Seeing the story about the accident in California that caused a section of the I-80 East connecting ramp to partially melt, then buckle and collapse, I am happy, for two reasons: first, that no one was killed or seriously injured; second, that some of the exponents of the "intentional demolition" theory of the 9/11 WTC collapse (yes, they're still around) might at long last -- seeing the effect of thousands of gallons of burning fuel on steel girders -- shut the fuck up. I say this as a dyed-in-the-wool lefty who has no use for the Bush administration or its half-baked policies: if I hear one more radical "progressive" say that there's no way the towers could have collapsed without the use of explosives, I'm going to use explosives, on that person.
Governments do plenty of bad things, and ours is no exception. Enough of those things are done in the open that we don't need to make shit up.
Monday, April 30, 2007
The Amusements of Randall Tobias
Who Told Randall To Buy Ass?
By now the news about Randall (aka "Randy") Tobias is all over the blogosphere. Tobias was the (reservoir) tip of the spear in Bush's foreign anti-AIDS initiative, and as a loyal Bushie he oversaw a policy that promoted abstinence and faithfulness over condom use. He resigned last week when it came to light that he was a regular customer of a D.C. "escort service" whose madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, is under indictment by a federal grand jury.
The Prostitution Rests, Your Honor
Many of the posts about this latest amusement from the Bushes mention an anti-prostitution "loyalty oath"; that provision is actually part of a law called the
"U.S. Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act of 2003". It's sometimes known as the "Global Aids Act". Here's the official press release on its signing.
That act created the post -- Global Aids Coordinator -- from which Tobias resigned. What's important to remember here, even as we savor the rich ironies on offer, is that Bush, true to form, appointed RT to this position despite his utter lack of public health or AIDS experience. (Check his bio here.) We'll hazard a guess that Mr. Tobias demonstrated his loyal-Bushie status, and therefore his worthiness to hold his post, in some yet-to-be-discovered way.
Actually, I may have misspoken about his lack of qualifications: it turns out that randy Randy received an award from the National Association of People with AIDS in 2005. It's called the "Positive Ally Award." This is fitting; he might test positive for quite a few things, given his sexual history.
F*ck You and the Whores You Rode In On
What else is there to say? I'm glad to see another unqualified political appointee leave the Bush administration, even though I don't have much hope that his replacement will be any better. With any luck, mainstream news outlets will pick this up and expose a bit more widely the hypocrisy at the core of much of what this government does. In the meantime, Mr. Tobias says he's been using a different escort service, this time with "Central American women".
In the face of Republican rhetoric about immigration and human trafficking, you should make of that what you will.
Here is some news about the ongoing effort to get rid of the "loyalty oath", which according to every source I've seen, was not well-received among organizations doing anti-AIDS work.
More on the Global AIDS Act here.
By now the news about Randall (aka "Randy") Tobias is all over the blogosphere. Tobias was the (reservoir) tip of the spear in Bush's foreign anti-AIDS initiative, and as a loyal Bushie he oversaw a policy that promoted abstinence and faithfulness over condom use. He resigned last week when it came to light that he was a regular customer of a D.C. "escort service" whose madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, is under indictment by a federal grand jury.
The Prostitution Rests, Your Honor
Many of the posts about this latest amusement from the Bushes mention an anti-prostitution "loyalty oath"; that provision is actually part of a law called the
"U.S. Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act of 2003". It's sometimes known as the "Global Aids Act". Here's the official press release on its signing.
That act created the post -- Global Aids Coordinator -- from which Tobias resigned. What's important to remember here, even as we savor the rich ironies on offer, is that Bush, true to form, appointed RT to this position despite his utter lack of public health or AIDS experience. (Check his bio here.) We'll hazard a guess that Mr. Tobias demonstrated his loyal-Bushie status, and therefore his worthiness to hold his post, in some yet-to-be-discovered way.
Actually, I may have misspoken about his lack of qualifications: it turns out that randy Randy received an award from the National Association of People with AIDS in 2005. It's called the "Positive Ally Award." This is fitting; he might test positive for quite a few things, given his sexual history.
F*ck You and the Whores You Rode In On
What else is there to say? I'm glad to see another unqualified political appointee leave the Bush administration, even though I don't have much hope that his replacement will be any better. With any luck, mainstream news outlets will pick this up and expose a bit more widely the hypocrisy at the core of much of what this government does. In the meantime, Mr. Tobias says he's been using a different escort service, this time with "Central American women".
In the face of Republican rhetoric about immigration and human trafficking, you should make of that what you will.
Here is some news about the ongoing effort to get rid of the "loyalty oath", which according to every source I've seen, was not well-received among organizations doing anti-AIDS work.
More on the Global AIDS Act here.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
A Fundamental Breach of Ethics
Last week was a great time for those of us who've been waiting for Alberto Gonzales to be revealed as what he really is: a fatally underqualified yes-man who should never have been placed at the helm of the Justice Department. On the other hand, it was a terrible time for anyone who understands how important the Department of Justice is to what remains of justice in the American experiment.
We should remember, as we think about the AG's substandard performance in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that we might never have known the depth of his dishonesty (he is apparently able to recall having made a decision without being able to recall when), his lack of curiosity (he admitted that he didn't review the performance reports on some of his highest-profile subordinates prior to their dismissal), and his rank incompetence, if the Democrats hadn't reversed the Republican congressional majority in the recent midterm elections.
Friday night on Real Time with Bill Maher, Republican political analyst Amy Holmes repeated the talking point that the US Attorneys scandal is not that big a deal; that it's a made-up, inside-the-Beltway scandal; that it wasn't the firings that were improper, but the way in which they were handled. Like a lot of other information coming from the administration, nothing could be further from the truth. It's possible to act unethically without breaking the law.
Without falling into the trap of moral equivalency, I think we can agree that President Clinton would have been guilty of unethical behavior even if he hadn't tried to conceal his extramarital affair, and even if it hadn't been with someone under his authority; in other words, even if he hadn't been accused of breaking any laws. We vest a tremendous amount of power in our political leaders, and we should expect a very high standard of behavior from them in return.
So never mind that US Attorneys serve "at the pleasure of the President"; it is a fundamental breach of ethics for an AG to dismiss any US Attorney who is investigating members of his own political party -- as several of the fired attorneys were -- unless their performance is so egregious that keeping them on them would do obvious harm to the continued functioning of the Justice Department. It's a matter of public record that for the majority of USAs who were fired, their performance was not in question; on the contrary, prior to being dismissed they had received positive evaluations from within the Department.
Any Republican AG with a shred of ethics would have understood that, once a USA is investigating or seeking indictments of Republican politicians, he or she cannot be touched. There would have been just as big an outcry -- and justifiably so -- if Janet Reno had been a lifelong friend of President Clinton (in reality he was none too fond of her) and, amid talk of who was and was not a "loyal Clintonite", had summarily dismissed high-performing US Attorneys who just happened to be investigating a slew of high-profile Democrats.
Any president whose ethics were intact would understand the magnitude of this breach and the damage it is doing to the image of the Justice Department both here and abroad, not to mention the morale of the remaining US Attorneys on Gonzales' staff. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), speaking to reporters during a break in Gonzales' testimony, compared George Bush to previous Republican presidents, remarking that "after today there'd be no question that Alberto Gonzales would not be attorney general, and that's the difference".
Another difference is that -- to quote another often-used Republican talking point -- we're in the middle of a war. Not just any war either. According to the Bush administration, it's one in which ideas are just as important as more tangible weapons; we're attempting to export democracy to parts of the world which have rarely if ever known it. Regardless of the wisdom of trying to remake Iraq as a Jeffersonian democracy, that is our stated objective; so if cronyism, confessional government, and prosecutorial loyalty to people, rather than to the rule of law, are wrong there, they're wrong here as well.
Here's a talking point for the left: if President Bush truly supports the democratic ideals for which we're fighting, he should act with the courage of his convictions and dismiss any official whose conduct violates those ideals, starting with the Attorney General. It ought to go without saying that America should be the model we seek to replicate elsewhere in the world.
Of course there's no danger of Bush acting on such advice. What would happen if he did so consistently is known as a purge.
Purge. Let's remember that word in 2008.
We should remember, as we think about the AG's substandard performance in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that we might never have known the depth of his dishonesty (he is apparently able to recall having made a decision without being able to recall when), his lack of curiosity (he admitted that he didn't review the performance reports on some of his highest-profile subordinates prior to their dismissal), and his rank incompetence, if the Democrats hadn't reversed the Republican congressional majority in the recent midterm elections.
Friday night on Real Time with Bill Maher, Republican political analyst Amy Holmes repeated the talking point that the US Attorneys scandal is not that big a deal; that it's a made-up, inside-the-Beltway scandal; that it wasn't the firings that were improper, but the way in which they were handled. Like a lot of other information coming from the administration, nothing could be further from the truth. It's possible to act unethically without breaking the law.
Without falling into the trap of moral equivalency, I think we can agree that President Clinton would have been guilty of unethical behavior even if he hadn't tried to conceal his extramarital affair, and even if it hadn't been with someone under his authority; in other words, even if he hadn't been accused of breaking any laws. We vest a tremendous amount of power in our political leaders, and we should expect a very high standard of behavior from them in return.
So never mind that US Attorneys serve "at the pleasure of the President"; it is a fundamental breach of ethics for an AG to dismiss any US Attorney who is investigating members of his own political party -- as several of the fired attorneys were -- unless their performance is so egregious that keeping them on them would do obvious harm to the continued functioning of the Justice Department. It's a matter of public record that for the majority of USAs who were fired, their performance was not in question; on the contrary, prior to being dismissed they had received positive evaluations from within the Department.
Any Republican AG with a shred of ethics would have understood that, once a USA is investigating or seeking indictments of Republican politicians, he or she cannot be touched. There would have been just as big an outcry -- and justifiably so -- if Janet Reno had been a lifelong friend of President Clinton (in reality he was none too fond of her) and, amid talk of who was and was not a "loyal Clintonite", had summarily dismissed high-performing US Attorneys who just happened to be investigating a slew of high-profile Democrats.
Any president whose ethics were intact would understand the magnitude of this breach and the damage it is doing to the image of the Justice Department both here and abroad, not to mention the morale of the remaining US Attorneys on Gonzales' staff. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), speaking to reporters during a break in Gonzales' testimony, compared George Bush to previous Republican presidents, remarking that "after today there'd be no question that Alberto Gonzales would not be attorney general, and that's the difference".
Another difference is that -- to quote another often-used Republican talking point -- we're in the middle of a war. Not just any war either. According to the Bush administration, it's one in which ideas are just as important as more tangible weapons; we're attempting to export democracy to parts of the world which have rarely if ever known it. Regardless of the wisdom of trying to remake Iraq as a Jeffersonian democracy, that is our stated objective; so if cronyism, confessional government, and prosecutorial loyalty to people, rather than to the rule of law, are wrong there, they're wrong here as well.
Here's a talking point for the left: if President Bush truly supports the democratic ideals for which we're fighting, he should act with the courage of his convictions and dismiss any official whose conduct violates those ideals, starting with the Attorney General. It ought to go without saying that America should be the model we seek to replicate elsewhere in the world.
Of course there's no danger of Bush acting on such advice. What would happen if he did so consistently is known as a purge.
Purge. Let's remember that word in 2008.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Rap Roundtable
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Blindness and Fixing Other People's Messes
While reading the news Monday, I learned of the scheduled departure of six of Moqtada al-Sadr's men from their posts as ministers in Iraq's government. My initial reaction was positive; in my admittedly naive analysis, there's not much downside to sectarian theocrats vacating ministerial posts which Prime Minister al-Maliki, if he is wise, will fill with relatively independent technocrats.
Imagine my surprise, then, to see Juan Cole on PBS's NewsHour that evening, arguing that such a move would be undesirable because ministries are "sources of patronage" and "ways of rewarding allies". The implication seemed to be that any move toward professional, rather than confessional, government in Iraq would be a net negative and would threaten the stability of the parliament. The sentiment seems to have some currency in the lefty blogosphere.
Of course parliamentary government is a tricky and often unpredictable thing, even in countries which aren't in the throes of violent tribal and religious conflicts. But is there really no advantage whatsoever to the departure from a putative unity government of six highly-placed men who are blindly loyal to the leader of an armed and violent religious faction? As limited as my knowledge of Iraqi politics is, I find that difficult to believe.
As a die-hard secular liberal, I can't imagine that I'd greet the departure from our goverment of any of Pat Robertson's creatures with anything other than relief and a desire to see more of the same. If you think, as I do, that the use of religion as an instrument of state power (or vice versa) is corrosive both to religion and to the fabric of liberal democratic society, then you have to think it no matter what country we're talking about, and whether or not you believe the obvious truth that George Bush's Iraq policy is an almost complete failure.
Mr. Cole's reading of this event suggests of a kind of moral blindness; it's almost as if, having objected to the invasion of Iraq, he averts his eyes from the possibility of real progress there while a single pair of American boots remains on its soil. The best that can be said about this is that perhaps it's an attempt at consistency. But in the face of religious extremists, death squads, and violent Baathists nostalgic for the days of minority rule and state terror, it's a
foolish consistency -- and we know what Emerson had to say about that.
The emerging consensus between left and right in this country on Iraq --
namely that, having ignited a civil war there, we should leave and let the combatants slug it out -- suggests a more problematic lack of vision. We on the left seem to think that reversing the disastrous decision to enter the country as we did will automatically reverse the disaster that has ensued; and many on the right seem to think that, those ungrateful Iraqis having squandered our good will and not instantly shaped themselves into a stable Jeffersonian democracy, we should wash our hands of the whole affair. (You can almost hear the peevish subtext in the conservative blogosphere: We threw a perfectly good war, and these people ruined it.)
In the debate on whether or not to invade Iraq, I came down against it; I thought that, even assuming you agreed with the stated reasons for going to war, there were simply more effective methods than war for addressing them. But it seems obvious to me that irrespective of how we got into Iraq, there are objectives worth fighting for in that country now -- objectives which ought to be shared by anyone who truly believes in liberal democracy -- and there is at least an argument to be made for not ceding the ground to theocrats and death squads. That argument can and should transcend every well-deserved criticism -- and there are many -- of the Bush administration's policies and decisionmaking, if only because the people who live in Iraq and have chosen to stay will be there long after the Bush administration is a bad memory.
It's simply not good enough to look at the disaster that has been Bush's foreign policy and think "we're better than this"; if we really are, then we must be up to the task of trying to repair at least some of the damage. This will be painful and difficult, and it will cost more lives. Averting our eyes will be much less painful and difficult, and it will also cost more lives. The engineered calamity that is Iraq makes any small victory more precious, not less so; and the absence of any good options there doesn't absolve us of the responsibility to think seriously about what should happen next.
Imagine my surprise, then, to see Juan Cole on PBS's NewsHour that evening, arguing that such a move would be undesirable because ministries are "sources of patronage" and "ways of rewarding allies". The implication seemed to be that any move toward professional, rather than confessional, government in Iraq would be a net negative and would threaten the stability of the parliament. The sentiment seems to have some currency in the lefty blogosphere.
Of course parliamentary government is a tricky and often unpredictable thing, even in countries which aren't in the throes of violent tribal and religious conflicts. But is there really no advantage whatsoever to the departure from a putative unity government of six highly-placed men who are blindly loyal to the leader of an armed and violent religious faction? As limited as my knowledge of Iraqi politics is, I find that difficult to believe.
As a die-hard secular liberal, I can't imagine that I'd greet the departure from our goverment of any of Pat Robertson's creatures with anything other than relief and a desire to see more of the same. If you think, as I do, that the use of religion as an instrument of state power (or vice versa) is corrosive both to religion and to the fabric of liberal democratic society, then you have to think it no matter what country we're talking about, and whether or not you believe the obvious truth that George Bush's Iraq policy is an almost complete failure.
Mr. Cole's reading of this event suggests of a kind of moral blindness; it's almost as if, having objected to the invasion of Iraq, he averts his eyes from the possibility of real progress there while a single pair of American boots remains on its soil. The best that can be said about this is that perhaps it's an attempt at consistency. But in the face of religious extremists, death squads, and violent Baathists nostalgic for the days of minority rule and state terror, it's a
foolish consistency -- and we know what Emerson had to say about that.
The emerging consensus between left and right in this country on Iraq --
namely that, having ignited a civil war there, we should leave and let the combatants slug it out -- suggests a more problematic lack of vision. We on the left seem to think that reversing the disastrous decision to enter the country as we did will automatically reverse the disaster that has ensued; and many on the right seem to think that, those ungrateful Iraqis having squandered our good will and not instantly shaped themselves into a stable Jeffersonian democracy, we should wash our hands of the whole affair. (You can almost hear the peevish subtext in the conservative blogosphere: We threw a perfectly good war, and these people ruined it.)
In the debate on whether or not to invade Iraq, I came down against it; I thought that, even assuming you agreed with the stated reasons for going to war, there were simply more effective methods than war for addressing them. But it seems obvious to me that irrespective of how we got into Iraq, there are objectives worth fighting for in that country now -- objectives which ought to be shared by anyone who truly believes in liberal democracy -- and there is at least an argument to be made for not ceding the ground to theocrats and death squads. That argument can and should transcend every well-deserved criticism -- and there are many -- of the Bush administration's policies and decisionmaking, if only because the people who live in Iraq and have chosen to stay will be there long after the Bush administration is a bad memory.
It's simply not good enough to look at the disaster that has been Bush's foreign policy and think "we're better than this"; if we really are, then we must be up to the task of trying to repair at least some of the damage. This will be painful and difficult, and it will cost more lives. Averting our eyes will be much less painful and difficult, and it will also cost more lives. The engineered calamity that is Iraq makes any small victory more precious, not less so; and the absence of any good options there doesn't absolve us of the responsibility to think seriously about what should happen next.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Weighing in on You-Know-Who
The Don Imus Debacle (DID) is one of those rare spectacles where the discussion surrounding it is at least as interesting and revealing as the issue itself. Today I found myself over on AngryBlackBitch's blog (always a good read) with a little something to say about it, then realized that I actually have a blog of my own and didn't need to clog up the sister's real estate with my rant -- I could do it up proper right here. And anyway I'm tired of shouting at my web browser over some of the foolishness I've seen in the name of "anti-PC".
First, as I've said elsewhere, the DID wasn't an issue of censorship or "banning words"; censorship is the government telling you what you can or can't say. The Constitution gives us a right to free speech; it doesn't give us the right to make $10 million a year, as Imus did, speaking into a subsidized microphone. It should be self-evident that insulting your boss at work will get you fired; it happens all the time, no one cries censorship, and nor should they.
Don Imus's (richly deserved) firing came as a result of an economic decision by his direct employers, who were paying his leathery ass to SELL SOAP. To us, the listening public, his "indirect" employers. It's our dollars that pay radio advertisers, thereby enabling subsidized microphones to be switched on.
Imus was paid to sell soap. Not necessarily to be funny, or erudite, or entertaining, or insightful, or transgressive; those were just possible side effects. The motherfucker was useful to his paymasters only insofar as he was able to justify the money spent on radio by advertisers. What's beautiful and downright inspiring to me about the whole DID is that at a certain point, the people Imus worked for said "Hey, wait a minute -- Black folks have money and they buy a lot of soap. This guy may actually be bad for business." And the free market -- the same free market that conservative (and even some liberal) drive-time-radio fans seem to think is the solution to every *other* goddamn problem -- delivered its verdict, in the form of a pink slip for our man Don. "Big Government" didn't step in to regulate a fucking thing. Republicans and libertarians of all stripes should be over the moon.
Second, when someone loses their job in front of a subsidized mic -- or a subsidized camera -- for making racial or ethnic slurs against the people who ultimately pay the bill, it obviously doesn't mean that racism has been defeated or even seriously wounded. To point that out in a kind of sarcastic huff, as if seeing someone come to grief for doing something you counseled against, is a silly bit of pedantry.
Did King Kaufman at Salon Magazine really think he needed to remind us that "Talk radio did not just get smarter or kinder or more inclusive because Don Imus got canned"? David Bromwich at Huffington Post mentions "the destruction of Don Imus" (as if he'd been forced into bankruptcy instead of just out the door), then fearlessly tackles the hard question: "Can anyone believe [Imus's] replacement will be made of finer stuff?" I have an easy question for him: Does anyone fucking care?
No one seems to ask these profound questions when it comes to the Mel Gibsons of the world, and well they shouldn't. If it's a career-damaging or career-ending move for a current or aspiring Hollywood actor to spew anti-Semitic bile, that's only because the many influential figures in Hollywood who pay people to make movies and also happen to be Jewish, quite correctly decide that they'll be damned if they'll pay someone to insult them. I doubt that, having made that decision, they also think that the blood-libel or the Protocols of the Elders of Zion will be universally repudiated the next day becuase of it.
The end of DI's (current) job doesn't mean the end of racism; why should it? It's enough for me that, despite the many ways in which they continue to manifest, racism and misogyny are sometimes perceived to be bad for biz. If anything, we could stand to see this kind of thing happen more often (and to pre-empt a common argument in the DID debate, I'm certainly interested in seeing the culturally genocidal elements of hip-hop culture get exactly the same treatment).
Black Americans seem to have plenty of collective economic muscle. Rev. Al Sharpton, his flaws as a person and a politician notwithstanding, raised his eyebrows and his voice to remind people of that. The Don Imus Debacle is a "speech issue" in exactly one respect: it reminds us that money talks.
Third, as I read other forums where people weigh in on this issue, I find a stark contrast between the nuance with which people judge Imus's overall output, and the absolutism they apply to Rev. Al Sharpton. Here's David Bromwich again:
By voicing base passions such as our disinclination to support the careers of rich, unfunny middle-aged shock jocks, Bromwich seems to be telling us, we've Lost Something Special.
In the interest of thoroughness, he includes a sarcastic reminder for us to ritually deplore the usual suspect:
Several of the comments responding to Bromwich's article seem to go out of their way to point out that Imus was a Good Guy Really, despite his faults and errors in judgement-- while almost all the posts which mention Al Sharpton find that he is completely and irredeemably bad, because of his. One person (under the strangely appropriate screen name of chickenhawkwarrior) goes so far as to weepily proclaim that
(One imagines poor Don Imus, $10 million salary no longer forthcoming, hefty severance check in one clawlike hand, dangling like strange fruit from the tree of early retirement -- although Imus is 66, so maybe early is too strong a word.)
Another poster decried the continuing "distraction" from more important political issues that apparently happens whenever Sharpton speaks out about something.
Not to mention the refrain, repeated ad nauseam anywhere on the web you'd care to look, that misogynistic comments appear in rap music all the time, and --- say it with me -- No One Says Anything.
All this is somewhat strange to me.
Rev. Sharpton, with whom I certainly don't agree on everything, has been extremely vocal in his disapproval of degraded language and behavior in hip-hop culture. It's also worth noting, for the benefit of those who mourn the loss of Imus's contributions to political discourse, that when Sharpton ran for president in 2004, he brought issues to the debate -- issues important to voters of all races, by the way -- that the more mainstream Democratic candidates, in their craven rush to "claim the center", were afraid or at least unwilling to talk about.
Let me be clear: this is not about the relative merits of Rev. Al Sharpton or Don Imus. It's about consistency. Rev. Sharpton has spoken intemperately and unwisely in the past. He was also one of the few who spoke out on behalf of the young men who were wrongfully convicted of the Central Park "wilding" incident back in 1989. (Their confessions were found to have been coerced and they were recently acquitted and released from prison). Do the intemperate and unwise things he has said completely blot out the good he did in aiding the release of these men, or the good he's done in other areas?
If Imus is to be forgiven his racially offensive speech because of his charity contributions, fine: go on and forgive the son of a bitch. The young women he insulted already have. (WCBS, his former employer, seems to be much less forgiving, but no one seems to be accusing them of lynching anyone--go figure.) If Imus' supporters are willing to overlook the unwise or offensive things Imus has said and judge him on a day-to-day basis -- racist one day, thoughtful critic of U.S. foreign policy the next -- so much the better for him. It's fascinating to me that certain public figures who are black and outspoken don't get a similar reading.
First, as I've said elsewhere, the DID wasn't an issue of censorship or "banning words"; censorship is the government telling you what you can or can't say. The Constitution gives us a right to free speech; it doesn't give us the right to make $10 million a year, as Imus did, speaking into a subsidized microphone. It should be self-evident that insulting your boss at work will get you fired; it happens all the time, no one cries censorship, and nor should they.
Don Imus's (richly deserved) firing came as a result of an economic decision by his direct employers, who were paying his leathery ass to SELL SOAP. To us, the listening public, his "indirect" employers. It's our dollars that pay radio advertisers, thereby enabling subsidized microphones to be switched on.
Imus was paid to sell soap. Not necessarily to be funny, or erudite, or entertaining, or insightful, or transgressive; those were just possible side effects. The motherfucker was useful to his paymasters only insofar as he was able to justify the money spent on radio by advertisers. What's beautiful and downright inspiring to me about the whole DID is that at a certain point, the people Imus worked for said "Hey, wait a minute -- Black folks have money and they buy a lot of soap. This guy may actually be bad for business." And the free market -- the same free market that conservative (and even some liberal) drive-time-radio fans seem to think is the solution to every *other* goddamn problem -- delivered its verdict, in the form of a pink slip for our man Don. "Big Government" didn't step in to regulate a fucking thing. Republicans and libertarians of all stripes should be over the moon.
Second, when someone loses their job in front of a subsidized mic -- or a subsidized camera -- for making racial or ethnic slurs against the people who ultimately pay the bill, it obviously doesn't mean that racism has been defeated or even seriously wounded. To point that out in a kind of sarcastic huff, as if seeing someone come to grief for doing something you counseled against, is a silly bit of pedantry.
Did King Kaufman at Salon Magazine really think he needed to remind us that "Talk radio did not just get smarter or kinder or more inclusive because Don Imus got canned"? David Bromwich at Huffington Post mentions "the destruction of Don Imus" (as if he'd been forced into bankruptcy instead of just out the door), then fearlessly tackles the hard question: "Can anyone believe [Imus's] replacement will be made of finer stuff?" I have an easy question for him: Does anyone fucking care?
No one seems to ask these profound questions when it comes to the Mel Gibsons of the world, and well they shouldn't. If it's a career-damaging or career-ending move for a current or aspiring Hollywood actor to spew anti-Semitic bile, that's only because the many influential figures in Hollywood who pay people to make movies and also happen to be Jewish, quite correctly decide that they'll be damned if they'll pay someone to insult them. I doubt that, having made that decision, they also think that the blood-libel or the Protocols of the Elders of Zion will be universally repudiated the next day becuase of it.
The end of DI's (current) job doesn't mean the end of racism; why should it? It's enough for me that, despite the many ways in which they continue to manifest, racism and misogyny are sometimes perceived to be bad for biz. If anything, we could stand to see this kind of thing happen more often (and to pre-empt a common argument in the DID debate, I'm certainly interested in seeing the culturally genocidal elements of hip-hop culture get exactly the same treatment).
Black Americans seem to have plenty of collective economic muscle. Rev. Al Sharpton, his flaws as a person and a politician notwithstanding, raised his eyebrows and his voice to remind people of that. The Don Imus Debacle is a "speech issue" in exactly one respect: it reminds us that money talks.
Third, as I read other forums where people weigh in on this issue, I find a stark contrast between the nuance with which people judge Imus's overall output, and the absolutism they apply to Rev. Al Sharpton. Here's David Bromwich again:
[Imus] is also the only interviewer who ever put John Kerry at ease (the subject, once, was basketball). He had corrosive things to say about the Iraq war, and his references to the president were often in a class with his sprawl of words about the Rutgers team. A non-denominational hater and, like certain other misanthropes, fearless as well as feckless.
By voicing base passions such as our disinclination to support the careers of rich, unfunny middle-aged shock jocks, Bromwich seems to be telling us, we've Lost Something Special.
In the interest of thoroughness, he includes a sarcastic reminder for us to ritually deplore the usual suspect:
The occasion was arbitrary, the penalty outsize, the author of the majority opinion that stern moralist, Al Sharpton.
Several of the comments responding to Bromwich's article seem to go out of their way to point out that Imus was a Good Guy Really, despite his faults and errors in judgement-- while almost all the posts which mention Al Sharpton find that he is completely and irredeemably bad, because of his. One person (under the strangely appropriate screen name of chickenhawkwarrior) goes so far as to weepily proclaim that
Imus threw himself on the mercy of the court of elite opinion - and that court, pandering to the mob, lynched him. Yet, for all his sins, he was a better man than the lot of them rejoicing at the foot of the cottonwood tree.
(One imagines poor Don Imus, $10 million salary no longer forthcoming, hefty severance check in one clawlike hand, dangling like strange fruit from the tree of early retirement -- although Imus is 66, so maybe early is too strong a word.)
Another poster decried the continuing "distraction" from more important political issues that apparently happens whenever Sharpton speaks out about something.
Not to mention the refrain, repeated ad nauseam anywhere on the web you'd care to look, that misogynistic comments appear in rap music all the time, and --- say it with me -- No One Says Anything.
All this is somewhat strange to me.
Rev. Sharpton, with whom I certainly don't agree on everything, has been extremely vocal in his disapproval of degraded language and behavior in hip-hop culture. It's also worth noting, for the benefit of those who mourn the loss of Imus's contributions to political discourse, that when Sharpton ran for president in 2004, he brought issues to the debate -- issues important to voters of all races, by the way -- that the more mainstream Democratic candidates, in their craven rush to "claim the center", were afraid or at least unwilling to talk about.
Let me be clear: this is not about the relative merits of Rev. Al Sharpton or Don Imus. It's about consistency. Rev. Sharpton has spoken intemperately and unwisely in the past. He was also one of the few who spoke out on behalf of the young men who were wrongfully convicted of the Central Park "wilding" incident back in 1989. (Their confessions were found to have been coerced and they were recently acquitted and released from prison). Do the intemperate and unwise things he has said completely blot out the good he did in aiding the release of these men, or the good he's done in other areas?
If Imus is to be forgiven his racially offensive speech because of his charity contributions, fine: go on and forgive the son of a bitch. The young women he insulted already have. (WCBS, his former employer, seems to be much less forgiving, but no one seems to be accusing them of lynching anyone--go figure.) If Imus' supporters are willing to overlook the unwise or offensive things Imus has said and judge him on a day-to-day basis -- racist one day, thoughtful critic of U.S. foreign policy the next -- so much the better for him. It's fascinating to me that certain public figures who are black and outspoken don't get a similar reading.
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