They Really Really Don't Get It

[filkertom]

I am greatly amused at this story at Yahoo News about radio hosts terrified they're gonna get fired. Especially the headline on the Yahoo main page: "Hosts choose words carefully in post-Imus radio".

Um, guys? How about not being, or pandering to, ignorant bigoted dicks? That's usually a good choice.

So. Any broadcast personality get on your nerves lately? My "favorites" are Brit Hume, a vile and sanctimonious man who has no trouble slandering anybody who doesn't agree with his Kill Everybody plan for peace in the mideast, and William Kristol, a fatuous warmonger who, besides being wrong about literally everything he has ever pontificated on, titters like Toht, the guy with the Coat Hanger Of Death in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

ETA: In comments below, markbernstein says most of what I'm thinking quite eloquently.

Comments

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

The idea that somehow, offending people is an essential part of humor amazes me. Yes, I admit, sometimes those jokes can be funny. But...really.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

You can't laugh unless your sensibilities are somehow shocked.

Albeit, in comedy, it is at least somewhat necessary to let your audience "in on the gag".

No one would laugh at Moe hitting Larry on the head with a wrench if they didn't know the wrench was fake.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

From the LJ icon, I'd guess you've read Stranger in a Strange Land. I'm not sure that Michael's thesis that humor is a response to something being wrong is entirely accurate or complete...but it's certainly got some truth to it.

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

Public "face" of a business offends actual/potential customers; gets fired.

Next astonishing news items: Benedict XVI promulgates Roman Catholic doctrines; feces of Ursidae discovered in forested area.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Bill Maher has apparently been arguing that Imus's firing suggests there's no such thing as free speech in the media.

To which I say, no, there is free speech. There just isn't consequence-less speech. Which is good.

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

They dare not do that, Tom. If they did that, they'd lose the bulk of their audience, the ones who tune in BECAUSE they're bigoted, ignorant, or just like hearing people act ignorant and bigoted. So, they're walking a tightrope: don't offend anyone the advertisers care about, but keep enough of an audience entertained that the advertisers will still sponsor them.

[grimmbear.livejournal.com]

My life partner is the assistant chief of Engineering for Greater Media radio here in Philly. He has seen no impact on the Shock jocks here. In fact wasn't there a morning show in NYC where the asshats got a homeless man to describe what he would do to Condoleeza Rice if he had her naked. (They got a months suspension) It was Opie and Anthony!

[devospice.livejournal.com]

They're on XM, though. Supposedly they weren't going to be censored for anything and could do whatever they damn well pleased. The show is syndicated to some terrestrial radio stations, although I didn't know they were back on in New York.

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

Tucker Carlson pissed me off right after the VT shootings with his inability to understand why college kids have the right to keep their private information from their parents and his believe that a suicidal person is prone to murder. But Tucker Carlson is a tool. Goes without saying. And I could hit my big douchebags--Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and everyone's favourite Bill O'Reilly. Dare I speak the name Ann Coulter, who comment on Jerry Falwell's death by calling him "the perfected Christian?"

Eacy targets, I know. They're all so routinely frigging annoying, though. I guess my out of the ordinary pick would have to be Lou Dobbs.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

All of them are particularly odious, and honestly some of them could be indicted for crimes for their speech (Coulter most obviously), except of course they won't be.

In a way, though, I feel a little sorry for Tucker. He's the perfect example of a whiny know-it-all who wants to be cool, but [a] thinks it's all in how you dress -- I literally mean that -- and [b] doesn't understand he's hated not because he's not cool but because he lies to the teachers about the other kids, sucks up to the bullies and acts like he's as tough as them, and pretends his barely-passing grades are the best in the school. He is so trying to be a Real Boy when he grows up.

[jenrose]

Stephanie whazzername on air america. Crappy and bigotted show, even if we are nominally on the same side.

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

Miller? I never got to hear her when we still had Air America; I always ended up listening to Randi Rhodes just by virtue of when I was in the car. Randi was a bit much sometimes.

[ratbastrd.livejournal.com]

Is it even worthwhile to point out here that there is neither a constitutional right nor a moral right not to be offended? Whatever happened to "change the station if you don't like what they're saying"?

I'm sorry, I'm genuinely sick of the present sense of sanctimonious outrage being levied at edgy or non-pc humor. People really honestly need to get over it.

[realinterrobang.livejournal.com]

"Un-PC" doesn't mean "I have free license to be an asshole," sorry. I don't really think what Imus said was defensible on commercial radio. If he wants to say people are "nappy-headed hos" when he's at home or talking to his friends, fine and peachy. But if he wants to expect that the invisible hand of the market won't give him the finger for saying stuff like that, especially when he's the out-in-front face for a multimillion-dollar franchise, he has another think coming.

I'm also slightly disturbed that you think blatant racism is "edgy humour." What decade is this again?

To me, what happened to Imus is exactly analogous to a campaign my friend has where he's been writing to sponsors of radio screamers on KSFO in San Francisco, providing audio clips, and saying, "Here's what these people whose shows you advertise on are saying, and here's what they're associating your brand with. Do you think that's the kind of image you want to project for your brand?" Unsurprisingly enough, the answer is sometimes yes and more often no.

[tomreedtoon.livejournal.com]

(Sorry if this is a duplicate)
Getting back to the personalities: two on ABC come to mind. John Stossel - who I call "John Stuff-it-all" - seems to be in the business of saying that ecologists, investigative reporters, or anyone who dares to criticize Big Business is a liar and wrong. He managed to shove Barbara Walters off 20/20 with his bootlicking nonsense. I'm just waiting for him to say the recalled dog food is fine to feed your grandma, and that nuclear waste is good for you.

And then, there's the guy I call "George Stuffitupyerass," who took over when David Brinkley retired from This Week. I still see him as the guy who helped backstab Bill Clinton, and who has been making excuses whenever he can for the Bushies. (The admired blogger Bartcop calls him "Judas Maximus," and that has a lot of truth in it.)

[markbernstein.livejournal.com]

Two rants, prompted by several comments here:

Rant 1: Thanks to the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, everyone in this country is entitled to free speech. But no one is entitled to an audience. The firing of Don Imus has absolutely nothing to do with free speech as that term is used in the Constitution. He said something sufficiently stupid that it damaged his commercial viability. That led his employer, who only employed him because of said commercial viability, to fire him. It was a commercial, corporate decision.

Imus is free to say whatever he wants on whatever street corner he chooses. He was not censored in any legal sense of the word.

Rant 2: Why was Imus fired, when many equally offensive broadcast personalities on both the left and right keep making money? (And I use the term "broadcast personalities" in the broadest sense, to encompass the rappers that have also been compared to Imus.) In great part, I believe, because he chose the wrong target.

When a rapper calls all women bitches and hos, you can only talk in the abstract about who got hurt. When someone makes a sexist attack on Hillary Clinton or Condoleeza Rice, even when the attack on Rice is also racist, well, they're public figures, so for better or worse, they're considered fair game.

But the young women of the Rutgers University championship basketball team are simply a group of educated, accomplished, college students, who were only in the news because of their positive achievements. Imus' attack on them was baseless, utterly gratuitous, and actively, immediately harmful. That's why the level of outrage was, and deserved to be, so much greater.

[madfilkentist]

Unfortunately, some of the people who reacted to Imus wanted actions that really would violate the First Amendment, including calls for FCC action which would violate not only the Constitution but be unauthorized by any law.

So far the reactions have been just noise. But it's the same kind of noise which has led to absurdly high fines on broadcasters for a single swear word or the momentary appearance of a bare breast. The threat of censorship -- meaning the real thing, not a private employer's action -- is a greater worry than anyone's name-calling.

[kenalepha.livejournal.com]

I recall years ago when some remark of Imus' offended the blacks at my workplace and they got up a petition to get the station pulled off the PA system.
I think they had every right to get the station changed because I had no desire to listen to his crap either, what I did object to was that the next program on the same station was one I enjoyed and because they got the station removed I could not hear it, but when those of us objected to the country station becuase of their offensive playlist, we were told that was not a legitimate complaint.
Personally, I feel that listening to the same 15 songs over and over when 12 of them offend you is a legitimate reason, but they did not think so. The radio would play a 4 hour block of one station then cycle to the next one for 4 hours and again to a third different station and then repeat the same grouping. In one 4 hour period alone we heard Achy Breaky Heart 5 times. And the Christmas season would have at least 6 plays of grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer in that same 4 hour period. I was so glad to change jobs and get to bring my own radio in.

[gypsylady.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm asking too much but why can't we expect people to make a habit of choosing their words carefully?

Yeah, asking too much.

[allandaros.livejournal.com]

Glenn Beck really grates at me.

Also, I may have to hand in my Pulp Hero Fan card, but for the life of me, I can't twig on to who you're talking about in Raiders. :(

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

This guy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Toht).

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

From what little I've heard, it seems to me that stations are competing for the ignorant, bigoted (male 18 to 35) demographic. Thus, the radio talkers are required to be offensive, boorish and as stoopid (sic) as possible.

It seems to me.

[maiac.livejournal.com]

The clueless idjits defending Imus' "right" to remain employed are right down there with the clueless idjits who declared Judith Miller a First Amendment Heroine for going to jail rather than talking to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. They seem to think that the First Amendment confers not rights but special privileges, specifically the special privilege of being exempt from ethical standards and even laws. Uh, no. Members of "the media" are not above the law, either the Law of Cause and Effect or the laws against obstruction of justice.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

One immediate difference: Miller knew she could be put in jail for what she did, and chose to do it anyhow and take the consequences. Imus doesn't want to take the consequences.

[cheshyre]

For some reason, I'm reminded of the Daily Show segment on the Imus mess. After having their black correspondent and woman correspondent speak up, Jason Jones demands the right to stand up for racist sexist small-minded idiots.

Found the link: http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=85078

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

...I spent five years being a broadcast personality, and this was never an issue. For some reason, "not being an asshole" is usually included in NPR training. :P

These days I mostly listen to my iPod.

Nope, not a one

[hvideo.livejournal.com]

"Any broadcast personality get on your nerves lately?"

I don't listen to people who repeatedly say things that get on my nerves. The OFF button was a marvelous invention. So I only hear about such things second hand.

Granted, this means I can't make a sudden show of disapproval by dropping them (since I wasn't listening to them in the first place). That's a price I'm willing to pay.