Don Imus

For whatever it's worth, I don't actually want to write this post. I don't want to join the throngs of screaming morons, and I know that every time anybody talks about Imus, his notoriety and power grow like Beetlejuice or Voldemort or something. There's no such thing as bad publicity.

First of all, let me state that Imus is a total sleazebag, worthy of the sort of profanities that I don't feel comfortable putting on the blog. I don't understand what could've possessed him to call the Rutgers Women's Basketball team "nappy-headed hos", at least not in normal conversation.

Could it be that this wasn't an accident? That Imus brought this up in a move calculated to increase his notoriety, to make him a household name after a decade of obscurity? Could it be that after the wild success of Howard Stern, the precedent has been set for playing to the shock-hungry crowd's desire to inject some controversy into their 2 hour bumper-to-bumper commute?

Here's what gets to me... the outrage. As far as I'm concerned, the only people entitled to outrage are the team, maybe their families. Certainly not the athletic department or the university... we've gotten more coverage from this affair than we got for the Championship game. I've seen interviews with "the man on the street", with a NYC councilman who's trying to ban the n-word, and of course with Al Sharpton. Everybody's got a soapbox - mine is this blog - but unlike bloggers, the microphone-seekers are in it for personal gain, which we must not forget.

The outrage is especially disconcerting in the college community. There's a whole discourse begging to be written about Political Correctness and college life. Fortunately, it's already been done before. One of my favorite shows, Penn and Teller's Bullshit, has taken a magnifying glass to the culture of PC that pervades campuses. Penn put it best:

"We're all offended, all the time, and we don't have a fucking right not to be offended ... Americans believe everybody deserves freedom to move up in the world. That's a great thing. But if moving up means spending four years in a beer commercial run by politeness police, maybe you should think twice."

So there it is. I've outed myself as someone with no tolerance for PC. I don't think I'm a racist, and I don't think I'm at odds with the Womens BBallers. It just seems insane to me that there will be an "Emergency Protest" on College Ave today, as if this is a time-pressing issue. Then again, maybe it is; in a few days, people will forget about the offensive words of an attention-seeking old man, and the loud-mouths on campus will lose their bully pulpit. Can't have that, now can we?

I, for one, plan on protesting Don Imus the best way I know how, because I do find his statements distasteful and offensive. I will not listen to his radio show. Like most other Americans, I will protest with my wallet (indirectly, I suppose), and just like a week ago, soon nobody will remember Imus, that he has a radio show, or that he's even alive.