April 15, 2007

Radio personality Don Imus has long been an equal-opportunity basher. And the comments that got him fired this week from CBS radio and MSNBC television, no matter how deplorable and hurtful and deserving of apology, were not significantly more venomous than other comments he has made in the past--or other comments made over the years by Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Al Sharpton, et. al., during their AM and FM and satellite screeds. On the radio, no one knows you're a junkyard dog.

What amplified Imus's troubles this time, however, was the fact that we live in the age of Mob Rule By Videoclip. In the past, such ill-conceived attempts at humor would have merely dissipated into the audio ether. But because of the ease with which bloggers can now post videoclips, the offending footage was simply lifted from the MSNBC video simulcast of Imus's broadcast and placed on a watchdog Web site, Media Matters. As a result, Imus's 15 seconds of shame were suddenly magnified, Magnavoxed, and made available for replay, ad infinitum, across the Net.

Here was yet another example of how video, in an Internet-fueled, pundit-primed, politico-posturing, 24/7 news culture triggers snap judgments--this time on the part of CBS, which, instead of yanking Imus from the air immediately and suspending him for a month or so and letting tempers settle before making its final determination about his fate, instead allowed him to continue his drive-time mea culpa for a full, excruciating week, then kowtowed to the critics clamoring at the gates of Black Rock (CBS headquarters). The cool medium of television has been replaced by the hot minute of the YouTube Era. We make snap judgments and vote with the clickers at our fingertips. We see someone Do The Wrong Thing and immediately demand public retribution. We take a Straw Poll By Appearances, not a vote by a jury of cool-headed peers. We leave no time for accepting apologies (Imus's contrition, while serially self-serving, long-winded, and hyperbolic, was nonetheless genuine) or for understanding context (meaning: CBS has sanctioned this sort of speech by Imus and others, for years, and was disingenuous and disproportionate and arbitrary in firing him for what has clearly been behavior it had long enabled and richly rewarded.)

I'm reminded of the "Two Minutes Hate" scene in Orwell's 1984, in which the faceless crowds, every day, were forced to gather under huge screens to hurl invective at images of "lean, Jewish face[s]" or "expressionless Asiatic faces." This was the State's way of keeping the masses focused not on the horrors of the State itself, but on a silver-screen parade of common enemies. Today we just do our "Two Minutes Hate" from the privacy of our own cars, as we commute into work, or from the privacy of our PC's, as we pass holier-than-thou judgments on what we think is truly "P.C.," ricocheting from videoclip to videoclip.