Imus Said It. So What?

Only the dead do not know Imus this week. Hardly had the words "nappy-headed hos" left his grizzled lips when he was chained, pushed into the tumbril, and rolled by the Sharpton-Jackson tag-team to lick their mire spatted boots, in a live demo of the "Bottom rail on top" ritual that should have passed sometime after Reconstruction. He was allowed to beg and beg shamefully he did as all bullies must. It was the show trial of one-man hostage taken in the American culture wars whose confession tapes were aired for all and sundry. Who says we can't learn anything useful from the Iranians?

Alas, Imus was not released with a goody-bag and a bad suit. Instead he was frog-marched up to the Gallup gallows and, amidst ecstatic shrieks from those who are eternally offended by pretty much any word that points at them that does not come from them, he was executed. He may have hoped for some sort of soft diplomacy to save him since both the entire British state department and Nancy Pelosi were unemployed after engineering fresh self-humiliations in the mideast, but to no avail.

He said it! (Cue shock and horror laugh track) He has confessed and kissed the Sharpton-Jackson rings! (Cue victory cheers, the ululation of tongues in orgasm, and the sad shakes of the head 'more in sorrow than in anger!') Execution now judgement later! (Show us the head and let us have raw meat!)

What now follows is the ritual "display of the body in whole and in parts" for about a week until something or someone new stumbles along. During this time, media personalities and politicians famished for ratings or votes will come along and chew off hunks of the corpse. We shall watch them closely to see how they feed. They will come to bury or to praise him, but if the latter they shall praise him softly lest withering gaze of the race-gender basilisk fix on them as the next sacrifice to be stuffed into its gibbering maw.

Praise or criticism of the whole shuddering tumbril of race/gender hustlers that infest what passes for our "culture" is a very "del-i-cate" business these days. In public or in private -- and especially on the air -- one must constantly filter and monitor what one says in words and inflections and to whom one says it. It is, for all our constant prating about the freedom of speech, the actual on-the-ground reality of the speech-stifled nation in which we live. A nation in which you must never, ever say in public what you really think or mean; a nation whose national expression has become something very much like what we see and abhor in a dictatorship.

There's been a lot of blather over the past few years about "the tilt of the country towards censorship, the crushing of dissent, the chaining of free speech, etc." It is almost always directed towards the one thing in the universe that many Americans fear most -- the single most evil power since the creation of Satan, Hitler and, oh yes, Israel -- George Bush. Yes, that man has stripped away our liberties until all we have left is a baby's pacifier and a whoopee cushion through which all expression is muffled or silenced.

Of course, as in all things that lead back to George Bush as the prime cause and most powerful mover since God, it is pure bullshit. But it is bullshit with a powerful purpose. It lets those that create it avoid the internal self-recognition. The recognition that they are the ones promulgating censorship and shunning and silencing in the culture through threat, action, extortion and intimidation. It's the "Pay no attention to the bozos behind the curtain" move that all crapulous stage magicians employ. It has worked before, it has worked with Imus, and it will work again because it would seem that the political and media realms are so infested by or terrified of these flatulent hamsters they can do no other. They have, in terms of a whole list of words, phrases, and concepts, accepted the muzzle and now plow placidly along guided by a host of people such as Rosie O'Donnell, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and their ilk.

Think about that. Large companies and political organizations appealing to millions that take their marching orders from the morally, spiritually and mentally retarded "leaders" of..... who exactly?

Of other morally, spiritually and mentally retarded functionaries of the same cut.

And to pipe up in the public sphere and make the opposite case requires now, it seems, a small preface to the statement in order to ward off the wrath and the power given over to these midgets. Today a minor contender for the Republican presidential nomination, Mike Huckebee, spoke up -- slightly -- for Imus saying first "the Imus comments were wrong and inexcusable."

That's pretty much the new catechism in this day and age. First you need to state whatever was said was 'WRONG AND INEXCUSABLE" before you are allowed to move to your main point. This is a means of insuring you don't get strung up by the same witch hunt that's ready to roll over you at the slightest slip of the tongue or bad joke or send up of a screwed-up part of our society. To start with the rote statement of 'WRONG AND INEXCUSABLE" is a kind of childish "Kings-X" that befits a nation of moral, spiritual, and mental infants pretending to have a culture.

You are left to ask if the Imus statements were indeed "WRONG AND INEXCUSABLE" and if so when the culture passed the unwritten law that there are a whole library of words, phrases, and observations that are, ipso facto, "WRONG AND INEXCUSABLE?" Who wrote these laws, these rules, that so many unelected and self-selected people use at a whim or whenever they see a political or personal advantage? Worse still, why do so many of us lumber along and accept them? Will self-censored speech give us that perfect happy world, or will it just push what we really think into the shadows to fester and grow?

One man commenting on the Imus case this week said, "If I heard that man say something like that about one of my daughters, I'd go find him and kick his ass." That's a straightforward and admirable reaction, an American reaction.

It seems to me that what we need now more than ever is a lot of straight talk instead of a lot of talk that, above all, avoids offense. Right now it would seem that the only person you can insult and offend with impunity and without consequence is the President of the United States. That may do for many of the deranged among us, but I'd prefer to work on a much, much longer list. I'm not in favor of an offense free society because there are, from where I sit, so many droolers and bozos working overtime to, well, crush my right to dissent and freeze my free speech. And, surprise, none of them are in the government. As I said, it's past time for a tsunami of straight talk.

Instead we've got a sheaf of "eternally offended" spew soaking the land all beginning "Of course what he said was wrong, but...." This is done to avoid "giving offense" when what is needed is a lot more straight talk, a punch in the nose from time to time, and a return to that most potent American rejoinder, "Yes, I said it. SO WHAT?"

Posted by Vanderleun at April 14, 2007 7:26 AM