Letters to the Editor
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Imus's Words of Mass Destruction
We're in the middle of a media-driven morality melodrama over Imus' thoughtless line. I don't get it.
The Imus debacle boils down to the use of words - words that are otherwise broadcast all day over entertainment networks. For profit. The airwaves abound with, and earn millions from, songs that unapologetically use "nigger" and "bitch" and a range of other words as if they were unmarked and unremarkable. Now the networks -- Fox most lugubriously -- are leaping to profit from a celebrity personality who uses them apologetically. Speech that uses sensitive language about identity groups is the smallest part of U.S. racism; why is it at the centre of the media's attention?
Real issues like institutional and structural racism in America -- issues that deserve a significant investment of media time and popular emotion every day -- are left largely uncovered, though they are real, ever-present, damaging things, not just symbols. The U.S. media display the same pandering, critically naive style in this matter as they have done in their coverage of Iraqi WMD and W's GWOT, to mention just two parallels.