[NYTr] More on Imus II: Supansic, Silver Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 15:48:53 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit More on Imus II: Hate Speech Isn't Free Speech sent by Ed Pearl Portside List - April 13, 2007 Subscribe: portside.org/subscribe Search the archives: portside.org/archive On Don Imus by Bob Supansic 1. This is not a free speech issue. My right to say whatever I want to my neighbor over the backyard fence should not be confused with my right to do the same over the public airwaves to a huge audience. It is one thing for me to spread poison, disinformation, and outright lies to my neighbor (regrettable though that may be). It is another for me to do it with millions of people. To ignore the difference is to ignore the vast difference in power inherent in the two cases. People like Don Imus, Anne Coulter and Rush Limbaugh must be held to a different standard than those of us not given access to their megaphone. (And when we get that access, we should be held to the same standard.) I do not know a good way to implement the censorship this implies. 2. Before we get too misty-eyed over the glories of our First Amendment, we should be clear about the political realities underpinning its continued existence. Marx famously remarked that freedom under capitalism is based on "the freedom to buy and sell". For the owners of the media, free speech is their freedom to spread opinions which they (and their class) find congenial. To believe that they do not understand the power inherent in this is to believe that they are morons. (They are not.) However, the political defense of their free speech requires that this freedom be extended to us, especially if limited to our backyard conversations. Thus it is that Don Imus and I equally free to express our views. Should they choose to deny me the use of their megaphone because they do not find certain of my opinions congenial, they are not really repressing dissent. They are merely exercising their control over their "private property". And this somehow is less a matter of censorship than, say, what a totalitarian state does. In fact, in this free society of ours with its marketplace of ideas, censorship goes on. All the time. Try finding a white face in any newspaper photo accmpanying an article on welfare. 3. Even as they deny us the use of their megaphone -- even when we are able to pay for the ad space -- the owners of the media depend on us -- the left -- to provide the political defense of their right to free speech. Because we are associated in the public mind with the defense of civil liberties, we then become associated with the licentiousness and vulgarity to which the god-fearing, Republican media barons have increasingly resorted in their efforts to assemble an audience. Thus, the mythology of the "liberal" media. And a "liberal" Hollywood, one in fact still controlled by the same right-wing plutocrats. 4. Just what does Don Imus think he is doing? Day after day, he is reliably assembling an audience for use by his advertisers. You can't do that with say, an audience of opera buffs. (Even though in a recent year, 17 million people in North America went to the opera, there is no opera cable channel because opera lovers are not easily herded into an audience.) No, you have to resort to the sensational and the bizarre. And, if possible, the sensationally bizarre. And as the audience becomes jaded, you have to periodically top yourself. And sooner or later, you find yourself picking on the girl's basketball team from Rutgers. 5. A personal note to Don Imus. You should be ashamed of yourself. As a male. And as a representative of European-American (i.e., white) culture. 6. At the risk of seeming naive, this thing would not have happened under public ownership of the media. Under such a system, other sins may come to pass, but not this one. Because there would be no unrelenting pressure to assemble an audience day in and out for advertisers. 7. And for another reason. The civil rights and feminist movements still stick in the craw of the right wing like a bone that won't work loose. Even under the slow fascism that passes today for mainstream Republicanism, there is no hope of completely reversing those achievements. But they are not the sort to abandon the field. Do you remember when you were little and you got your first bad cut? After a while it started to heal and a scab formed. And you began to pick at it. And your mother said, "Stop picking at that thing or it will never heal." She was right. And that's what the Don Imuses are also paid to do. To keep picking at the scab. So that it doesn't heal. Portside aims to provide material of interest to people on the left that will help them to interpret the world and to change it. *** sent by Dave Siler - Apr 15, 2007 FRANK RICH'S N.Y. TIMES OP-ED ON IMUS by Dave Silver So the most liberal journalist of the newspaper of record whitewashes the racism and sexism of Mr. Imus. Why? Because Rich says that the "punishment doesn't fit the crime." And the Imus firing will "have a chilling effect" on comedians like Bill Maher. Rich points to offensive remarks about Muslims by Glenn Beck, the lyrics of some Rappers, and the use of the word faggot and will corporate sponsors Bring these folks "to account" saying in effect that if it's OK for them to continue on the air, why not Imus. Rich says the proper response should be "more free speech." He thus buys into the Norm Siegel's (formerly head of the New York Civil Liberties Union) comment on Channel 1 that "freedom of speech "trumps" the obscenities of racism and sexism. Of course this the bourgeois concept of an absolute freedom including filing an amicus curia brief for the right of Nazis to march in Skokie. Humankind has reached a consensus after much bloodshed that Certain statements or words that encourage political and social behaviors like racism and fascism can and should be banned and cut out Because it is a malignant social disease. * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================