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Editorial: Sticks and Stones |
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by Dan Veaner
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Friday, 20 April 2007 |
 Of the two big national news stories this week, one is a tragedy and the other is a mystery. It will be a long time before anyone understands why all those Virginia Tech students and faculty were killed. But it is a mystery to me that anyone is surprised that Don Imus was fired. In fact, as I listen to those who lament the demise of a forty year career I don't really get why it took the allegedly respectable major news outlets CBS and NBC four decades to ditch him.
Imus's defenders say it was OK for him to insult blacks because he insulted everyone else. He was an equal-opportunity insulter, so it was OK. I have to ask didn't any of these peoples' mothers tell them that it is bad form to call people names? Of course mothers aren't always right. They tell us 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.' The Virginia Tech incident certainly confirms the first part of the adage. But the Imus story contradicts the second part. Because words do matter.
The objects of his so-called humor, a good 45 or so years younger than the 66 year old radio personality, handled their unwanted infamy with grace. It is not the first situation where kids behave better than adults, but it certainly showed that young women who worked hard to accomplish positive tasks were smart enough to at least act like words could never hurt them. And to not tarnish those accomplishments by sinking to their attacker's level.
I am not a fan of political correctness. To me it is a kind of facism that has been popularly embraced, diluting our ability to communicate clearly, and encouraging self-appointed word police to impose a real and frightening reign of terror over all of us. But I don't think Imus's firing is about political correctness.
It's about money. The flap flared like flash paper, more quickly than anyone could have predicted, and advertisers suddenly didn't want to be associated with Imus. That cracks me up -- they only wanted to be associated with him when nobody was paying attention? Isn't that supposed to be when advertisers don't want to be involved? When similar flaps were raised over comments am Imus sidekick made in 2004 about Arabs, and again in 2006 about an Imus attack against gay men, he wasn't fired. This time the advertisers bolted.
At his age, after a long career, he is probably financially fixed, and there will always be some idiot who will hire him to continue doing what he got fired for. So aside from people thinking he is a bad guy, I don't think the consequences his behavior has had lasting impact on him, at least relative to how such consequences would affect the average person. When you walk the line like he did it is, I imagine, very difficult to avoid crossing it from time to time. Which begs the question, why walk it?
The saddest piece of this story to me is that so many people enjoy Imus's so-called humor. Building up yourself at the expense of someone else is bullying, and a form of cowardice. Making a bully a star just doesn't make sense to me. Theoretically nobody likes bullies. Lamenting the career of someone who was supposed to learn not to be a bully 60 years ago just seems dumb. This should have been a non-story, and it should have been one a long time ago.
Unfortunately sticks and stones did break bones at Virginia Tech. The consequences to those victims were as bad as they can get. Yet in the coming weeks we will probably learn, if the pattern of such things plays out, that words like those that Imus uses were at the root of the killer's behavior. And we will nod sagely, because we'll understand what led him to such an act. It will provide collective closure. Words do matter.
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