Human Dignity and the Demise of Don Imus
April 13, 2007
It's too bad we don't recognize the profit in forgiveness that we find in "entertaining" one another with insults. We might make some progress in this country if we did.
In the festering debate surrounding Don Imus' repugnant remarks about the Rutgers women's basketball team, we've heard some good points made about the opportunity this gives us to discuss matters of race, free speech and American culture. It's a discussion that's long overdue, and I want to be part of it. I feel I'm qualified to participate because it's fundamentally about human dignity, and most of my friends are human. I'm an old white guy too (because anything over 30 is old to my generation), and this is at least partly about an old white guy who can't or won't keep his mouth shut. I can identify with that.
Race is overemphasized in the current debate, which should center instead on hate speech. Sometimes the easy answer isn't the correct answer. If you prefer the easy answer, move along; nothing to see here.
Hate speech isn't quite the same as actual hate. Here's a thing that troubles me: On any given day in America, thousands of Americans ply their trade by merrily dancing across the lines of propriety for the sake of getting our attention. We call them "rappers" or "comedians" or "talk-show hosts" or "political pundits," and sometimes we call them worse than that. They're the ones who smack us upside the head with their much-too-muchness, and we respond with our laughter or disgust or anger or disdain, and we go on with our lives as if this doesn't matter all that much.
The truth is that we can't afford the emotional investment required to let it bother us, but it matters very much. It matters because, ultimately, we are the people they insult. They insult our intelligence by placing undue emphasis on the worst in us, never acknowledging that any one of us is just as capable of greatness as of failure. In this way, I think, they deny America its greatness too.
I take that personally, at least partly because I believe in certain principles that have shaped this nation. I am sick to death of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, and all the rest who divide America by labeling its people, measuring us by standards they can't live up to themselves. It's the combination of deeply divisive rhetoric and lack of introspection that I abhor, not the person or the political stance.
I don't think I'm alone.
I also have a hard time with those who judge us by clothing themselves as representatives of God — Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, to name just a few. I might tolerate them better if each was not also a minister ordained to transmit the teachings of Jesus, whose recorded words were clear and succinct on the subjects of judgment and forgiveness. I usually keep my thoughts about all this to myself. I'm not a preacher; I'm just another white guy who sometimes talks too much.
That brings me back to the guy who started all this. Don Imus has always been edgy, he's often been irascible, and he's sometimes gone too far. He'll continue to pay for that as we all pay for our indiscretions. But what is so different about Don Imus? Why send him packing while we tolerate Howard Stern and a hundred shock-jock wannabees from coast to coast?
I think I know the answer. I think this time he reminds us a little too much of what we want to ignore about ourselves, what's really rotten in the core of America's conscience.
His remark truly was off-the-cuff, spontaneous. We could hear that in his voice. It was rude and offensive, and yet so completely lame and unwarranted that I can imagine these young women, hearing about it later, might have thought it merely stupid.
So how is it that we've decided to defend free speech more stringently for one who carefully considers and crafts his words, rehearses and records them, and finds music publishers and radio stations willing to support him as he loudly and proudly calls any and all women "b*tches" and "hoes"? We may not even raise much objection if he advocates the killing of police officers.
The answer of course is in the bottom line, the profit margin. Here are words you won't hear from the presidents of MSNBC or CBS:
There is no excuse for giving anyone a platform to insult, defame or threaten another human being. Dignity, not race, is the issue here.
This is the truth, but saying it would reveal their hypocrisy. So they call out the reactionaries who want to sell us on the idea that this is about race. And, may God bless them, they are just as wrong and just as divisive.
Don Imus has been stoned and slaughtered to atone for a multitude of bigger sins, his own included. This may be inevitable, and it may be expedient for the music producers and broadcasters who want to look concerned as they continue to profit from various forms of hate speech directed at anyone and everyone, but it's wrong.
I'm not saying it isn't fair. It's wrong for just one reason: He asked our forgiveness and we aren't big enough to grant it. In this whole sordid televised and microanalyzed mess, Imus repeatedly emphasized that what he said was "reprehensible" and he openly sought and accepted opportunities to apologize even more publicly than he delivered the original insult. Maybe he's just a clever self-promoter, but he looked as genuinely ashamed as he ought to be.
As disgusted as I am with his callous words, I'm even more disgusted with the hypocrisy of his critics — especially those in the so-called "entertainment industry." Our laws protecting free speech have allowed these people to sell millions of recordings and live broadcasts of deliberate and profane insults against our children and ourselves, and now they pose as champions of propriety?
Profanity in itself doesn't bother me so much. (Get real. A landmine is a far greater insult to humanity than an F-bomb, and we haven't outlawed landmines yet.) What hurts us all is the stuff that is demeaning and divisive. It denies the best in us as it elevates and celebrates the worst in us. It is commodity without conscience, yet we buy it. Merchants fill their shelves with it. Advertisers rush in to buy the commercials that sustain it. Promoters book concerts and print T-shirts to spread its influence.
So really, who's the "ho" in this picture? Is anyone innocent? How long will we look the other way? And how — if at all — can we simply make it less profitable to insult people? Because busting Imus, if that's as far as it goes, is like arresting one street dealer and voting the drug lords a tax break. He just had sufficient poor taste to remind us of the unacknowledged elephant of intolerance in America's living room. With a hundred TV channels, you still can't get away from it. It isn't limited to racial intolerance, either. God help anyone in America today who dares to say or think or be something truly different. As "edgy" as he may seem to some of us, Imus is in many ways a shameless conformist.
I believe there is something deep within us that wants a change. At some point, we simply have to stop drawing battle lines between us. Among all the obvious questions, Imus' firing by MSNBC and CBS also raises this one: When a person makes a public mistake that soils his own reputation, then admits the mistake and publicly demonstrates genuine regret and contrition, can we find it in ourselves to forgive that person?
Why don't we ask the Rev. Sharpton and the Rev. Jackson what Jesus said about that, since they've weighed in on the matter? I'm no more a saint than Don Imus, but I think the answer is in Luke 17:3-4. The King James translation of it goes like this: "Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him."
You don't have to be a Christian or a Republican, or even a straight middle-aged man, to distinguish between truth and lies. Upholding the dignity of all people requires a balance of tolerance and forgiveness, and throwing Don Imus to the wolves doesn't get us there. What does? I think we'll figure that out when we decide as a nation that it's important to us. If we can do that, we may discover that we are one nation after all.
Jeff Seager
Charleston, WV
April 13, 2007
