IMUS Sides 5:

"Let’s double-lock that barn door"

When I heard about the Imus remarks and the uproar, my first reaction was, “NOW you’re upset? NOW there’s going to be a public firing?”

To be more specific, Howard Stern plays gunshots on the air to commemorate the death of Selena, DJ Star (in New York) goes on the air with jokes about the plane crash death of Aaliyah, “Bob and Madison in the Morning” in North Carolina tell listeners to throw empty bottles at bicyclists, the “Hot 97” morning show does a comedy song about tsunami deaths, the “Greaseman” goes on the air in Washington, D.C. in ’85 and says, about Martin Luther King Day, “they should shoot four more of them and give us a whole week off,” and years later comes out of a Lauryn Hill recording saying, "and they wonder why we drag them behind trucks," and NOW you’re upset?

Gwen Stefani, role model for girls everywhere, who puts out her own line of dolls, records a song calling herself a “stupid ho”, and singing, “it’s my s**t, it’s my s**t, it’s my s**t…,” movie ads on television, morning noon and night, advertise the best way to torture people—usually women, and, never mind Janet Jackson’s nipple, how about her song on over a thousand pop radio stations, with her expressing her need to “ride that package tonight” Destiny’s Child saying “you gotta be gansta if you’re looking for me” and now, NOW you find we’ve crossed the line?

This is like a Minnesotan cowboy in Tierra del Fuego complaining that they’ve crossed the Mason-Dixon line.

I believe that, no matter how inventive we are with technologies, no matter how innovative we are with our ideas, we always have the opportunity to create a country, and a world, where we meet with respect for each other. We just have to want it enough to insist on it.
But, if Imus is the straw that broke the camel’s back, that’s one strong camel. Because there was a ton of straw already in place.