Don Imus Has A Potty Mouth?

This is a subject that I have been meaning to write about since it first happened, but haven’t gotten around to it. People have to realize that there are certain freedoms that we as Americans have, and the first Amendment says that we have freedom of speech. There are moral boundaries that exist. You can’t go around calling black people niggers all day and not expect some form of backlash, you can’t yell fire in a crowded movie theater, and you can’t say you have a bomb on an airplane. As a radio host, there are certain words that Don Imus can and can’t say because of FCC regulations. Nappy headed ho’s are three words that are allowed. You won’t get fined for saying that. Unfortunately, you can get fired. Reverend Al and his following of sheep banded together in a form of terrorism to beat Imus down and pressure management and sponsors to the point where they had to fire him to try and make everything go away. What Imus said was not hate speech. Was it the best thing to say? No. But as an American he has the right to refer to whoever he wants to as nappy headed ho’s. It was sad to see Imus go from interview to interview and spout the word sorry over and over. What was it worth? Absolutely nothing. Would this have happened if a black person had said the same thing? No. There is a double standard that exists when it comes to what people can say, and it is based on race. In a world where everyone pretends to be striving for equality, it doesn’t seem very equal that a white man and a black man can say the exact same phrase in the exact same context and one will garner laughter and the other will be fired.

This situation shows how much of a politically correct, ultra-sensitive prudish society we have turned into. In the era of instant new and information, anything a person says will be online within a minute and you have to be critical of every single word that is uttered. There are times when people are going to make mistakes, but there is no longer a margin of error that exists. In a country that prides itself upon its freedoms, we are quick to limit and even censor those freedoms when the results are no more than unpopular. It seems that every portion of society has their own legion of spokesmen and legal teams that are just waiting for the next public misstep.