Real Racism: The Mediavore's Knee-jerk Outrage

Fantasy Talking Head With Brain, to caller: Don Imus has been charged with racism so often he's almost as tied to the word as Al Sharpton. Why do you think that's happened?

Caller: Well, what color is he?

FTHWB: Well, duh, Imus is white and wears a cowboy hat.

Caller: Well, there you go. Now we know.

FTHWB: Res ipsa loquitur, huh?

Caller: Boy, howdy ...

***

If Al Sharpton hates racism so much, why isn't he stamping it out where it's deepest? He could start with himself, if he weren't too busy setting himself up to be The Great Equalizer or maybe Vice Miracle.

The talking heads on CNN have once again loaned America's news-watching time to the Rev. Al Sharpton, enabling the attention-hungry racist icon's insatiable limelight addiction. Once again CNN and, to a lesser extent, other networks, in their insatiable greed for bloodthirsty, even incendiary and therefore loyal viewers, unleash Al Sharpton to fulminate and shake his fist. And once again, Sharpton is being allowed and even encouraged to sully Don Imus' name and endanger his livelihood — by attacking Imus' right to the freedom of speech.

This is so sick. Honestly, it looks like a strikebreaking B movie writer thought it up, just to resettle Sharpton more deeply into his homemade Holy White PC Vigilante frame (gold, poster size, adorned with signed wallet photos of Don King, Rosa Parks and Marjoe Gortner).

I think the reason more Americans haven't figured this out is that most of us don't listen to gangsta rap. We hear Sharpton and what Imus said (and didn't say), but the networks can't play what the black rap stars are saying about white people. Consequently, we don't know what a new rap slang word means until it gets into street circulation, like "nappy-headed" and "ho". And if we use it, all of a sudden it's an insult. We are not allowed to say something because only blacks can use that word — like only whites used to be able to use certain water fountains: as if letting "whitey's" lips touch it would befoul it, somehow make it unusable.

The way Sharpton acts, he's operating on some false assumptions. One of them is that only white people can be charged with racism: I wonder how he would react if a class action civil rights discrimination suit were brought against him and/or the CNN producer that keeps him on the air? Or just "Theft of valuable enjoyment and broadcast time"? Come to think of it, CNN is culpable. Cable subscribers pay for journalism, but we are not getting it: For balance the story should present an equally well-known white person speaking against Sharpton's endless, unhelpful consumption of the networks' news time — and reminding us that every American has both the right to Free Speech and the right to change the channel!


It used to be Jesse Jackson, remember? But he didn't get nearly this picky, and I don't recall his being so quick to get into the media. He basically just snapped to the Clintons' side as if spring-loaded anytime there was a catastrophe they could blame on Republicans, and then he said whatever and whenever the Clintons decided he should. In his own inimitable style, of course. Sharpton is different.

Sharpton appears to think that he is defending all African-Americans' inviolable right to not be offended by other people's free speech. For one thing, of course, he's not the spokesman, and for another that's a nonexistent, impossible right; but the image is solidifying. But he goes further: since the First Amendment is still in force, he can only wail loudly that whatever the offender said should be punished — and he can only do that because, ironically, the very people who should be most alert to encroachments on our freedom of speech and of the press pay him to.

Their currency is what he loves most: His name and image in millions of Americans' living rooms, many white. The attention — and the invaluable assistance — of the world's media. Free publicity. The ability to climb a ladder in a valley and call that the moral high ground because it's on CNN. And the positioning to use his credentials to incite race rioting and call it preaching.

Reverend Sharpton, minister to thyself: WWJD? RTFM*.

I think Sharpton and CNN both need to be called sharply to task. They are acting racist, but in such a blatant way that the fact is ignored — and they never bring his assault on the First Amendment up as the chilling news it is. I think it is racist that he is given my time to cast such stones at broadcasting professional whites while black rappers are becoming multimillionaires by spewing out hatred and threats that are far more racist than anything Don Imus ever dreamed. And I think that it is blatant racism, not to mention illegal discrimination, to attack only whites for using the exact words that blacks themselves first used. Apparently, you can only be called a racist if you're white, but you can only practice racism openly if you're black.

What America needs is for Don Imus to sue Al Sharpton for harassment and stalking and win big. And maybe that class action suit would be great backup — and an excellent reason for the networks to reinvest in journalists.

*Phrase (C) 1998 elan communications (T-shirt design)