Part shock jock (highly irreverent and comedic radio DJ) and serious news radio DJ Don Imus was recently suspended for two weeks from his job and the simulcast of his radio program on the MSNBC network was cancelled because he called the players of the Rutgers University predominately African-American woman’s basketball team “tattooed… nappy-haired hoes”.
The outrage over these statements grew the days after Imus expressed his opinion about the young women of the Rutgers and Tennessee women’s basketball teams that were playing in the NCAA championship.
The description Imus used for these women was insulting and out of line and he should have been punished and voluntarily apologized for making such a statement.
Imus (and some of his producers) seem to have a long history (Imus has been on radio for over 30 yrs.) of being highly insulting to the African-American community (and many other minority groups in the US), so much so that what he consider as shock jock humor appears to be a more deeply held personal racism (and sexism).
This view of Imus as a racist and sexist is offset by his many charitable activities that seem to be forthcoming to all those that suffer some misfortune (such as childhood cancer or war wounded).
Whether Imus is a sixty-five year old white racist, just a good guy who misspoke, or a radio DJ trying to be an outrageous shock jock, I don’t believe he should be fired for this incident.
I believe strongly in freedom of speech even for vile racist and sexist, so I support Imus not because I like him (I never listened to his radio broadcast and only occasionally watched the simulcast MSNBC program when he interviewed someone I was interested in) or think he did not do anything wrong, but because freedom of speech is so very important.
Freedom must be maintained and part of being free means having freedom of speech. The human condition will never be understood if human expression in any of its forms is overly restricted.
The censuring of Imus could lead to an assault against all irreverent or so-called politically incorrect humor. The question is who is going to decide what is irreverent or politically incorrect?
One may be happy that someone that one disagreed with and thought was vile was removed from the air, but what if someone you thought was not vile was removed from the air.
There is a lot of racism and sexism (this is why Barak Obama cannot win the presidency at this date and Hillary Clinton would have an extremely tough time winning the presidency) in America and probably a large percentage of Imus’s audience are racist and/or sexist, which would partly explain his large radio audience (one of the largest in free radio – Howard Stern, the king of shock jocks has a significantly smaller audience since going to satellite radio).
Of course, businesses have the right to pay for the talent that they desire. They can hire or fire whomever they want to. Most business decisions are determined by forces in the “marketplace” (whether someone makes money for a company or not).
In many instances, a company’s public image will determine how it does in the marketplace; so public image is a factor some companies consider too.
Anyway, Imus (and a producer or two) may be racist and sexist but freedom of speech and an understanding of the human condition are so important that we should not so easily tread on them.