http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/6653Don Imus and the Cancer of Communications
by Brent Budowsky | Apr 9 2007
There is too much hatred, derision, disrespect, smearing, slander, polarization, division and bigotry that has infected American politics and American media.
What Don Imus said about the Rutgers women’s basketball team was only the latest example of a sickness that is spreading — and in certain corporate boardrooms even encouraged as good for business.
This problem is far larger than Imus, the idea that it’s profitable, beneficial or cute to spit hate, venom, or ugliness in our politics and media.
It starts at the top. In my view, the sickest hour in the history of American national politics was when George W. Bush used his Republican National Convention to hand out little toys to demean the Purple Heart. How sick can it get? Here was a collection of politicians who never served in the military, using their convention to make fun of those wounded in war, to demean a political opponent awarded Bronze and Silver Stars for valor.
When Ann Coulter attacked 9/11 widows as harpies who were probably pleased their husbands were dead, where was our “war president” who perpetually exploits 9/11 for partisan purposes, when he should have defended the honor and dignity of those women Coulter slandered?
It’s not only the right, it’s also the left. It’s not only television, it’s blogs and talk radio and all other means of political discourse.
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