Imus: Live at the Apollo

[SeattleDan]

Though I wouldn't characterize Jackson/Sharpton as race baiters, joew and i agree on this one. (Geez, how about that?) The insult was uncalled for. I've been reading Chris Hedges new book and he quote Karl Popper on tolerant and intolerant speech. I don't have the book close at hand, and will quote from it tomorrow. But there is a line, a moral line, about where we draw it. I'm not sure Imus actually crossed that line but he came damn close.

[SeattleDan]

And this is from a friend of mine, a midwest lawyer, and, no, not the midwest lawyer you may think I'm quoting:

Anyway, I shed no tears over Imus’ departure from CBS radio and MSNBC. Still, I think it’s important to note what’s not at stake here. I’ll be blunt: there is no First Amendment or “freedom of speech” issue here. Imus -- a private citizen employed by a private company -- made offensive comments. Private citizens voiced their objections, and private companies that advertise on CBS radio and MSNBC, most likely in response to the public outcry, threatened to cancel advertising and/or refused to place future advertisements with the networks. So, MSNBC, acting as a private company, made the decision to drop the simulcast of Imus’ show, and CBS, acting as a private employer, decided to can the jackass.

Here’s the point: Imus wasn’t censored -- he was fired without the involvement of the government, even though the self-righteous bastards at the FCC said they would “look into” complaints filed against Imus. I’d say that despite the hand wringing over Imus’ termination the whole sad affair demonstrates that the ol’ marketplace of ideas thingy works. Imus made statements that people found offensive; they -- and CBS’ and MSNBC’s advertisers -- rejected those ideas; and guess what? Imus’ racist, misogynistic ideas lost whatever currency they may have had. Makes you wonder whether the FCC is really necessary after all.


There you have it.

[booklady]

joew said:

I think bl's quote ignores a couple of important points. Although, as I noted earlier, free speech means that you don't get prosecuted in a court of law for saying something unpleasant, that does not mean that decent people have to listen to you or associate with you, or that an employer has to keep you on the payroll if your speech is bad for business.

Of course.

[booklady]

joew said:

BTW, compared to the UK, we are clearly still the land of the free. A few days ago, the National Catholic Reporter carried an article about a law recently enacted there. The article states:

Under the new Sexual Orientation Regulations, it will be illegal for a teacher in any school, including a Catholic school, to state that homosexual activity is morally wrong, and that this is a teaching that should be accepted as true. A teacher could be prosecuted if a pupil were able to claim that, by teaching the sinfulness of homosexual activity, the teacher had discriminated against him and caused him to feel hurt or humiliated. … [The law] affects both those schools that receive support from public funds and those for which parents pay fees and are wholly independent.

Certainly nobody would advocate that sort of restriction on free speech in non-public schools in this country, would they?

How can I say this and be understood? This is absolutely outrageous. Catholic schools do not have the right to teach their own religious doctrine?!

[rmn]

gailkate said:

In fairness to BL, she offered the quote "not as an answer." But Joe, Dan, PT and Lirio have the right end of this stick. You have the right to say whatever you please and risk your job. Your audience and your employers have the right to fire you.

I'm astonished by the animus directed toward Sharpton and Jackson. They used their power just as Imus used his - in the public marketplace of ideas. They won because they were right.

Astonished? Odd. Here's a refresher RE: Sharpton. I haven't the stomach this morning to talk about Jackson, a bird of the same feather:

We need this Sharpton story to get a picture of some actual racism. In 1987, a 15-year-old black girl named Tawana Brawley disappeared and was found four days later covered in dog feces with racial slurs written on her body. She claimed that at least two and as many as six white men, one of them carrying a badge, had repeatedly raped her in the woods in upstate New York. She refused to meet with prosecutors, but scooted to Sharpton's side very quickly. Sharpton and a couple of now disbarred lawyers took up her cause. Sharpton and Brawley’s lawyers said that a local prosecutor named Steven Pagones had kidnapped and raped Brawley.

Of course, there was no evidence to support this charge. Indeed, a grand jury investigation concluded that Brawley wasn't the victim of sexual assault and that the whole affair was a hoax. She had smeared herself with dog feces and written the racial epithets herself in an attempt to fool an angry stepfather about her whereabouts. Several witnesses testified that they had seen her at various parties during the time she was supposedly being held against her will.

Sharpton still wasn't finished. He then accused state Attorney General Robert Abrams of masturbating over Brawley’s crime scene photographs.

This affair is probably the single greatest example of race baiting in the latter half of the last century.

Pagones’ life was ruined. It took more than a decade for his defamation suit to come to trial. In 1998, a jury finally found Sharpton and his crony lawyers liable for defaming Steven Pagones and ordered them to pay fines. In a just world, the bastard would have been sent to prison.

To this day, Sharpton has never apologized to Pagones or anyone else for his part in this.

I have no doubt that Imus owed the female ball players an apology. His remarks were foul. Be that as it may, Imus did not need to go on Sharpton's radio talk show and apologize to him. That was a profound disgrace.

Forgive the history lesson, but I find it quite unbelievable that anyone could be astonished over the animus directed at Sharpton (and Jackson).

[joew]

Does anybody know if Sharpton has actually payed the judgment against him? Last I heard, if memory serves, he hadn't. If he still hasn't, he is not only a race-baiter but a scofflaw, IMO.

But, as they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

[rmn]

joew said:

Does anybody know if Sharpton has actually payed the judgment against him? Last I heard, if memory serves, he hadn't. If he still hasn't, he is not only a race-baiter but a scofflaw, IMO.

But, as they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

My understanding is that he has not payed what was owed. No payment, no apology. The man is a racist scoundrel.

[gailkate]

I haven't read your whole summary, rmn, because I do know the case. What astonishes me is that it continues to color everything about the man since - and also about Jackson. The names go in tandem, blacks whom whites are relieved to be able to hate.

Sharpton believed Brawley. I believed her. If you believed her you were outraged and sickened; nothing he said could be called race-baiting if you accept that he believed her. It was not his fault that she "scooted" to him.

And why did he believe her? Why did I? Because it was not out of the realm of possibility in this benighted world of racism and misogyny. Black females had been horribly used and abused by white men for centuries. Females of all races were and are subject to horrible abuse to this day.

Sharpton didn't invent the Brawley story. Maybe he felt duped and embarrassed so he continued stubbornly believing when he should have backed off. Certainly the Pagones accusation was unfounded and pursuing it was inexcusable. How much was his doing and how much was fed to him by his lawyers? I don't remember enough and don't want to go back to delve into it all again.

My point is this - why are we talking about Sharpton and Jackson? They are always paired, and the Brawley case is always dragged in, just as Chappaquiddick will always be dragged in about Kennedy. Nothing else matters; there is no redemption. It's as if any issue they touch is immediately suspicious.

You were right that we should be talking about a wider issue. How much do we tolerate? What do we have to take in order not to be accused of censorship? Remember when Tipper Gore started her campaign about violence in the music her kids were listening to? She was treated like an uptight goody two-shoes. Whatever one's race, being hip and cool meant blanching at nothing.

The broader society hasn't spoken up loudly enough. Don't disparage Sharpton and Jackson for speaking loudly.

[booklady]

How much do we tolerate? What do we have to take in order not to be accused of censorship?

This is what I want to see discussed, as well.

[joew]

gk, you make a good point about pairing Jackson and Sharpton. They are different. The problem with Sharpton is not that he initially believed Tawana Brawley, but that he continued to defame people long after any decent person would have realized that the accusations were dubious at best, and, so far as I know, to this day he refuses to admit he was wrong and apologize. In other words, as far as I know, he is still maintaining the lies. If I ever learn that he has admitted that he was duped and he was wrong to support Brawley as long as he did, my opinion of him will change. Jackson hasn't done anything that bad.

We are talking about them because they inserted themselves into the case.

On the issue you and bl want to talk about, I think that as individuals we don't have to take anything. We have a right to have nothing to do with anybody who says things we find offensive, and to use our free speech rights to try to persuade others to have nothing to do with the offensive person also. I think as a society we are far too tolerant of boorishness, offensiveness, and crude speech and behavior. I think we make the mistake of thinking that if something is not illegal, it is okay and we have no right to oppose it.

[escalus]

1. Gail, I love you.

2. Freedom of Speech has always had it's limits. The most famous example being, you can't yell fire in a crowded theatre. These limits are a good thing.

3. Don Imus is an ignorant, bone-headed, red necked, fascist, racist, sexist shock jock, and I am delighted he's been fired. I only hope it will start a domino effect among his colleagues, though I know it won't, and Imus will probably have another show before the month is out.

4. The saddest thing of all: where was the attention of the news when these fine young women were winning the championship in their sport?

[booklady]

I have just started reading this, from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-speech/

Perhaps it will make some pertinent points. According to the introduction: This entry explores the topic of free speech. It starts with a general discussion of freedom in relation to speech and then moves on to examine one of the first, and best, defenses of free speech, based on the harm principle. This provides a useful starting point for further digressions on the subject. The discussion moves on to an assessment of the argument that speech can be limited because it causes offense rather than direct harm. I then examine arguments that suggest speech can be limited for reasons of democratic equality. I finish with an examination of paternalistic and moralistic reasons against protecting speech, and a reassessment of the harm principle.

[joew]

booklady said:

I have just started reading this, from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-speech/

Perhaps it will make some pertinent points. According to the introduction: This entry explores the topic of free speech. It starts with a general discussion of freedom in relation to speech and then moves on to examine one of the first, and best, defenses of free speech, based on the harm principle. This provides a useful starting point for further digressions on the subject. The discussion moves on to an assessment of the argument that speech can be limited because it causes offense rather than direct harm. I then examine arguments that suggest speech can be limited for reasons of democratic equality. I finish with an examination of paternalistic and moralistic reasons against protecting speech, and a reassessment of the harm principle.

It is a pretty good discussion.

I do want to disagree with the part where he said

Very few people would deny that violence against women is abhorrent and an all too common feature of our society, but how much of this is caused by violent pornography? One would have to show that a person who had no propensity to rape or batter females was caused to do so through exposure to material depicting violence to women.

It seems to me that this is too high a standard. I think if you show that someone with a propensity to rape or batter is able to control that propensity except when triggered by pornography, then in fact the pornography has caused the action. And then we get the questions of how many people have to be triggered to rape or batter women before the pornography can be prohibited, and how many people have to be triggered to murder or mayhem before the portrayal of violence can be prohibited.

More generally, I don't see the matter as one of absolutes, or even one where it is easy to set clear limits. One factor which the author misses is the Supreme Court's "redeeming social importance." In the quotes from Mill which the author puts at the beginning of the essay, Mill is speaking of speech which advocates "doctirnes." Pornography does not advocate a doctrine in that sense (nor did Imus's line). IMO that decreases its entitlement to free speech protection.

[joew]

This gets back to the narrower question, but I think it is worthwhile in its own right, and it does touch on the larger question.

www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/04/14/fire_hip_hop_offenders_too/

The author, Derrick Jackson, is a black columnist for the Globe. He also writes good columns pointing out the difference between graduation rates for white and black athletes at highly ranked colleges — the point being that the colleges are just using the black athletes rather than educating them.

[liriodendron]

booklady said:

How can I say this and be understood? This is absolutely outrageous. Catholic schools do not have the right to teach their own religious doctrine?!

I know what you are saying, BL. And yes, I suppose that Catholic schools ought to be able to teach their own religious doctrine. Still, I find it upsetting to think that any teacher in any sort of school would be discussing the morals of homosexuality with their students, from either side of the table, so to speak.

Oh, and for the record, I am Catholic.

[rmn]

//GK - You were right that we should be talking about a wider issue. How much do we tolerate? What do we have to take in order not to be accused of censorship? Remember when Tipper Gore started her campaign about violence in the music her kids were listening to? She was treated like an uptight goody two-shoes. Whatever one's race, being hip and cool meant blanching at nothing.//

Very well stated. Good thought, GK.

R

[ptcaffey]

Sharpton and Jackson are two blips in this story. It's Imus' own words--freely available to be replayed on the internet--that sunk the dude. And, from what I read, many of the employees of NBC News and CBS News no longer wished to be associated with the minstrel aspects of the Imus show. Will this silence Don Imus? Of course not. He'll be on talk shows. He'll write a book. He'll have another radio show.

As for Booklady's quote (of Aaron Sorkin): if Imus wants to burn an American flag to protest his firing by CBS, then, by God and the Constitution, he has that right!

[booklady]

Here is "Booklady's quote" again (since I'm being addressed in the third person, as though I am not really here), just for the record. It clearly includes speech, not just flag burning:

"America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say 'You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free".'" -- "The American President"

[ptcaffey]

//How much do we tolerate?//

In a legal sense, we "tolerate" a tremendous range of expression since the public, by and large, is not lobbying to alter the First Amendment and enact, in its place, strict language codes. That's not going to happen. So how much do we tolerate? Nearly everything.

With respect to questions of taste, we are more discriminating. For example, I buy the music I like, and the music I do not like I do not buy. Is that "intolerance"? No. It's simply one person in the marketplace of ideas exercising his pesonal taste. If I ran a media company, I would face a similiar decision: do I hire on-air hosts who degrade women and African-Americans, or do I not? If I'm the sponsor of shows, what kind of shows do I support with my advertising dollars? And so on.

At each level, it's a question of taste, and choices must be made. If something or someone goes on the air, then you can be sure something or something else is not getting on.

Most of the programming I would like to see on radio and television, by the way, is not getting on. Intolerance! Censorship!

[ptcaffey]

BK, Sorkin is clearly talking about laws against flag burning, i.e. government control of speech. He includes flag burning as a form of free speech (as does the Supreme Court). In the movie, a photograph emerges showing the President's girlfriend at a protest where a flag is being burned. Everything turns on this.

[hartlikeawheel]

I was wondering when we'd get around to this.

rmn says he's heard we were naughty while he was gone. I'm still in the dark about the mysterious doings which supposedly took place.

But, you know, it looks like everybody's doing a pretty good job of conversing about something which could elevate tempers.

Actually I don't give a poopster about what anyone said or responded in the larger public forum. But I really like to hear you all talk about your thoughts regarding it.

[booklady]

A few points from the Freedom of Speech essay that seemed relevant to me:

4.2 Democratic Citizenship and Hate Speech
To argue the case above, one has to dilute one's support for freedom of expression in favor of other principles, such as equal respect for all citizens. This is a sensible approach according to Stanley Fish; the task is not to arrive at hard and fast principles that govern all speech, but to find a workable compromise that gives due weight to a variety of values. Supporters of this view will tend to remind us that when we are discussing free speech, we are not dealing with speech in isolation; what we are doing is comparing free speech with some other good. For instance, we have to decide whether it is better to place a higher value on speech than it is on the value of privacy, security, equality, or the prevention of harm.

To start from a principle of unregulated speech is to start from a place that itself needs to be vigorously defended. For Stanley Fish, the issue is one of finding a balance in which "we must consider in every case what is at stake and what are the risks and gains of alternative courses of action" (1994, 111). Is speech promoting our basic values or undermining them? "If you don't ask this question, or some version of it, but just say that speech is speech and that's it, you are mystifying--presenting as an arbitrary and untheorized fiat-- a policy that will seem whimsical or worse to those whose interests it harms or dismisses" (1994, 123).

In other words, there have to be reasons behind the argument to allow speech; we cannot simply say that the First Amendment says it is so, therefore it must be so. The task is not to come up with a principle that always favors expression, but rather, to decide what is good speech and what is bad speech. A good policy "will not assume that the only relevant sphere of action is the head and larynx of the individual speaker" (1994, 126). Is it more in keeping with the values of a democratic society, in which every person is deemed equal, to allow or prohibit speech that singles out specific individuals and groups as less than equal? The answer, according to Fish, cannot be settled by simply appealing to a pre-ordained ideal of absolute free speech, because this is a principle that is itself in need of defense. Fish's answer is that, "it depends. I am not saying that First Amendment principles are inherently bad (they are inherently nothing), only that they are not always the appropriate reference point for situations involving the production of speech" (1994, 113). But, all things considered, "I am persuaded that at the present moment, right now, the risk of not attending to hate speech is greater than the risk that by regulating it we will deprive ourselves of valuable voices and insights or slide down the slippery slope towards tyranny. This is a judgement for which I can offer reasons but no guarantees" (1994, 115).

Hence, the boundaries of free speech cannot be set in stone by philosophical principles. It is the world of politics that decides what we can and cannot say, not the world of abstract philosophy. Free speech is about political victories and defeats. The very guidelines for marking off protected from unprotected speech are the result of this battle, they are not truths in their own right: "No such thing as free (nonideologically constrained) speech; no such thing as a public forum purged of ideological pressures of exclusion" (1994, 116). Speech always takes place in an environment of convictions, assumptions, and perceptions i.e., within the confines of a structured world. The thing to do, according to Fish, is get out there and argue for one's position.

We should ask three questions according to Fish: "[g]iven that it is speech, what does it do, do we want it to be done, and is more to be gained or lost by moving to curtail it?" (1994, 127). He suggests that the answers we arrive at will vary according to the context. Free speech will be more limited in the military, where the underlying value is hierarchy and authority, than it will be at a university where one of the main values is the expression of ideas. Even on campus, there will be different levels of appropriate speech. Spouting off at the fountain in the center of campus should be less regulated than what a professor can say during a lecture. A campus is not simply a "free speech forum but a workplace where people have contractual obligations, assigned duties, pedagogical and administrative responsibilities" (1994,129). Almost all places in which we interact are governed by underlying values and hence speech will have to fit in with these principles: "[r]egulation of free speech is a defining feature of everyday life" (1994,129). Thinking of speech in this way takes a lot of the mystique away. Whether we should ban hate speech is just another question along the lines of whether we should allow university professors to talk about football in lectures that are supposed to be about Plato.



5. Back to the Harm Principle
We began this examination of free speech with the harm principle; let us end with it and assess whether it helps us determine the proper limits of free expression. The principle suggests that we need to distinguish between legal sanction and social disapprobation as means of limiting speech. As already noted, the latter does not ban speech but it makes it more uncomfortable to utter unpopular statements. J.S. Mill does not seem to support the imposition of legal penalties unless they are sanctioned by the harm principle. As one would expect, Mill also seems to be worried by the use of social pressure as a means of limiting speech. Chapter III of On Liberty is an incredible assault on social censorship, expressed through the tyranny of the majority, because it produces stunted, pinched, hidebound and withered individuals: “everyone lives as under the eye of a hostile and dreaded censorship...t does not occur to them to have any inclination except what is customary” (1978, 58). He continues:

the general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind...at present individuals are lost in the crowd...the only power deserving the name is that of masses...t does seem, however, that when the opinions of masses of merely average men are everywhere become or becoming the dominant power, the counterpoise and corrective to that tendency would be the more and more pronounced individuality of those who stand on the higher eminences of thought. (1978, 63-4)
With these comments, and many of a similar ilk, Mill demonstrates his distaste of the apathetic, fickle, tedious, frightened and dangerous majority.

It is quite a surprise, therefore, to find that he also seems to embrace a fairly encompassing offense principle when the sanction does involve social disapprobation:

Again, there are many acts which, being directly injurious only to the agents themselves, ought not to be legally interdicted, but which, if done publicly, are a violation of good manners and, coming thus within the category of offenses against others, may rightly be prohibited. (1978, 97 [author's emphasis]
Similarly, he states that “The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance” (1978, 53). In the latter parts of On Liberty Mill also suggests that distasteful characters can be held in contempt, that we can avoid such persons (as long as we do not parade it), that we can warn others against the person, and that we can persuade, cajole and remonstrate with those we deem offensive. These actions are legitimate as the free expression of those who happen to be offended as long as they are done as a spontaneous response to the person's faults and not as a form of punishment.


6. Conclusion
In a liberal society, we have found that the harm principle provides reasons for limiting free speech when doing so prevents direct harm to rights. This means that very few speech acts should be prohibited. The offense principle has a wider reach than the harm principle, but it still recommends a very limited intervention in the realm of free speech. All forms of speech that are found to be offensive but easily avoidable should go unpunished. This means that all forms of pornography and most forms of hate speech will escape punishment. If this argument is acceptable, it seems only logical that we should extend it to other forms of behavior. Public nudity, for example, causes offense to some people, but most of us find it at most a bit embarrassing, and it is avoided by a simple turn of the head. The same goes with nudity and coarse language on television. Neither the harm or the offense principles as outlined by Mill support criminalizing bigamy or drug use, nor the enforcement of seat belts, crash helmets and the like.

Some argue that speech can be limited for the sake of other liberal values, particularly the concern for democratic equality; the claim is not that speech should always lose out when it clashes with other fundamental principles that underpin modern liberal democracies, but that it should not be automatically privileged. To extend prohibitions on speech and other actions beyond this point requires an argument for a form of legal paternalism that suggests the state should decide what is acceptable for the safety and moral instruction of citizens, even if it means limiting actions that do not cause harm or unavoidable offense to others. It is up to the reader to decide which of these positions is the most persuasive. It has certainly been the practice of most societies, even liberal-democratic ones, to impose some paternalistic restrictions and to limit speech because it causes offense. As we have seen, even Mill seems to back away somewhat from the harm principle. Hence the freedom of expression supported by the harm principle as outlined in Chapter One of On Liberty and by Feinberg's offense principle is still a possibility rather than a reality. It is also up to the reader to decide if it is an appealing possibility.

[booklady]

ptcaffey said:

BK, Sorkin is clearly talking about laws against flag burning, i.e. government control of speech. He includes flag burning as a form of free speech (as does the Supreme Court). In the movie, a photograph emerges showing the President's girlfriend at a protest where a flag is being burned. Everything turns on this.

I've seen the movie. Many times. Again, I brought up the quote because it clearly speaks to the fact that American people have the right to say things that other people disagree with.

Are you arguing that the government should decide what is allowable speech over the airwaves? Or that the market should decide?

I believe Trusty hit the nail on the head. What's allowed to be said in this country is what makes money for someone.

[booklady]

And just one more thing (for now): I can't stand Imus, Howie Carr, Bill O'Reilly, Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, or Glenn Ordway. I don't demand that the government silence them. I just turn the stupid radio off. If the government is going to silence anybody, it should be the music companies who continue to publish the work of men who "sing" horrible, violent lyrics to "entertain" our youth. But like Trusty said, follow the money.

[liriodendron]

Oh, Bookie, could we please add Howard Stern to your list???

[booklady]

Yes! Should I modify my post?

(How come you didn't ask who Glenn Ordway is? ;D )

[hartlikeawheel]

Grandstand, folks, you who thrive in the public eye. That's how you make your living - by stirring the pot. If nobody gave a damn about your inane and apparently profitable dance of hatred you'd all have to go home and change your diapers. Who'd care?

Why would we let anyone have that much power?

The most satisfying thing I can think of to do is let them play the assl Go for it, big guys. I'll watch and snicker seeing you expose your true natures.














/

[liriodendron]

booklady said:

(How come you didn't ask who Glenn Ordway is? ;D )

I just assumed he is one of those Yankees. Should I Google?

[liriodendron]

ptcaffey said:

Most of the programming I would like to see on radio and television, by the way, is not getting on. Intolerance! Censorship!

Censorship? Nah. They're just aiming for the lowest common denominator.

[booklady]

liriodendron said:

booklady said:

(How come you didn't ask who Glenn Ordway is? ;D )

I just assumed he is one of those Yankees. Should I Google?

Oh, I think you should definitely google.