These threads have gotten all mixed up in my mind by now, but in one of them I already made a point similar to this, but I think that it bears repeating.
YWTF had appropriately pointed out that I would accept censorship in a variety of other circumstances, such as by a resturaunt owner who fires a waiter who referred to customers as “hos” or to me as “Jew” instead of “Sir”. And that is exactly right: we accept a variety of forms of censorship and censorship is not per se a bad thing. We are particularly wary of governmental censorship and this debacle does not involve that. We do accept that the government has a role in censorship, such as that which crosses the line into true hate speech, but he did not cross that line any more than most of Snoop’s or Johnny Cash’s did. No one’s protected rights have been infringed in any way. He was censored by way of indirect use of corporate avarice.
The issue at hand is if this particular method of censorship is the sort we want to endorse let alone celebrate. Imus was censored not because he lost his audience. The market was as interested in what he had to say as it had been before his latest idiocy, in fact probably more. This was censorship by those who did not listen to him by way of use of battery with the blunt object that is the media circus, which concerned the advertisers who then put the screws onto those who have every right to censor Imus, the media outlets.
I maintain my concern that allowing those that can play the media circus well to have this de facto veto power over what stations will broadcast or not, that calling for someone to be removed from the air because you as a non-listener want to prevent others from hearing something that is offensive to you, is no cause for celebration. It is a cause for concern.
I didn’t like it when Conservative forces tried to prevent Michael Moore from having his ability to distribute his movie. I didn’t like it when the others tried to punish the Dixie Chicks for saying things they didn’t want to hear. And I do not like this. Short of hate speech what he said and how “innocent” or how much these women were “the best of black women” is totally besides the point. The intent to silence voices that you do not like, the intent and the method, while legal, are worrisome.