WELCOME BACK, IMUS

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Sam Smith

Don Imus is returning to radio. While he was away, Ann Coulter's stock
seems to have risen markedly but I guess liberals can only deal with one
hater at a time.

Actually, Imus isn't really a hater so much as a poorly acculturated old
grouch who never learned when to shut his mouth up. The first time he
was fired from a show was when he said "hell" on the air. He's not
really a racist; he's a globist - he puts down just about everything in
this world except his wife's environmental efforts and their ranch for
kids with cancer.

You don't have to listen to Imus for more than a few minutes to figure
out what's wrong with him. What's a bit harder is to figure out what's
right.

For one thing, he's a recovered alcohol and cocaine addict.

For another thing, he's spent a lot of time in recent years being nice
to people who need help. His suspension from the air was delayed by the
network so he wouldn't have to cancel the annual non-profit fundraising
show he did. Imus helped raise over $6 million for a rehabilitation
center for Iraq war veterans and he boosted the criticism of conditions
at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

When he says things like "hell" and "ho" on the air he's thinks he's
just being funny, but when he does things like help veterans or kids
with cancer you can tell his heart is in it, In fact, he's happy to bore
you to death proving it.

In short, Don Imus is your run of the mill, totally contradictory
American character. Like the little girl with a little curl on her
forehead, when he's good he's very, very good and when he's bad he's
horrid.

On the other hand, whom has Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears or anyone
else featured on TMZ helped lately? The fact is, the number of American
characters worthy of both affection and disgust is rapidly declining;
the pendulum no longer swings between good and evil but between good
looks and bad behavior.

And that's another thing about Don Imus. They don't let people like him
on TV much any more. He's too unfinished, too unbranded, too plain, too
inconsistent for a media trying to get us to join the single race of
corporate consumerism.

When famous people were on the Imus show you heard them say things you
wouldn't hear elsewhere. Imus and a knack for finding the human in them,
even - as with the host - when it wasn't all that admirable.

There are scores of people on radio and television who are more
ethnically prejudiced than Don Imus; they just know how to hide it.

In fact, that's what modern civil rights is all about: acting like we
don't have a problem by not saying anything the wrong way. Not the right
economic and social opportunities; just the right words.

I keep thinking of the young man from South Carolina sitting next to me
on a plane as he flew to visit his brother at an Ivy League college.
"How's he liking it?" I asked. "Well," the brother replied, "he's having
some problems with the liberals up there but he's learning to keep his
mouth shut."

From the civil rights movement to learning to keep your mouth shut and
punishing Don Imus. So much for progress.

One of the things that made the Imus show fascinating was that people
didn't keep their mouths shut. You saw the good and the bad and you
watched people react to it, for better or for worse. The network didn't
react well at all; they should have burdened Imus with some black,
latino and women colleagues who could have given as well as they got.
Instead, they just let it get out of hand. But it was still the most
real reality show on television.

There's a crazy idea that liberals have that you can eliminate prejudice
by treating it like it was jaywalking or speeding. In fact, people get
along with each other because they like it, not because they'll be fined
if they don't. The trick to improving cultural relations is to find
reasons for respect and friendship. That why sports teams and shopping
malls are among the true but hidden models of multicultural relations.
Everyone on the team or at the mall is getting something out of it.

It was like that on the Imus show. It's been forgotten but Rep. Harold
Ford received more national airtime on the Don Imus show than anywhere
else. What sort of racist would help a black guy become senator from
Tennessee? Ford was eventually defeated thanks in part to a Republican
ad that featured the comments of a white blonde talking about meeting
Ford at a Playboy party. Didn't hear much from Al Sharpton about that.

One other thing: the liberal critics of Imus better check the mote in
their own eye. The assault on Imus began with Hillary Clinton's
outsourced spin center, Media Matters. Hillary Clinton hated Imus for
calling her "Satan" and other misdeeds. It was clear that the Clinton
machine was anxious to get rid of Imus before the 2008 election.

But it was curious that they would use ethnic slurs as a reason. For
example, in August 2000, the NY Post reported: 

"The Arkansas man who accused Hillary Rodham Clinton last month of
uttering an anti-Semitic slur in 1974 has passed a lie-detector test
arranged by The Post. Paul Fray, who has charged Mrs. Clinton called him
a "f- - -ing Jew bastard" after Bill Clinton lost his race for Congress,
cleared the polygraph exam administered Sunday near his home here. . .
That same year former Arkansas state trooper Larry Patterson claimed
that in their frequent arguments, Bill and Hillary Clinton would use
such expressions as "Jew motherf*cker," "Jew Boy" and "Jew Bastard."

Dick Morris also recalls that on one occasion HR Clinton said to him,
"Money, that's all you people care about is money." Morris says he
responded, "By money, Hillary, by you people, I assume you mean
political consultants?" And she said, 'Oh yes, of course that's what I
mean.' But it wasn't what I thought she meant."

What is far more clear, because it is on tape, were Bill Clinton's view
of Mario Cuomo as expressed when Gennifer Flowers told Clinton: "Well,
he seems like he could get real mean . . . I wouldn't be surprised if he
didn't have some mafioso major connections." Clinton replied, "Well, he
acts like one."

Trooper Patterson also claims he heard Bill Clinton use the term nigger
when talking about Jesse Jackson and local black leader, Robert 'Say'
McIntosh.

Hillary Clinton shouldn't have to drop out of the race nor Bill Clinton
give up his presidential library because of what they said. But Imus
denigrators should show a bit more humility about this topic.

Don Imus, when his show was cancelled, still had a long way to go. But,
as his struggle over addictions has shown, he is a man capable of
getting better, something you don't find much in politics these days.
And I'll take a struggling sinner over a hypocritical fake saint any
day. Welcome back, Don.

SAM SMITH, GREAT AMERICAN POLITICAL REPAIR MANUAL - It is hard to
imagine a non-discriminatory, unprejudiced society in which race and sex
matter much. Yet in our efforts to reach that goal, our society and its
institutions constantly send the conflicting message that they are
extremely important.

For example, our laws against discriminatory practices inevitably
heighten general consciousness of race and sex. The media, drawn
inexorably to conflict, plays up the issue. And the very groups that
have suffered under racial or sexual stereotypes consciously foster
countering stereotypes -- "you wouldn't understand, it's a black thing"
-- as a form of protection. Thus, we find ourselves in the odd position
of attempting to create a society that shuns invidious distinctions
while at the same time -- often with fundamentalist or regulatory fervor
-- accentuating those distinctions.

In the process we reduce our ethnic problems to a matter of regulation
and power, and reduce our ambitions to the achievement of a tolerable
stalemate rather than the creation of a truly better society. The
positive aspects of diversity remain largely ignored and
non-discrimination becomes merely another symbol of virtuous citizenship
-- like not double-parking or paying your taxes.
Martin Luther King said once:

"Something must happen so as to touch the hearts and souls of men that
they will come together, not because the law says it, but because it is
natural and right."

Sorry, Martin. Our approach to prejudice and discrimination is not
unlike our approach to drugs: We plan to simply rule them out of
existence. In so doing, we have implicitly defined the limits of virtue
as merely the absence of malice.

The most important fact about prejudice is that it's normal. That isn't
to say that it's nice, pretty, or desirable. Only that suspicion,
distrust, and distaste for outsiders is a deeply human trait. The
anthropologist Ruth Benedict wrote that "all primitive tribes agree in
recognizing [a] category of the outsiders, those who are not only
outside the provisions of the moral code which holds within the limits
of one's own people, but who are summarily denied a place anywhere in
the human scheme. A great number of the tribal names in common use,
Zuni, Dene, Kiowa . . . are only their native terms for 'the human
beings,' that is, themselves. Outside of the closed group there are no
human beings."

Many attempts to eradicate racism from our society have been based on
the opposite notion -- that those who harbor prejudice towards others
are abnormal social deviants. Further, we often describe these
"deviants" only in terms of their overt antipathies -- they are
"anti-Semitic" or guilty of "hate." In fact, once you have determined
yourself to be human and others less so, you need not hate them any more
than you need despise the fish you eat for dinner. This is why those who
participate in genocide can do so with such calm -- they have defined
their targets as outside of humanity.

What if, instead, we were to start with the unhappy truth that humans
have always had a hard time dealing with other peoples, and that much
ethnic and sexual antagonism stems not from hate so much as from
cultural narcissism? Then our repertoire of solutions might tilt more
towards education and mediation and away from being self-righteous
multi-cultural missionaries converting yahoos in the wilds of the soul.
We could turn towards something more akin to what Andrew Young once
described as a sense of "no fault justice." We might begin to consider
seriously Martin Luther King's admonition to his colleagues that among
their dreams should be that someday their enemies would be their
friends.

GREAT AMERICAN POLITICAL REPAIR MANUAL
http://prorev.com/order3.htm#repair

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