Will The Firing Of Imus = The Day That 'Free Speech' Died?........

I didn't like Imus or his show - but as I look at this incident I can't help but think that Imus was 'piled on'.

After all he - is - and - has - a reputation as a 'shock jock' - well waddaya expect coming from him!!! I don't condone his comments - but I don't think that they were as bad as they've been made out to be.

I'm concerned at the precedent that Imus's firing will or has set.

Is this a shot across the bow to all personalities to keep them from saying anything that can be even remotely construed as objectionable? Will this effect 'free speech'? Will it stifle free expression? Is this like the anthrax scare in Congress - intimidation? What do the Dixie Chicks have to say about Imus? Is Rosie next? Will it come back to haunt the very people that helped fuel the Imus firing (Sharpton, Jackson, et al? Dan Rather??????

Just curious if anybody has similar feelings as I do.

A long, long time ago...
I can still remember
How that Imus used to make me smile.
And I knew if he had a chance
That he could make those people dance
And, maybe, they’d be happy for a while.

So bye, bye Mr. American guy
Drove his Chevy in the levy
And the levy was flooded (being in New Orleans)
And them good old boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
Singin' "This'll be the day 'free speech' died"
"this’ll be the day that we died."

Would be expended on the newly-missing emails at the RNC. I mean, I guess I like a good dogpile as much as the next meat puppet, but really, there's the story we should be howling about. The bastards burned the evidence, so to speak.

It isn't about Anna Nicole's baby or what a radio DJ said.

Good grief. Imus can say whatever he wants, whenever and wherever he wants. The only thing that has changed is MSNBC won't be paying him ten million a year to do it. Are you saying that our right to speak our outrage at his racist attacks on these kids should have been silenced so Imus could continue to be paid to call exemplary students "whores?"

you have the right to say whatever you want, but you also have to face the consequences of your speech. If you walked onto your job and started spouting off offensive comments, you would expect to face some disciplinary action. It just so happens that most of us aren't syndicated radio hosts

Why not Rush Limbaugh - for his 'feminazi' or 'hafrican' slurs.

Why not Ann Coulter - for her/his calling an exemplary 'american' John Edwards - a 'fag'.

Where's the outrage for them? Why are they still poisoning the minds of americans? Why are they still on the airwaves?

You can speak your outrage at his racist attacks and then choose not to listen to him - like I assume that you are not a listener to Rush.

I just think that he was 'piled on'.

First, I don't care one way or the other about Imus. For all I know he's the saint some here have been trying to claim he is. He made a horrible comment, his boss fired him for it. I'm a bookkeeper, if I make a tremendous accounting error I get fired. It's not disdain, it's justice.

Second, where have you been? People have been screaming about Limbaugh and Coulter for years. We've cost them a lot of sponsors and gotten them dropped from a lot of stations. There has been plenty of outrage on this board and on hundreds like it. We've even organized massive boycots of their sponsors. Coulter lost a lot of sponsors on her website after her Edwards comment, and was dropped from a dozen or more papers. We went through a wave of getting Limbaugh dropped by a lot of sponsors a couple of years ago. And he was fired from the two real jobs he had--his television show and his ESPN gig--because of public outcry.

The problem is, you can't get Limbaugh or Coulter fired, because they haven't been hired. They are self-employed, and syndicate their work. The various media outlets who carry them by and large want them to say what they say. We've done what we could to them, but there's only so much we can do.

You don't talk about something as big as the Final Four, and expect it to slip under the radar. That's why the shitstorm ensued.

As for Rush Limbaugh, he was immediately fired from his sportscasting gig for racist comments, so he got very similar punishment.

There was also quite a shitstorm over Man Coulter's comments, but you can't fire somebody who doesn't have a TV show in the first place. Her column is already being dropped by newspapers left and right, but you can't stop rightards from buying her books...so we're pretty much stuck with the man-hag.

He's free to stand on street corners saying whatever he wants. He's just not going to be paid by MSNBC to say it anymore.

Plus I have a right to corporate sponsors! Help help I'm being repressed!

Just like I hate Limpballs or the entire Fox network.

But there's one thing I hate even more:

Silencing the peoples you don't agree with,damn it!

This isn't even a 'free speech' issue, as his private employer, NBC News, has decided to terminate his employment, which they have a right to do. The First Amendment protects citizens from government regulation of speech. Private parties are free to regulate conduct as they see fit.

it seems a lot of people don't understand the concept.

What I find scary is how clueless people are about what the First Amendment protects. If people realized what free speech really means, they might exercise it more. Free speech is not about being "politically incorrect" and insulting those who are weak; it's about being able to protest and write letters to the editor criticizing the president without having to worry about being thrown in jail or ending up on a no-fly list. People loudly defend the supposed right of a bunch of ****'s to insult anyone they like without losing their job, while not caring the least bit that the FBI has been sending undercover agents to protest meetings and monitoring environmental groups for supposed terrorist activity.

Platform is not constitutionally guaranteed...

Plus, he works for a corporation who are allowed under law to set their own standards of conduct..


No, Imus is most definitely not the aggrieved one here...and none of his rights have been trampled on

:toast:

Imus had his rights trampled on. The question I was asking - is this just another notch on the gun to trample on all of our rights?

Again - I don't condone what Imus said - it was reprehensible. But - how will his firing effect our freedom of speech? Will everybody now become even more sensitized to what they have on their mind and will that not come out of their mouths now. If that is the effect of this - is that good or bad?

Would 'Monty Python and The Holy Grail' never make it to prime time today - because it is offensive to the religious?

You can't just say whatever you want while on the job, as any working stiff can tell you. And you REALLY can't say whatever you want on TV...haven't you heard of standards and practices?

Furthermore, consider this...Imus claims he only used a word that was coined in hip-hop culture. Well, people in that culture also use the F-word...a lot. But if Imus used that word on the air, he'd not only be fired, but fined.

He only got fired, not fined--and he still has his radio show--so he got off pretty lightly.

If he's going to have Cheney et al. on his show then he has to pretend to comply with a certain level of civility.

He's a big boy, and he should know that corporate sponsors are going to take off running when a certainly line is crossed, and that's the reason MSNBC canned him. What goes around....

"Free Speech" as a Constitutional Right, is a protection in the 1st Amendment that keeps the government from punishing a person or otherwise unduly restricting a person's free expression. In this case Imus didn't lose his right to the free expression of racist jokes, he only lost his forum to do so; and obviously the government played no role in punishing him or restricting his free expression. He simply became a liability for his employer so he got fired. Ultimately it came down to the fact that no one wanted to buy what he was selling.

I feel he was made an example, and a sort of mob mentality took over. He was genuinely contrite, truly sorry, and pledged to change the format of his show and make it diverse, as well. I believe that when someone truly "gets it" and asks for forgiveness, well...I believe that he should have been given a chance to try to make things right.

I watched his show regularly for several years. He is at his core a good person, IMO. He is very philanthropic and has spent much time and money on various good causes. He is a very wealthy man who doesn't need to do that. He really cares about these causes. He has the Imus Ranch, where he and his wife personally care for children with cancer (it's not a tax write-off as some have suggested...he and his wife go pick up the kids at the airport, feed them, teach them to ride horses, etc.). They don't hire caregivers to do it. He also built a hospital for veterans. He has the Fallen Heroes fund for veterans. He works for autism issues and sickle cell anemia issues.

These good things about him don't excuse the horrible thing he said. But these good things are as much a part of him as the horrible thing he said.

As a woman, I too was personally offended by the term he used. But I can sorta see how it happened, since I watch his show and know the format and how the edge is pushed. These terms have become part of our culture now. They're everywhere on late night TV, on cable, on the radio. You hear something often enough, and sooner or later, it might come spilling out of your mouth. That's not any sort of excuse, of course. And those exceptional young women should not have been exposed to that sort of horrible insult. Horrible. But I can sorta see how it happened for a person with his type of show.

He had a special responsibility to behave a certain way, being in such a high profile position. But this was an opportunity lost to use the incident for something good. And to have this spearheaded by Sharpton, who is no bastion of good taste and no stranger to calling others' names, is ironic. It also strikes me as more than coincidental that Sharpton's sharp tirade came at almost the same time as the Duke LaCrosse case was dismissed by the Attorney General, with a declaration that the Duke students are innocent and the charges unfounded. Sharpton had gone to the area previously and did a tirade down there about how guilty the Duke students were.

I'll miss his provocative show. He was one of the few major personalities on TV who spoke out against the Swift Boating of Kerry, the Bush-Cheney Iraq War debacle, and Rove. Unfortunately, he was also too rude and irreverent about other individuals. And this time, they were private citizens, young college athletes, who were not in a position to defend themselves. He crossed the line. But I think he should have been allowed to at least try to make amends. I think the African American cause and women's issues are not helped by this result. I also think that the candidate that Sharpton endorses will have a problem, too. I was not too crazy about Sharpton before this. I am an Obama supporter. But if Sharpton endorses Obama, I'm going to rethink that support. There are other candidates.

Wanted to add that...since I am not African American, I can't speak to the comment Imus made from that viewpoint. And I can see where an African American might react to it more than I react to it as a woman.

And also...I am hearing things about there being a pattern. I think that Bernard, the producer, was a hatemonger and the real problem on the show. Don't know if a producer can be fired. But if this was a pattern with Imus, that would change my opinion. I did not hear a pattern of this sort of thing from him, though (except for the word "ho," which, as I said, I hear frequently these days from various sources). Although I did flip channels quite a bit, when watching his show. For instance, I always changed channels when Bernard would start one of his "routines." I didn't like Bernard.

I think part of the problem is that some of these terms have become so much a part of our culture that we've gotten somewhat used to them. When the heck did I stop being AS offended by "ho" as surely I must have been when I first heard it. But it is true that it's part of our society now..it's in the music, hip hop slang is now being used in normal conversation and in comedy routines.

If you don't already know the difference, explaining it probably won't help.

If you drive at all, the amount of responsibility that you have or should incur is minimal.
If you ride a bicycle to work you have some responsibility for public safety and to see to it your activities don't unduly disrupt the freedoms of others.

If, however, you boss a semi or a bus, or a five hundred seat airliner, over populated areas, your responsibility and accountability are enormous, as any idleness, inattention, carelessness or even deliberate malfeasance is capable of catastrophic consequences.
You still have your freedoms, only as long as you recognize and implement your concomitant responsibility.

If you live as I do, with exposure to other humans being a fairly rare occasion, talking to the trees and the cats carries with it little responsibility.
However I do interact with other activists, office holders and others with regularity and impact, via the phone, snail and E mails. With that free speech comes responsibility to all the people I influence, with that responsibility even extending to not making other activists look bad, insulting office holders, etc, that would make my job, and that of other liberals- and progressives much harder.

Considerable responsibility.

Although I don't appear on the media and onstage nearly as much as I used to, if I elect to communicate and influence the thinking of thousands of others, I bear much greater responsibility and subject myself to equally greater inspection and critique than talking to the trees.

In the first instance, I can give my tacit agreement to the yanking of my freedom of transportation by repeatedly and willfully flouting the regulations and driving intoxicated.

In the second, I voluntarily agree to some standards and respect for others' freedoms and if i willfully and flagrantly exceed the boundaries of good taste or break the rules by producing the obnoxious and damaging pornography of hate speech, racist, homophobic, sexist or other hurtful vomit, I am, again, giving my tacit permission for the limiting of my "free speech" to curtail the damage I may do to myself or my fellow humans.

We all make agreements and accept certain minimum direction in order to interact with the world and other humans.
My rights to free speech must be evaluated in the light of your right to be free from undeserved punishment, harassment, or the right to conduct your own affairs the way you might want.

Contrary to the removal of Imus' megaphone's being a curtailment of free speech, it is actually freedom making for the unfortunate targets of his acerbic "wit" and his disrespect and contempt.

All that happened is that he got his loud-hailer toy taken away, just like the uncontrollable alcoholic's weapon on wheels or wings, while leaving him perfectly free to go down to the street corner and exercise his free speech and hurtful hate mongering all he wants.
Until some six foot four black belt gets a little annoyed at having her own right to be as free as possible from assholes and exercises a bit of that right. Then he loses another toy-but keeps his freedoms.

This is NOT a free speech issue!! Imus can go home tonight and say the exact same comment until he's blue, no one will stop him.

And everyone else has that same right to not pay attention to you, not sponsor you, and not employ you.

I have never heard an Imus show, and I really haven't been paying attention to this "controversy" but if the market's not there for you anymore, the only responsible thing to do is fire him.

In the 70s, New York weathercaster Tex Antoine was fired for quipping after the report of a rape that "if rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it." The victim was 5 years old. He was canned.

Now that is a far more callous thing to say than Imus did. But Imus has a long, long track record of racist, sexist remarks. It was only a matter of time that some remark of his would make the scale tilt.

The guy went over the line: the advertizers pulled out, and the public was clamoring for his dismissal ...

He was as welcome as a fart in church ....

As much as I appreciate free speech rights, this doesnt qualify : it was an HR action at a private concern .... Its not like he is being charged with a crime .... YOUR employer could discharge you for the same reason ....

He is free to spew his particular brand of wisdom/idiocy ...

Just somewhere else ....

I have ALWAYS disliked that man, but that only means I wont miss him ....

His rights are intact ....

It's not like Congress is passing laws banning hate speech. This is about the free market. If a radio-show host insults a large number of listeners and his advertisers start withdrawing their support based on the level of outrage he has caused, why should the radio station, which is private, by the way, keep him? The first amendment doesn't protect you from losing your job if you repeatedly insult and harrass your co-workers. This is a good precedent. The people have spoken and said that they want quality programming, not insulting, racist and sexist vitriol.

(I'm amazed at how few people understand what the first amendment says. If congress banned pornography, for example, it could then ban political material, such as feminist literature, arguing that it was sexual in content. Not only has congress not banned anything, but we are not talking about political speech here.)

I doubt that the men here who are telling the Rutgers players to "get over it" would be so nonchalant if someone went on the radio and insulted men sexually.

As it should be. :patriot:

Imus was free to call the young women "nappy-headed ho's". And now he's facing the consequences of his actions.

Imus is free to say whatever he wants. And other people are free to kick his ass off the air.