable, the fundamental one. I ask myself the simple question: Is this person an a**hole?

A black a**hole will screw you differently than a white one, a pretty one differently than an ugly one, and so on and so forth.  But the net effect is that you will always get screwed.  By dividing up the world properly, I limit the opportunity for people to do injury to me while, at the same time, broadening the possibility of having contact with positive, productive people.

In the final analysis I don't really care about a person's color, sex or other qualities. What I really want to know is the answer to that single, simple question.  Understanding it tells me everything I need to know.

Had Don Imus kept this in mind, he would still be on the air today.  Instead, he committed the cardinal mistake every good liberal makes.  He believed that because he carried the water for the Left, when he was attacked he’d be defended by his Leftist friends.

Had Imus realized that the “fundamental question” at play here wasn’t political philosophy, but something entirely different, he wouldn’t have been so surprised at the reaction his words created.  As soon as the political winds changed his former friends deserted him in droves.  John Kerry, the man for whom he so shamelessly shilled in the 2004 election, was missing in action.  Harold Ford, another candidate he strongly supported, put as much distance between himself and Imus as he could.  The plethora of liberal Democratic party presidential contenders who sucked at his radio teat to promote their own agenda now suddenly couldn’t remember even having met the guy. 

The only notable person not to desert Imus was Republican presidential candidate John McCain.  To the Left, this is a clear cut case of endemic Conservative/Republican racism.  Notwithstanding the fact that any Republican apparatchik would hardly call McCain “conservative” except on an isolated policy point or two, the real reason is that McCain — as well as other Conservative opinion leaders who have spoken out against his firing — acts on principle not expediency.  If being stupid was unconstitutional, we’d need at least 534 special congressional elections (I’ll leave it up to you to find the one exemption), not to mention a wholesale restructuring of the other two branches, state and local governments, and the constitutionally-protected news media. 

No, the fact is that the Right hasn’t jumped on the “fire Imus” bandwagon because as a general rule, the Right respects principle over expediency.  We’d rather let the market decide who stays on the air than some self-appointed protectors of public morality.  It’s why there’s no corresponding Conservative push for Bill Maher or Rosie O’Donnell to be fired.  These people are as big an idiot as Imus, but in America you have a right to be a fool.  You counter foolishness and ignorance with facts and education, to borrow again from my essay on moral relativism. 

There will always be a certain number of people who believe that George Bush has a secret plan to kill black people, just like there will always be the Rosie O’Donnells and Charlie Sheens who believe that the U.S. attacked itself on September 11.  Rather than silence these people, we’re better off giving them a public forum to spew their nonsense.  Those who seek the truth will then consult other sources of information to verify or challenge the claim.  Those who won’t will never be convinced otherwise, because what they seek isn’t knowledge but justifications for their political biases.

We will always win the war of ideas if our ideas, actions and behaviors are superior to those of the Left.  Victory is not instantaneous, as the 2006 election cycle demonstrated, but it is assured.  Have enough faith to believe what you believe, and enough courage to express your ideas unabashedly, and the end result is not in dispute.

Which brings me now to my final self-congratulatory reference to the March 2007 essay I wrote, "Democrats Hate Little Children (Allah Be Praised)."  Don Imus not only missed the point that moral relativism is a cancer, and that principles matter first and foremost — therefore you can’t count on your Liberal friends to come to your defense when the moral relativists attack you.  He also missed the important point about why Jessie, Al and the rest of the gang get a free pass for saying even worse things than he did. As I wrote just a few short weeks ago,

[T]he fact [is] that Byrd, Maher, Sharpton, et.al. are not criticized for what they say because, well, everyone knows they’re just a bunch of morons, and therefore nobody really takes anything they say seriously.

Listening to Liberals and Democrats is like watching a group of ten-year-olds on the school playground call someone a stinky-pants, or say that they’re ugly, or insist that their mother never really liked them.  Nobody really analyzes what they say.  You don’t find their teacher sniffing around little Johnny’s trousers to see if he’s actually emitting a foul odor, or sizing up little Suzie for a nose job and other plastic surgeries, or calling Tommy’s Mom to see if she does love her little boy after all.

Instead, you treat the remarks for what they actually are; silly, infantile expressions coming from a group of children who really don’t know any better, and as such can’t be held to the same standard as an adult.  Contrast this with the same comment made by little Johnny/Suzie/Tommy’s teacher, and you’d see him or her put on suspension pending a full disciplinary hearing before the board of education.

And so it is that the Left can say just about anything they want — from commenting on race relations, to sexual orientation, to the war in Iraq — and no matter how egregiously stupid they act or sound the press isn’t going to call them on it.  But let the “adults” (that is, Republicans and Conservatives) comment on the same subject matter, and every word, punctuation mark and/or nuance of what they say is scrutinized for content which is then used to criticize them.

The poetic justice in the whole Imus affair is that Imus routinely condemned Conservatives and Republicans as lying, unprincipled bastards to curry the favor of Democrats and Liberals.   But when the time came to protect his livelihood following the apology he made to the Rutgers University women’s basketball team, the only people who’ve come to his defense are the very people he condemned.

Thank God for Don Imus.  Without him, I’d be accused of being completely out of touch with the way things actually work.

Culture: Media

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