Imus' Slur Meme (Sleme)

Poor Imus. He is a self-proclaimed "good guy," always a bad sign. And he keeps explaining that he "didn't mean" it when he used a hoary old racial misogynist epithet to humiliate those lovely, earnest, hard-working girls.

If meaning it means saying it for the purpose of convincing someone it's true, then I don't think Imus did mean it. Was he sitting there is his Hop-Along hat thinking, "Why, I do believe I feel a racist slur coming upon me. And Women? Well, first and foremost they're inferior. And sluts! Don't get me started! I must get this message out to The People..."

No, he was just babbling away and the slur was just...there. It was just...easy. Available. Like an old punch line. It was a meme, one of those gene-like "units of cultural information" that Richard Dawkins postulated. This was a slur meme--slemes, let's call them.

To the person who uses a sleme, and that would be all of us to a greater or lesser extent, the sleme mean exclusion and rejection of the slemed, of course, but more important, it means inclusion and connection with other slemers.

Here's something my grandparents used to say. "Scratch a Goy, find an Anti-Semite." That's an interesting triple edged variety of sleme: Shout out to the tribe, put down of the tribe, put down of those who put down the tribe. Did they think it was a funny joke? Yes. Were they completely joking? No. But, I should point this out, my grandparents did not say it on the radio.

Slemes, even Imus's unbearably obnoxious public comments, are not a call to arms. They're a lazy, ugly, pathetic shout out.

South Park and Da AliG Show and the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are all masters of the sleme. They know just what they're doing: they turn slemes upside down and inside out; they shock us and make us uncomfortable and make us reconsider the slemes we take for granted.

But Imus? Imus is a sleme slave. He shouldn't talk about anyone else's hair, either.