Re: Imus
On Apr 10, 2007, at 3:15 PM, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
Why should not he? Why should not he be able to say what he wants? It is one thing to incite to riots or harming others, but slurs are
pretty harmless, no matter how idiotic. I am pretty much libertarian as
far as freedom of speech is concerned. People should be able to say what
they want and if someone gets offended, it is his problem. He can shout back
if he wants or ignore it (as I usually do), but using censorship to silence offensive speech will in the end do more harm than good. It is
fascists and right wingers who will invariably benefit from censorship.
If he wants to stand on a street corner and shout racial insults,
that’s his right, though I wouldn’t mind if someone beat the crap out
of him for it. But to have a radio show whose main schtick is racist
insults - no. Proprietors shouldn’t hire and pay people like that.
And do racist insults cause no harm? The isolated one, probably not.
But how often are racist insults isolated? They’re usually part of a
pattern of speech that’s embedded in a social hierarchy. The speech
both reflects and reinforces the hierarchy. That’s not harmless. You
just don’t hear many anti-Irish remarks these days in the USA,
because the Irish are not an oppressed group. Ditto anti-Semitic
remarks - pretty rare. Anti-Arab, yes. Anti-black, oh yes. Those just
don’t go away, though it’s pretty encouraging to see Imus and the
like take some shit for their epithets.
His shit isn’t even funny.
Doug