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AnImus Run AmokApril 11, 2007 I've never listened to Don Imus so I can't boycott him. Long before "shock jock" joined the lexicon I had a hard time listening to talk radio: weeding the ignorance and nasty thoughts out of my own head was challenging enough, and I couldn't stand being bombarded by the ignorance and nasty thoughts of others, the overwhelming majority of them men. Back then it was mostly the callers-in who spewed foolishness over the airwaves -- which brings up the eternal question of why the F-word gets bleeped but all this crap gets through -- but for some years it's the hosts who've been making big reputations and (presumably) big bucks talking big ugly. I know for a fact that if I spent any time listening to the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, I would go around in a constant state of bilious rage. Bilious rage makes some people feel virtuous. Me it just makes feel sick. Same goes for its flip side, gloom-and-doomy depression about the state of the universe. Supposedly Don Imus is different from Limbaugh, Coulter, et al. because he's liberal and philanthropic. Yesterday a friend of mine brought up the current fracas. This friend and I almost never talk about politics, mainly because it would take us several weeks of intense conversation to get anywhere close to the same page and I'm afraid the experience would destroy the common ground we've found on other subjects. She likes Imus because he asks his politician guests the hard questions no one else asks. I would probably like him for the same reason -- but as soon as he started gratuitiously trash-mouthing women, gay people, people of color, or fat people, the bilious rage would start to rise in my belly and I'd have to hit the switch or risk turning into a ranter. My friend, along with a few hundred thousand other people, can distinguish the guy who asks incisive questions from the guy who out of the blue slams young women athletes with a nasty phrase that disparages their color, their culture, their sex, their sexuality, and their looks. I can't. You know John Donne's oft-quoted lines about not asking for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee? When the likes of Don Imus call the players on the Rutgers basketball team "some nappy-headed hos," they're talking about me, even though I'm white, 55, and at no time in my life have the concepts "Susanna" and "athlete" come within 10 miles of each other. They're talking about every woman, every person of color, every person, who dares step out of the box they think we belong in. Sometimes I wish I didn't know that their words are tolling for me as well as whoever they're bashing at the moment. There are plenty of writers, musicians, and people in general whom I'd appreciate a lot more if I could dissociate a bit and act as if the nasty weren't coming from the same mouth as the smart stuff. Anyway, I learned about Imus's latest folly from an essay by Jill Nelson that was posted to the blog section of AlterNet as "Don Imus, Hater." I heartily recommend it. Jill Nelson, by the way, is a long-time Oak Bluffs summer resident and the author of several books, including the wonderful Finding Martha's Vineyard: African-Americans at Home on an Island (for more about which see my review). This blog started off to be about a point Nelson raised in her discussion: "I'm tired of racist, sexist haters like Don Imus hiding behind the notion that they're courageously being 'politically incorrect' and striking a blow against evil 'political correctness' by using hate speech." What's above is a prologue that got out of control. Well, better late than never . . . I'm old enough to remember "politically incorrect" when it meant -- at least in feminist, progressive, and liberal circles -- that you were a free-thinking, unstodgy politico who didn't toe any party's line. Around the mid-1980s, the mainstream media, the Republicans, and the further-right wingers got hold of the phrase and things started to change. "Politically correct" came to mean "takes sexism, racism, and other forms of oppression seriously (and says so out loud)." But the older connotation -- that "politically correct" implied a certain rigidity, albeit usually in a good cause -- didn't go away. Plenty of people now seem to think that the only reason anyone could take racism and sexism (etc.) seriously is that they're rigidly, mindlessly, maybe fearfully conforming to some Big Brotherly party line. So naturally the way some take to show that they're free-thinking, unstodgy, and generally hip is to be outrageously racist and sexist. And many, too many people preface their (usually mild) objections to racism and sexism with "I hope you won't think I'm being politically correct, but . . ." Saying and doing things mainly to piss people off is literally reactionary. It's the flip side of doing things to make people like you: either way, those other people are controlling your actions and you're not thinking for yourself. To be radical means to dig past the reactions and get to the roots. As far as I can tell, Don Imus's remark is at its root a racist, sexist slam at young women for excelling in sports. And because of his wide audience Imus is doing his bit to make the world a little safer for racist, sexist slams in general, and a little less safe for women, black people, and black women in particular. That's not the world I'm working to bring into being.
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