The Audacity Of Ho

I like Barack Obama, but I couldn't resist borrowing his book title for this.

Don Imus intends to sue CBS, because apparently his contract with them specifically called for him to be "irreverent" and "controversial", so it looks like he has a good case. He's looking for about 40 million. Here's my first and final take on this issue.

It should never be so much about what you you say, as who you are and in which context you say it. If Katie Couric had said the "ho" thing, she should have and would have been fired. But if Howard Stern had said it, people would have laughed and applauded as usual. It's not the words, it's the person and the context.

The Imus "scandal" is a case of mistaken identity. He has been portrayed as a serious news anchor. He's not. I've heard his show a few times, and I heard him insult Jews and Italians, with remarks just as "offensive" as the "ho" jab, if not worse. I was not offended at all, in fact I laughed my head off. The context of the show is something along the lines of "your crazy uncle from Texas who shoots his mouth off at the dinner table". That's Don Imus. A character, a caricature. If you're offended, switch to another show. Because that's all it is, entertainment, just like Howard Stern or The Daily Show. The fact that Imus occasionally has politicians on the show doesn't make it a serious show. It's your crazy Texan uncle interviewing John McCain, nothing more, nothing less. If you're offended, switch to some other entertainment. David Letterman has politicians on too, but we don't hold him to the standards of Katie Couric.

The only reason Imus was fired is because other media outlets talked about the episode, misportraying him as a Ted Koppel. Since most people had no idea who Imus was, they were genuinely outraged, as they would have been if Brian Williams had made the remark. I wish Imus would have defended himself like I am doing now. His firing is just the result of misportrayal and phony mass-hype.

Instead, Imus went to Al Sharpton and made an ass of himself. Does Howard Stern apologize every time he offends people? No, because it's a show. Does Quentin Tarantino apologize for his movies, which contain insults to Jews and Blacks? No. It's entertainment. Al Sharpton is a human flamethrower, always looking for someone to argue with. More people need to ignore him.

Now they want to ban hip-hop. As much as I dislike it, it's a form of entertainment, and even a form of art in some cases. Art sometimes forces us to see realities we may not want to see, but they're there. Hip-hop artists tell us, "these are the slums of America, and if we have to live in them, you're at least going to hear us sing about them." When they use words like "ho", they're presenting reality to us. Their reality. That's what women are called in the slums. It's real. If you don't like it, then you don't like reality. Change the channel, my friend. Or help make our cities a better place to live.

If we ban Imus and hip-hop, then we need to ban lots of books and movies. Let's take Harper Lee's novel "To Kill A Mockingbird", in which a poor black man is persecuted and repeatedly called the N word. Since context is obviously not an issue for us, we're going to need to burn that book first...

-Carmelo Modica

Ad pondus omnium (Consider everything's weight)