Why Stop with Don Imus?

I’d like to hope there is something precedent-setting in CBS Radio and MSNBC suspending veteran talk jock Don Imus for two weeks … (with or without pay, I’m not sure.)

What with the current administration’s 3-to-2 advantage on the FCC we’ve sat through three fairly ridiculous years since Janet Jackson’s “boobgate” at the 2004 Super Bowl. There has been endless huffing and puffing about “indecency” and threats of fat fines for any and all TV and radio stations who air offensive content, even though what is offensive may be pumped through their transmitters by some network or syndicator.

Other than Howard Stern flipping off CBS and terrestrial radio and taking another massive pay-day via his mentor, Mel Karmazin, (himself a world class corporate vulgarian), the FCC’s puritan fervor toward sexual displays and profanity hasn’t had much effect on pop media’s biggest names. Its kind of like Abu Ghraib. No officers need suffer. Punishment is strictly for the hillbilly grunts.

You see, what Imus said about the Rutgers women’s basketball team, calling them “nappy-headed hos”, doesn’t qualify as “indecency” according to the current FCC. Imus did not show a nipple. Nor did he call the women, “[effin’] nappy-headed hos”? No way.

But Imus’ display of racial vulgarity is such a staple of morning drive radio everywhere in the country — the Twin Cities are almost a prime example — I’m telling you kids, it’d be crickets from sea to shining sea if the FCC ever re-wrote its rules. Characters of the Imus genre make millions, sometimes individually, playing the race card for their cloddish audiences.

Without even getting into the futile discussion of whether Don Imus is racist, lets just say there is a healthy minority of folks out there that don’t particularly appreciate some chronically sullen, grandly remunerated white guy tossing off “comedy” like that. I’m willing to bet some of them even find it indecent. Moreover, I’m guessing that if you ran down a greatest hits of FCC infamy, including Janet Jackson’s — which, remember, was “seen” by America’s huddled families only as a indiscernible long-shot as it played live, but forever after, after magnification, as a kind of cultural lap dance — there might be as many people offended by Imus as the sight of Jackson’s nipple, or Bono dropping a cheery “F-bomb” at an awards show.

Point being, the FCC standard is both silly and gutless. Silly because of who is punished. Offended by a nipple? Really? Well, go fine the nipple-ee. And gutless, because if they were truly serious about enforcing decency on the country’s air waves — which giant media corporations pay exactly zero to use and exploit to their maximum financial advantage — they’d have fat fines for vulgar racial “humor” like Imus today and about dozen other examples here in the Twin Cities that spring immediately to mind.

Technically anyone can file a protest with the FCC over anything. But under current conditions, you’re chances of prevailing, through the FCC “investigation”, is only if there was a wayward ta-ta involved or one of the seven dirty words.

And “Nappy-headed hos” ain’t none of those.