In Defence of Imus and Disgust for Sharpton

The BBQ Pit
141

[QUOTE=DSeid]
Forcing him to be fired is not censorship? What the Hell kind of conclusion is that? Excalibre you are an idiot. An idiot of the worst kind, one who is supremely confident that anyone who thinks other than himself is a fool while he himself doesn’t understand what freedom of speech really means.

I guess closing down a newspaper that prints things I don’t like wouldn’t be censorship either … the reporters can still speak freely.

I guess that Conservative groups scaring Disney out of distributing Fahrenheit 911 and trying to scare anyone else from picking it up wasn’t an attempt at censorship either.

Geting him fired goes beyond appropriate censure and into censorship of the worst kind (And oh that’s so impressive to point out the difference). The hypocritical self-rightousness of those who will fight for freedom of speech as long as people say things that they want to hear. As long as it doesn’t “bother” me or “others”.
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So I guess Imus owes his career to censoship. After all, if WNBC hadn’t fired Howard Stern to quell public outrage, Imus would still be in the AM ghetto.

142

[QUOTE=mhendo]

If the former, then you are right. But no-one has censored Imus. He’s perfectly free to continue spewing his bile as frequently and as vehemently as he likes. That’s what free speech is all about.

If you meant “censure,” then you’re dead wrong, and have no understanding of what free speech actually means. To censure, according to Merriam-Webster, means “to find fault with and criticize as blameworthy.” There is absolutely no contradiction between supporting freedom of speech, on the one hand, and censuring speech that you don’t like, on the other. In fact, freedom of speech affors every one of us the right to “find fault with” speech that we don’t like, and to “criticize as blameworthy” someone who utters such speech.
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You are correct with respect to the fine line separating the two, and I failed to better state my point: Had Sharpton, Jackson, et. al. merely censured Imus, that would be fine.

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[QUOTE=DSeid]
I guess closing down a newspaper that prints things I don’t like wouldn’t be censorship either … the reporters can still speak freely.
[/QUOTE]
For your analogy to make sense in this context, it would have to be a newspaper being shut down by an outside agency, such as the government or a bunch of brown-shirted thugs who smashed the printing presses. When that happens, it’s censorship.

But if a newspaper publisher decides to shut his or her own newspaper down, or an editor-in-chief fires one or more reporters, then THAT’S analagous to the Imus case.

Or to put it more simply, look at this simple equation:

Newspaper fires writer for being a jerk = CBS yanking Imus for being a jerk.

The bottom line? That ain’t censorship, it’s business.

DSeid, you are a maroon.

144

[QUOTE=DSeid]
Forcing him to be fired is not censorship? What the Hell kind of conclusion is that? Excalibre you are an idiot. An idiot of the worst kind, one who is supremely confident that anyone who thinks other than himself is a fool while he himself doesn’t understand what freedom of speech really means.
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You’re the dribbling idiot here.

Who forced him to be fired? People called for his firing, but no corporate entity was forced to accede to those requests. By your kindergarten logic, the people sponsoring his show should be compelled to continue to sponsor it, even against their own wishes or their own financial interests, just so that Imus has a large media platform for his stupidity.

I don’t have a daily radio show. I don’t have a corporate-sponsored vehicle for my political ideas that allows me to reach millions of Americans every day. Am i, therefore, denied the right of free speech?
[QUOTE=DSeid]
I guess closing down a newspaper that prints things I don’t like wouldn’t be censorship either … the reporters can still speak freely.
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Depends.

Who is closing this mythical newspaper down?

Are you firebombing it and threatening the lives of its reporters if they continue to print stuff you don’t like? Is the government legislating its closure? Or is it simply closing down because you are pointing out how stupid its ideas are, and lots of people are agreeing with you, hence reducing its audience base? Because these are all rather different things.

In case you hadn’t noticed, you knuckle-dragging moron, newspapers are in financial trouble in America, and have been for a while. Newspapers are constantly being closed down and reporters are losing their jobs. Same with many other media forms—magazines, websites, TV shows, radio shows, etc., etc. Is everyone who loses his or her job in this industry thus being denied freedom of speech?

I guess that Conservative groups scaring Disney out of distributing Fahrenheit 911 and trying to scare anyone else from picking it up wasn’t an attempt at censorship either.
[QUOTE=DSeid]
Getting him fired goes beyond appropriate censure and into censorship of the worst kind (And oh that’s so impressive to point out the difference). The hypocritical self-rightousness of those who will fight for freedom of speech as long as people say things that they want to hear. As long as it doesn’t “bother” me or “others”.
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Again, you simpleton fool, i will fight for Imus’ right to say any and all of the stupid and bigoted bullshit that he has been spewing. But i also reserve the right to tell him i think he sucks, and to tell his corporate employers and sponsors that i think he sucks and will not be listening to his show.
[QUOTE=DSeid]
Mock him. Insult him. Ignore him. But do not set up a world in which the pundits or politicos have the right to say that if we do not like what you say then you will be pulled off of the soapbox whether others want to hear what you say or not.
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But what gives him a right to his soapbox? The first amendment does not guarantee you a radio show; it doesn’t guarantee you that a publisher will agree to print and sell your ideas in a book; it doesn’t guarantee you a TV spot.

You know, while i’m glad enough that Imus has been fired, it wouldn’t worry me too much if he hadn’t been. His very presence on the radio for all this time suggests that there is a substantial number of people in America who are happy enough to listen to this sort of bigoted bullshit on a regular basis. And, as lissener’s linked editorial shows, many people are even less concerned by homophobia than they are by racism. Firing Imus is a band-aid solution that fails to address a much bigger problem—the fact that many Americans are still bigots.

But to claim that he’s somehow been denied freedom of speech just because he no longer has a national audience handed to him on a platter is absurd.

[QUOTE=DSeid]
Sad thing is what I’ve been thinking about this morning … as noble as these young women may have sounded on air I will be unsurprised if within a few months we see one or more of them in Playboy or Penthouse and justifying their acting the part of sexual object for money with the rationalization of “He implied I’m ugly, well I’ll show him.”

Gawd I hope I’m wrong.
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And so the fuck what?

How would the appearance of any (or all) of these women in a men’s magazine change the nature of Imus’ comments?

When you say that you’ve been thinking this morning, i think you give yourself too much credit.

145

[QUOTE=danceswithcats]
You are correct with respect to the fine line separating the two, and I failed to better state my point: Had Sharpton, Jackson, et. al. merely censured Imus, that would be fine.
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But that is all they did. Last time i checked, Al Sharpton doesn’t make the hiring and firing decisions for CBS.

146

Was he fired because he lost his audience? No. He probably had better ratings this last week then he did before. He wasn’t that popular and this got lots of others tuning in to hear him squirm. He was fired because advertisers were afraid of the association just as Disney was with Michael Moore. Conservative’s attempts to prevent that movie’s release and the firestorm over this each forms of censorship. No they are not protected free speech. No law obligated any distributiion company to market Moore’s movie. But trying to prevent its distribution with economic threats is still an attempt at censorship. It is using business as usual to accomplish the goal.

As to my being a Maroon, why yes, I did attend the University of Chicago! How did you know? I always thought it was the lamest name for a school mascot there was though.

As to my thoughts, no it would just sadden me to show how much all of this on every side is governed by money and power and how hypocrititcal everyone is capable of being.

The nature of his comments stands; racist and sexist and stupid and not funny but so far I’ve not heard anyone here claiming it reaches the level of hate speech. Many think it would’ve been okay if its target was a rich and powerful celebrity. I don’t know about that.

147

[QUOTE=DSeid]
Was he fired because he lost his audience? No. He probably had better ratings this last week then he did before.
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No, he was fired because he lost his advertisers. And he lost his advertisers because they decided they didn’t want their product associated with his bigoted drivel. So far as I know, they didn’t do this because of any organized boycott, but because they decided that publically distancing themselves from a gigantic asshole was better PR than running ads during his show. And if no one is advertising on his show, NBC isn’t making any money on it anymore, regardless of how many people are listening. So Imus lost his show.

How is this censorship again?

148

[QUOTE=El_Kabong]
OK, so I’m no longer hip, if I ever was, but I can’t consider it acceptable when some dissipated asshole on the radio gets to call a bunch of college athletes “ho’s” without rebuke when they apparently are not, in point of fact, ho’s at all.

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If said “ho’s” were white, there would be outrage. So are you saying speech is only free when it is not a minority?

If you are against talk show hosts being rude and insulting people in general, you got a long battle a head of you. Aside from the Bob and Tom Show (and they insult, just in a funny way), they all are rude and insulting.

I gotta say, as time goes on, people get more and more sensitive. When people complain about a cartoon, it is pretty fucking sad.

149

Look, all you “censorship” retards. “We’re no longer going to pay you $10,000,000 and give you a national platform” does not, in any conceivable way, equal censorship. If it does, then I’M being censored, because I’m not being given $10,000,000 and a national platform.

If you submit an article to the New Yorker, and the choose not to buy it, it’s not censorship. If you can’t get a job–for whatever reason–as a radio announcer, that is not censorship. Don Imus does not have a constitutional right to a job at CBS, anymore than you or I do.

Sheesh. Use a fucking dictionary and stop embarrassing yourselves.

150

[QUOTE=Epimetheus]
If said “ho’s” were white, there would be outrage. So are you saying speech is only free when it is not a minority?

[/QUOTE]

Dang, didn’t catch this in time for an edit:

“If said “ho’s” were white, there wouldn’t be outrage.”

151

[QUOTE=lissener]
Look, all you “censorship” retards. “We’re no longer going to pay you $10,000,000 and give you a national platform” does not, in any conceivable way, equal censorship. If it does, then I’M being censored, because I’m not being given $10,000,000 and a national platform.

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I know it is a slippery slope argument, but if companies succumb to outraged people long enough, and fire anybody that offends, it is pretty much censorship. Soon you have politicians working on a platform to change FCC regulations, and bills passed to prevent certain “mean” things from being said.

I do think racially motivated hate-speech is something that needs to be limited or outright banned, but the line needs to be absolute, and not fuzzy.

My response was to the term “ho’s” being used. Saying the guy should be fired because he called some random people he didn’t know ho’s is over the limit and should be quelched, fuck that kind of censorship. Saying he can’t call them something racially motivated (and Ho’s isn’t, nappy headed, yeah, but not ho’s), is understandable.

Firing somebody on the air that is an asshole is stupid. Some of us like comedians. (and every comedian insults somebody or something that other people hold dear)

So go fuck yourself, you damn speech censoring fascist.

152

[QUOTE=Epimetheus]
Dang, didn’t catch this in time for an edit:

“If said “ho’s” were white, there wouldn’t be outrage.”
[/QUOTE]

You mean, if it wasn’t a racial slur, he wouldn’t have been fired for making a racial slur? Wow, genius.

153

[QUOTE=Epimetheus]
I know it is a slippery slope argument, but if companies succumb to outraged people long enough, and fire anybody that offends, it is pretty much censorship. Soon you have politicians working on a platform to change FCC regulations, and bills passed to prevent certain “mean” things from being said.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, and then your sons will turn into homosexuals with atom bombs, right before the aliens invade.

But maybe we’re right: maybe CBS should, as a public service, against the inevitable end of the world you posit, give a bigot free air time, at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, because no advertisers want to touch it. To do it right, they should find an even worse bigot. In fact, the logical result of your hilarious “slippery slop” argument is that CBS–at the very least–should donate its highest-listenership drive time to the KKK and Fred Phelps. As a public service. Man, I loves me some slippery slopes.

154

[QUOTE=Epimetheus]
Firing somebody on the air that is an asshole is stupid. Some of us like comedians. (and every comedian insults somebody or something that other people hold dear)
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Fine. Go buy yourself a radio station, and give Imus a job. No ones going to stop you, because no one is trying to censor Imus. But neither is anyone required to advertise on your radio station if they don’t like the crap you’re broadcasting.

155

[QUOTE=Epimetheus]

Firing somebody on the air that is an asshole is stupid. Some of us like comedians. (and every comedian insults somebody or something that other people hold dear)

[/QUOTE]

And some of us are racist and sexist pigs, and we’d like to feed every morning from a trough of racist and sexist jokes.

When a radio station finds enough advertisers who don’t mind being associated with these stupid people, they can have at it. Or, they can shell out some bucks and get satellite radio.

But no one’s entitled to anything.

156

[QUOTE=Miller]
No, he was fired because he lost his advertisers. And he lost his advertisers because they decided they didn’t want their product associated with his bigoted drivel.
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If this were true, I would actually agree with the decision to fire him. The advertisers left because they were threatened economically.

The only analogy I can come up with is this.

There is an Indian restaurant near me. I don’t care for their food, and the odor from the restaurant is poor. I go to the owner and ask him to change his restaurant’s location and he refuses. I proceed to stand outside his restaurant all day long, every day and inform anyone going in that the food at this restaurant is terrible, gave me gas and I think I may have once seen a rat in the kitchen.

All of this is true, so when he calls the cops, I can self-righteously declare that I’m breaking no laws. I’m just exhibiting my free speech.

I’m also being a giant asshole. Just because I don’t care for this place, I’m trying to make sure that no one is going to partake in their food. I’m using a legal method of economic extortion to get what I want. Sure, he doesn’t have to give in to me, but if I’m affecting his business enough he certainly will.

And, of course the problem lies in the fact that it doesn’t matter if I’m right or not. Maybe the food is awesome. Maybe they had a bad day in the kitchen. Maybe I just hate Indian food. Hell, it doesn’t even matter if I even ever ate there in the first place.

Their economic well-being has been completely divorced from the quality of their product by a single guy with a beef. If I can rally 3 or 4 other people who also don’t like Indian food, they don’t stand a chance.

Again, I’m not saying that Sharpton doesn’t have the right to call for Imus’ ouster. Merely that he is a giant asshole for doing so, and the station gave in to extortion.

157

[QUOTE=lissener]
Sheesh. Use a fucking dictionary and stop embarrassing yourselves.
[/QUOTE]

Oh, I’d love to use one. The biggest, heaviest dictionary I could find.

158

[QUOTE=Fiveyearlurker]
If this were true, I would actually agree with the decision to fire him. The advertisers left because they were threatened economically.
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No, they weren’t. Come on, you think American Express or General Motors was concerned that sponsoring Imus was going to make their stock value bottom out? They could have kept their ads, and it wouldn’t have affected their bottom line in the slightest. But they decided that the PR value of having their ads run during his show didn’t match the PR value of making a big show of how they didn’t like what he was saying, so they jumped ship. That’s not extortion, that’s just opportunism. It’s not censorship, it’s those companies exercising their right to freedom of speech, same as Imus did when he kicked all this bullshit off.

159

That doesn’t speak well for your case, because your analogy kind of sucks. Complaining about a media star’s being a racist and sexist bigot is not really on a par with trying to put a restaurant out of business, even if they’re not doing anything wrong and not bothering you, just because you don’t personally enjoy the type of food they serve.

(I’m also somewhat skeptical that your hypothetical occupation of standing at a restaurant entrance “all day long, every day” and accosting the restaurant’s patrons really wouldn’t have you violating any laws. Most municipalities have codes forbidding loitering and being a public nuisance, for example, which the cops might decide that your little crusade puts you on the wrong side of.)

Mind you, I’m not attempting to argue that Sharpton is being anything but a self-serving opportunist here. I just disagree that making a public stink about behavior that you think is unethical and bigoted is really on a par with making a public stink about activities that you just don’t happen to enjoy.

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[QUOTE=Miller]
No, they weren’t. Come on, you think American Express or General Motors was concerned that sponsoring Imus was going to make their stock value bottom out? They could have kept their ads, and it wouldn’t have affected their bottom line in the slightest. But they decided that the PR value of having their ads run during his show didn’t match the PR value of making a big show of how they didn’t like what he was saying, so they jumped ship. That’s not extortion, that’s just opportunism. It’s not censorship, it’s those companies exercising their right to freedom of speech, same as Imus did when he kicked all this bullshit off.
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Bottom out, no? Decrease, yes.

I’m not sure we’re disagreeing, but I think there is certainly an economic result of bad PR. Otherwise, why would they care.

The alternative is that GM cares more about social issues than their stock price. I just don’t buy it.