DON IMUS ET AL

I don't think you can HAVE a blog and not comment on Don Imus.

I guess I'm proud to say that I don't listen. Lots of my good friends are now telling me their reasons for listening. They don't wash.

He's been spewing this stuff for a while and everyone just went "wink, wink, nod, nod." It ain't OK.

The people at work in the lunchroom will tell you that I have been ranting about stuff like this for a long time. People will complain about how there's nothing on TV except stuff about Anna Nicole Smith's baby. I said, yes there is if you watch the Jim Lehrer show. So please don't tell me that you can't get away from Anna Nicole or OJ or Don. As Nancy Reagan would say "Just say NO!"

Every time we give this trash currency by discussing it at work, or not turning off the radio or TV, we give the media what it wants. An excuse to say "We're not responsible for this. It's what our readers/listeners/viewers want. We're just responding to public demand." We will leave the issue of whether they have any moral responsibility not to cater to this crud to another day. Today we're looking at our own responsibility for the ccntinuing stream of blather, innuendo and out and out racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, Muslim-bashing and everything else that passes for "news/entertainment" (we can't seem to distinguish between the two....) in this country.

IF we wonder why the tenor of civil discourse has become so degraded, we have only to look at the covers of People, Us Weekly and the tabloids. It's so much easier to worry about who's broken up with whom than whether we should be in Iraq or whether we're killing the planet. I know that stuff's boring, but trust me, you won't be bored when you have to stand in line at the Washington Zoo to see the last polar bear on the planet.

There are lots of ways to relax and enjoy life. But listening to trash talk and lowering the overall intelligence quotient of the American public don't qualify.