I have never been a huge fan of media shock jocks. If I desire to fill my mind with negativity I am completely capable of accomplishing that on my own. We all are.
Am I on the ban Don Imus bandwagon? Not really, I just think that the "yappy-hatted-host", oops, I mean radio announcer, has become the next in line of the fraternity of frequency freaks to learn how much irresponsible free speech can cost.
As a writer and sporadic radio host myself, I depend on the covenants of the First Amendment, but where governmental censorship ends the chameleonic statutes of societal opinion commence.
The sacred cows that Jay Leno would never joke about when I first started writing the Tonight Show monologue have evolved to become regular fodder for late night farce. Even when a host attempts to adhere to the supposed sensibilities of their demographic there will always be disputants who can detect mold on a freshly baked loaf of bread.
I recall an incident in which Jay received a letter from a woman in the Midwest who was bothered by a punch-line that included the phrase "Don't lose sleep over it" because her son suffered from insomnia. I guess it would have been worse had she written the show to commend us for being the cure.
We live in a society where a theater audience can sit seemingly emotionless while watching a film in which dozens of people are gunned down by an AK-47, yet when the same assassin kicks a little dog the spectators wince and groan at his heartlessness.
Don Imus didn't shoot anyone, when he made an insensitive, disparaging remark about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. He just fouled out by enacting the broadcast equivalent of kicking a puppy.
By rehashing his gaffe to absurdum, the sanctimonious news networks have done much more than Don Imus to concretize his racial slur as a cultural idiom.
Humorists will also keep the phrase alive by utilizing it for future bits because of the potency and sustainability of a nationally notorious premise.
The word broadcasting originated as an agricultural term meaning to scatter seeds. The seeds of racism have not been lying dormant and are continually cultivated on the airwaves in more premeditated ways than a radio jock's flippant faux pas.
If the Imus incident functions as a catalyst to invigorate the public scrutiny of media-based racial bigotry, then not only did Rutgers beat Duke but they were also instrumental in achieving a slam dunk in the stadium of equal rights.