Don Imus and Freedom of Speech in America

America is in crisis - we may or may not know it. We may or may not know the source or sources of our crisis. We may or may not know how to articulate this crisis; yet all of our freedoms are in peril. Why? How? For many years now, it is clear that generally we have lost our sense of gentility, our manners. We have become coarse in our manners and in our language. Don Imus and his producer Bernard "Bernie" McGuirk had developed the difficult timing and excellent skits tossing jokes and humor at any and all groups, both genders, and ethnicities equally. None of us were spared their irreverence - Be Jesus - and therein was much of the magic of the show. We were united by their humor and their uncovering of the funniest stereotypical traits among our "diverse" groups. If you don't think we have separate cultural norms, you are not paying attention. The bantering was not unlike the forerunners with TV shows such as I love Lucy, All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Chico and the Man. Lucy marries Ricky - so we have inter-ethnic marriage and the show ran for years with Ricky - Cuban-American as well as Lucy - the redhaired, wide-eyed white wife receiving the brunt of the jokes; Archie Bunker is the stereotypically biased yet open and unapologic man, amazed that anyone would consider him biased, especially "Meathead"; Freddie Prince played the Latino with the huge foam dice draped over the rearview mirror and the little bobble-headed dogs in the back window of his '56 Chevy. We also had Jackie Gleason and the Honeymooners. For decades Americans have been able to laugh at our respective idiosyncrasies. Laugh and love and appreciate each other better through humor - not with the malicious ugliness of some rappers today advocating violence toward police, violence toward women, black women especially, and toward other ethnic groups which serves to separate us and to make one ethnic group of young people seem scowl in perpetual anger at something. Where did our humor go? When did we become a people who wears our thin-skinned egos on our sleeves, our antenna out constantly sensing the wind for insults? Given that what Mr. Imus said is heard and said ad infinitum by rappers and by "the freedom of speech privileged" who walk along the boardwalk where I live shouting out insults at each other as if their use of the words is "protected speech." I have been told that the use of this denegrating and insulting speech by black youth toward each other is a "black" thing and not insulting at all. What I know is that the speech is insulting and denegrating to the young women. While Don Imus may be condemned upon occasion for poor taste and perhaps being rude, he was certainly imitating what "sells" in the music industry today. No, the issue is not that the words he used are uncommon; the issue is who said the words. We all know that Imus and Bernard were "fired" because they are white men. And only because they are white. We know that white people have been put on notice that "freedom of speech" does not apply to them. Double standard in freedom of speech - absolutely. Dangerous - absolutely. We can condemn celebrity personalities for being ill-mannered but do we really want to go to that place where they are censored and forced to do penance for saying exactly what they hear being spewed across the airways by the very minorities who turn and become so terribly offended when the words are said by a famous white man? Rudeness and ill manners are just that - rudeness and ill manners - and that behavior crosses all ethnic groups. Do we really want freedom of speech for some but not for all? And for personalities such as Don Imus - the scale is sliding. Today, a white-skinned celebrity can never know from moment to moment what "words" will be considered offensive and by whom. Effectively then white people, so sensitive to the "feelings" of others, are living under a de facto "gag" order. Discussions of great significance to us all as a nation, as one people, become taboo pushing the issue under the surface, beyond the reach of serious and reasoned discussion so essential to maintaining our free society. Freedom of speech is under attack in America today. Today, it is the white person who cannot even engage in discussions of race for "fear" of being called racists. White people must guard against what they say - I'm not talking about rudeness and ill manners - they must guard against what they discuss with fellow Americans. As this trend grows, if it is allowed to grow, the more isolated and withdrawn white people will become when interacting with current minorities. When white people become the minority which they will in relatively short order, they may well be conditioned to silence. Is that what we want? Do we want to remove any ethnic group from the table in America now that we have come so far? Do we really want to distance ourselves from each other? Do we really want to paint a veneer across our interactions with each other? Do we really want to encourage the new segregationists - the self-appointed PC speech police such as Al Sharpton to censor anyone other than himself? And who exactly was Tawana Brawley? George Orwell and 1984 for censorship and Animal Farm for inequality - yes, some people are more equal than others; some religions are more privileged than others; some people have free speech and others don't. Is this the way we want to go in America?