Virginia News Source, Virginia Beach, Virginia

THE HARM IN FAKE OUTRAGE

 
Don Imus is a redneck know-nothing whose celebrity is to say things on the radio that most people believe should never be said anywhere.  Imus is Howard Stern with a fixation on politics and sports instead of sex.  True to character, Imus once vilified the President and the First Lady to their face in the rawest way possible.
Don Imus is a redneck know-nothing whose celebrity is to say things on the radio that most people believe should never be said anywhere.  Imus is Howard Stern with a fixation on politics and sports instead of sex.  True to character, Imus once vilified the President and the First Lady to their face in the rawest way possible.

Far worse than a moron’s observation is a nation so frail in its sensibilities it can turn such a controversy into something so supposedly hurtful to so many.  Imus brethren Bill Maher is right when he calls this “fake outrage”. 

The on-camera emoting on every channel by so many is quite the outrage itself.  And it goes directly to the poisonous correctness that has sadly become the main dividing point between the races in America.

Slavery, segregation and discrimination were terrible eras in the South and throughout the nation.  Thankfully, courageous and selfless leaders changed those injustices in America forever a long time ago.  Now is the time, now is past the time, when Americans simply end the category in our minds known as race.  Such is the theme a reasonable American media would display in today’s free, modern world.

             Face it.  Imus was fired solely because he happened to be a Caucasian saying something negative about certain black people.  Apparently in the minds of all those so offended by Imus, one is to always, always conclude that a white person saying something negative about a black person, even about their looks, is motivated primarily by racism.     That is simply not true.  Indeed, that is a racist belief itself.

 

If a twenty-something on MTV said a girl on camera is a “nappy-headed ho” no viewer would care a bit.   It would be considered crazy fun.  If Bill Cosby were to say that many young black women act like “hos” it would be considered a jarring, necessary observation.  No one would be morally outraged.  No one would be insisting Cosby be fired somehow.

 
Don Imus was like a child calling someone “fuzzy head” because they do have big, fuzzy hair. It was an empty-headed display by someone who never really grew up. Only people fixated on race can make so much of this.   What is the reason in 2007 for this relentless focus on racial hatred lurking everywhere?

              The long history of bravery, solidarity and survival by black American families speaks for itself.  This present circus of victimhood has no connection whatever to those black Americans who truly suffered and persevered and created the way for future generations to pass through the cruel darkness to freedom.  It is baseless to say such a silly slight could possibly be so personally harmful to such a proud people. 

The Imus media circus set back the goals of the people who gave their lives to establishing legal equality between the races in America.  It has rewarded once again the usual race-baiters and sadly advances the false idea that there are meaningful differences in the character of the human races.

 We are all Americans, of course, and equals in every way.  When will so many important people finally commit that belief to their own way of thinking?          Stephen Merrill,  Zuni, Virginia