Life’s a Bitch When You’re Expected to be Held Accountable for Your Actions….

Well, let’s not go that far yet…

So there’s this guy, a radio hot of a show for a huge radio network. Works for a big corporate entity. But he’s a former full-fledged shock jock, bit of a loose cannon. He has a sizable loyal audience too…because to them, he speaks his mind…not some watered down PC mush here…son tells it like it is. Some people actually love him. The sort of people Karl Rove has wet dreams about (when he's not rapping...he prolly even imagines they live in Ohio)…

Anyways, this guy…his name is Don Imus. And he must have a soft spot for sports or something, because he decided, in that annoying and obnoxious, talk-pause sorta way, to speak on the ladies' NCAA College Final. He was gonna cut up women’s basketball using that razor sharp wit typical to the talk show host breed. Only the best he could come up with was this. Now it’s all over the news and, consequently, he's been given a vacation.

Between all the talk of free speech and white folks clamoring on message boards over what colloquialisms are appropriate to say and lamenting how they can’t say anything good while throwing out some serious Al Sharpton hate comes a question I believe is overlooked. One of accountability. It’s incredible, if not in conceit alone, that an old white man could come up with something like that and think he could, for lack of a better term, get away with it. And I’m sure if the corporate overlords’ cost-benefit analysis goes through, he still ultimately might.

More than anything, I think this incident is symptomatic of an underlying current of thought that has (surprise) flourished during the Bush administration along with partisan politics and fundamental Christian dogma. Granted, it’s less sinister, but epitomizes all that fuels the negative image of America around the world.

It’s this notion of ideally and blindly reducing every scenario to a base equality or sameness. That’s not to say everyone doesn’t deserve equality in the sense of fairness or treatment. It’s more like not every scenario can be treated as equal because the world not structured that way. It is impossible to deny context to any dialogue.

You can’t run around saying dropping the ‘n bomb’ has the same impact as using honkey or cracka. And just because rap artists use certain insensitive characterizations, absorbed enthusiastically by its given demographic, does not mean some old white man with a mainstream radio show that acts as a national forum can liberally incorporate them in an attempt to contemporize his humour and not expect not to come off as abjectly bigoted. Even if he didn’t have all those precedents (Imus’ true nature betrays him as the logic behind that off handed remark reaches a depth of ignorance that is truly mind boggling).

My point is this. In this era of globalization, where mainstream culture can be affected by any number of counter-cultures with a startling quickness and foreign cultures can be examined with a relative ease and thoroughness unique to this time, context is more important than ever. Different people have different views that exemplify their particular cultures. And that has to be understood and respected. It is impossible to expect that everyone in our shrunken global village will conform to the same beliefs or even general views of conduct. What constitutes appropriate behaviour can not be just leveled off to some standard (cough...American) view. There are often significant historical backgrounds that shape these societal elements, so to deny this and expect to blindly treat everyone as the same is not just insensitive, it’s foolish. For the U.S. to deny this sensitivity in its foreign policy will just continually fuel further backlash in a painfully vicious cycle. Not only it is ridiculously impractical, it is ultimately harmful.

This ethos is readily apparent domestically as well (cuz it sure helps as a subliminal sales pitch to secure that strategic voting block). Why white folks feel so hard done by their perceived double standard of what constitutes appropriate speech for who is tired as it is unconstructive. It can only lead down one slippery path. If you really take issue to the presence or practice that results in such material, one only has to look at how it enters the mainstream and the rich conglomerates that shuck criticism and co-sign their profits under the motto of ‘That’s just entertainment…”. Trying to insert the same characterizations in real world scenarios open up a whole new view for interpretation, reflecting the harsher truths that often come with it. There's just no way to translate between the two.

To deny context is to deny uniqueness and diversity itself: being a minority should not subject one to sacrifice their individuality. So not being the same means exactly that. It means respecting differences. Fair treatment demands that. But, then again, fairness doesn't always win elections.

Imus should be fired. I chose not to go into all those reasons why: they were just too self-evident. But I don’t necessarily expect him to be.

Similarly, even if he does get fired, there are a plethora of places he could go to pick up right where he left off. There’s always someone who profits…it’s just not us.

This post, at least the part that mentions accountibility, is dedicated to Pacman Jones, who goes to show that when you make it rain, you're bound to get soaked.

And as far as that comparison of the Rutgers ladies' team to the Raptors goes...I guess it'll take the playoffs before Americans notice our relative lack of melanin on the roster...wouldn't surprise me if we even get more fans off of it. For some more interesting viewpoints, check out Slamonline: specifically here and here (for Etan the Poet's take...my NBA content for the day)