Letters to the Editor
philliejoe
Published Letters: 38 Editor's Choice: 11
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Way to go, Charlie!
[Read the article: What was Charlie Crist thinking?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've been living in Tallahassee for the past 5 years--just missed election debacle 2000, but lived through Terri Schiavo and the second dose of Jeb's autocratic, bullying ways--and we can hardly believe our luck.
I know quite a few folks in the legislature and various liberal lobbying groups, and, by all accounts, Charlie's for real: ambitious, no doubt, but a guy who is more interested in working for people than for the powerful, and who is willing to risk alienating the traditional Republican power base in the interest of justice and fairness. This is just another in a string of surprising and refreshing choices Governor Crist has made since taking office only a few months ago--from his refusal to have the racist state song ('Way Down Along the Suwanee River') played at his inauguration to his swift and fair settlement of the Martin Lee Anderson case (an African-American boy beaten to death ON CAMERA in a juvenile rehabilitation 'boot camp'--a case that Jeb deliberately dragged his feet over so he could leave it on Charlie's desk), Charlie has everyone in Tallahassee walking around wondering if we've died and gone to heaven.
Charlie isn't just a 'new Republican'--he's a new kind of politician, like Mark Warner was for Virginia: a person who understands that the best way to succeed is to do the right thing, and who refuses to let partisanship interfere with progress.
We're still a long ways from Utopia down here, but compared to what Floridians have had to live through for the past eight years, we are justifiably excited to have a Governor who is bringing fairness and respect back to our much maligned state.
Thanks, Charlie!! You da Man!!
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Consider the Source.
[Read the article: Imus offends]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I would first like to point out that the two men leading the charge to fire Don Imus were responsible, not so long ago, for giving us Tawana Brawley, 'Diamond Merchants,' and 'Hymie-Town.'
Secondly, I would like to observe that Don Imus is a Shock Jock. His entire career is built on embodying the persona of the irreverent, indifferent snarkmonster who gets to say what everyone else is thinking. In many ways, his endurance on the airwaves derives from the very same forces that now assail him: the wave of relentless, knee-jerk political correctness that has left us all living in terror that some repressed bit of cultural insensitivity or, worse, an offhand remark misinterpreted by the PC police (such as the use of the word 'niggardly') will leave us ostracized and labeled as a racist/homophobe/antisemite/misogynist, etc. ad. inf.
Imus still has listeners because it's cathartic for a lot of frustrated people to hear a grumpy old white guy talk shit. Imus also enjoys pushing the envelope because it increases his popularity and notoriety (he first came to my attention after his widely reported roasting of President Clinton at the annual White House Press Corps dinner--the same event where Stephen Colbert recently aimed his withering satire at President Bush, and which was prominently posted here on Salon--which, by many accounts, crossed the line from satire to vicious ridicule and which clearly enraged the generally unflappable gentleman from Arkansas).
I guess the thing that is most mystifying about this uproar to me is that Imus is not a journalist--he's an entertainer. If 'nappy headed hos' constitutes actionable hate speech, then we better round up every rapper in America and most of the teenagers who have blogs or myspace pages and write them up. Was it a stupid, racist, offensive thing to say? YES. Is that anything new for Imus and his ilk? NO. Will firing Don Imus or publicly castigating him bring about any sort of reconciliation on the subject of offensive hate speech? ABSOLUTELY NOT--it will only reassure those who agree with Imus that he unwittingly and innocently set himself up to be the fall-guy in Sharpton and Jackson's latest grab for attention. I find it beyond ridiculous that Imus (and others who have made the all-too-human mistake of opening their mouths and letting dumb stuff come out) finds himself begging for understanding from two men who have mercilessly insulted Jews throughout their careers and have used their NPOs to practice blackmail and extortion. One of these men not so long ago was 'withdrawing from public life' after it was revealed that he subsidized his concubine and lovechild with revenue from his 'Non-Profit Organization,' and the other one came to national attention as a result of having encouraged a young black girl to falsely accuse a group of white men of raping and sodomizing her.
The saddest thing about the whole case is watching the poor schlub do the mea culpa dance with Jackson and Sharpton--shamelessly self-interested demagogues who have built their careers on inflaming PC sensitivity and mobilizing mass groups over perceived slights while doing next to nothing about the real conditions that have kept the majority of African-Americans in positions of entrenched educational and economic disadvantage. At the very least, if people are forced to lick the pavement every time they make an off-hand remark, let the PC court be presided over by judges with cleaner hands.
OOOOOHH!!! Call up the PC police!! I think I just made a boo-boo!!