Don Imus Gets Sacked

Hey Silverhorner's! I'm back after yet another long absence. This time I have no excuse other than I have been busy with some other projects, and of course my job which unfortunately takes up a little more of my time than I like....

But I figured it was time I got back to the Silverhorn Lodge, especially with all the Don Imus talk going on, figured that some of you would be waiting to hear from me....well...not really...

Don Imus for the uninitiated among us, is or now, was, an American radio personality in the vein of the shock jock style, though probably not quite as "shock jockey" as Howard Stern. Don is an old fella by the look of him, in fact he's in his mid 60's and looks pretty worn out sometimes, but hey, it's radio...or rather, it was radio..now it's called unemployment...

Don Imus justifiably got fired this week from his job at WFAN-Am radio for making racial and sexist remarks on air regarding members of the Rutgers University Women's Basketball Team.

It's interesting to note he wasn't fired immediately by his station, instead it wasn't until major sponsers started pulling their advertisements that the station gave the veteran radio guy the cowboy boot. Is that saying that the advertisers didn't care until the consumers, their customers started to speak up? I have seen Don Imus on Larry King and occasionally in other media venues over the years and was aware of who he is, but only generally, never having heard his radio show. However, what I had heard usually left me wondering how come he was so famous in the first place, but as I said, I have never heard his show. I know from his appearances on Larry King, or other talk shows that he has a ranch for sick children somewhere that I think does quite a bit of good for the kids, otherwise, don't know much about him.

Radio, like television and newspapers and other media rely on advertisers to make money, and to them advertisers call the shots. To some degree there is something inherently wrong in that, because it means that commercial reasons dictate what we as listeners hear. But on the other hand, in this case for example, the advertisers decided this was something we didn't want to hear, and pulled it, which is good, kind of like democracy at work.

What is amazing is that a fellow with 40 years on air experience could be so stupid as to say what he did, on air or anywhere for that matter. You don't get $10 million a year contracts as a DJ by being stupid. At least I didn't think you did...perhaps this is proof otherwise. Maybe stupid is what gets a person $10 million contracts, explaining why I cannot get a job like that...I'm just too damm smart.

But is Don stupid? Or is he a product of recent cultural shifts, but perhaps not quite able to understand how it works. I think it is becoming a problem of our society that we are wrestling with expressions and words like the ones he used that got him sacked.

As a child of the 60's and 70's and 80's and 90's and the present...(I haven't grown up yet) I was taught that some words and descriptions were not only inappropriate, but perhaps shouldn't exist in our vocabulary at all and as such I grew up with that perspective, like many of my friends.

However, recently I've noticed more and more unacceptable words creeping back into society, and in some circles, with acceptance. All you have to do is listen closely to some popular music styles, to hear words and expressions that would never have made the airwaves not so long ago. Why is that? I don't know? Is there some unwritten rule that as long as it is sung it's ok? Is it because we have forgotten the lessons learned in years past, or not passed them on to our children?

Anyway, I am too long and too late weighing in on this one. Imus is gone, tough luck to him, it was a stupid thing to say. However I don't think we should forget him, instead we need to use his story and others like him, to open some dialogue and decide what is and isn't acceptable, and what word and expressions should come out of the english language altogether.

That's it for me. Back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow....