The Natives Are Restless
by shep
I really didn’t want to see ten more seconds of airtime devoted the Imus kerfuffle (so why would I want to write about it?) but, alas, the mainstream media still couldn’t give a rat’s ass what people like me want them to talk about it.
Oddly, watching the bobbleheads hashing it out endlessly on Sunday morning, I realized two things. One, it can lead to a worthwhile conversation about public discourse (actually Digby helped me understand that) and, two, this is scaring the living crap out of some white male media and political elites.
Although our highly paid “opinion leaders” still don’t get it, they do realize that a new day is dawning; a day that will give them less and less desperately desired control over their empires. Here are some of the things they still don’t get:
Imus wasn’t being racist, he was trying to sound hip. In our culture, blacks own hip; which is why so many young white males consume their entertainment (understandable on its merits when it was blues, jazz and R&B) and seek to emulate them. If calling the Rutger’s girls “nappy-headed hos” was really meant as a racial slur, it was a pathetic attempt at slurring (I’ve known fifth graders who could do better). Was Imus taking a cheap shot at their kinky hair? Was he really suggesting they were selling themselves after the game? In fact, wasn’t he really trying to say that they were some bad-ass basketball players – paying them a compliment?
What Imus didn’t get and the talk show dopes still don’t is that there is a double standard about what whites can say about blacks and how blacks talk about themselves – and that’s OK. As a long-abused minority, they have every right to insist on the terms and conditions of the public discourse about them. And they also have the right to ignore the standards they set for the dominant culture, if they so choose. That said, if self-derogatory rap lyrics disappeared tomorrow, the culture would be instantly better (black women in particular should rage against the disgusting misogyny in black male rap).
The issue isn’t just about racist speech it’s about hate speech (why legitimate parody is not threatened by this new social paradigm). The fact that Imus’s possibly complimentary trash talk was turned into racism shows what really has people pissed. But admitting that would force them to confront the real trashers of political and social culture, the Rush Limbaughs, Ann Coulters, Sean Hannitys, and Bill O’Reillys of the world (after all, racist hate speech in popular media is thankfully rare, hate speech against liberals and Democrats is a multi-billion-dollar American industry). That fact is simply unacceptably condemning of too many of those they consider their colleagues and the entire modern Republican movement (the MSM isn’t even ready to consider that there might be something fishy in the destruction of five years of e-mail communication between the Bush administration and their Republican political operatives).
Whether they know it or not, this is what scares the living sh*t out of people like Tony Blankley. If the Imus episode really is a teaching moment, we stand to learn two important things that Republicans and their establishment press enablers desperately don’t want us to learn; 1) they – not blacks, Muslims, Mexicans or dirty hippies - are the most coarsening and polarizing element of society and 2) we, not they, hold the keys to the media and discourse that both defines and shapes us.
I wrote that, Ron (that would be the "by shep" in bold print at the top of the post and in the tag "Posted by shep" at the bottom) and I revel in self-contradictory.
Why don't you 'splain it to all of us.
Hi, Shep. Okay, you can revel in self-contradictory, but don't expect anyone else to revel in the analysis that emerges from that.
I will explain what you say you revel in but do not understand. How can "Republicans and their establishment press enablers" be so significant as to merit being "the most coarsening and polarizing element of society" (a preposterous premise but let's work with it) and yet "we, not they, hold the keys." If you hold the keys, how is it that this "coarsening" cadre (and, by the way, what do you think of this?) is so efficacious?
Hi Ron,
OK, if you can't grasp the premise, I can see why the analogy might be confusing. Let me see if extending it helps any.
Imagine an abusive husband whose spouse knows where the car keys are and how to drive, but never quite puts it together enough to pack up the kids get out of Dodge. Instead, she lets the lout drive them around to bars, strip clubs and street fights in bad neighborhoods until she and the kids are sick, shell-shocked and scared half to death.
Get the picture now?
Oh, I left out the fast-food "restaurants" He loves him some Taco Bell.
Oh, sorry, your question: I really don’t really give a flying f*ck about words (although I try to be a little sensitive to people who are trying to prot*ct y*ung childr*n). It’s how they are used that matters. I find more obscenity in one Dick Cheney speech than in all of Richard Pryor’s stand-up routines put together.
I follow your line of reasoning, Shep. I don't agree with it, because -- as I see throughout the blog is your practice -- you overstate it, and you do tend toward the vulgar; why, you admit as much.
In fact it is odd that you complain about the coarsening of discourse but say you don't really give a flying fig about "words." I suppose again I have failed to grasp your subtlety.
Having said all that, why, I do think I agree with the nub of your hypothesis, but not much else. But I mean, that's hardly surprising, we're on different planets.
Fair enough, Ron. I respect and share your desire to see a more civil discourse, even less coarse language if you can believe it. I’m just afraid that that genie is out of the bottle now and, especially on the internets, you need to be a somewhat “in-your-face” to get your point across. And political blogging is really an adult medium with lots of choice.
I’m not sure your age but I was raised on contemporary irreverence to what you would certainly consider foul language (e.g., Pryor, Carlin, etc.). The important thing to me is whether we all treat each other with respect and, in that, I think we also agree.
That said, I am honestly and deeply outraged at the post Goldwater/Eisenhower Republican movement on every level – it’s goals, it’s methods and what it has done to the country. I don’t blame most rank-and-file Republicans (I think they were essential scammed – see “methods”) but I think everyone needs to be shaken out of complacency toward that, whatever it takes.
As you say, “different planets.” Here’s to cheap, fast interplanetary travel, eh?
(cross-posted to your link/thread/comments)