Creating a backlash to hate speech--Imus fallout

[Skidmore]

I was in library and classes most of yesterday so I only checked the boards when I could get next to a computer. Today will be the same so I'm sure this situation will continue to develop. However, when I returned home last night, my husband was watching Abrams try to deal with the situation and he was talking to Smerconish (sp?) and then he had John Fund on. Now, it was interesting to watch these two twist themselves into knots trying to discount the racist and sexist comments Imus made last week. It was also interesting to learn that the Fox Noise machine was trying to defend Imus, a broadcaster on a competing network. I think we should continue to hammer on this because some of these people are fearful they might be next. Perhaps not the Fox people, who are protected by a rich benefactor, but those on the edges of the RW who have adopted hate speech as the language of political discourse for the past two decades. Pursuing this with vigor, as it deserves to be pursued, may not only promote a civility we haven't seen for some time in the public arena, but may very well disarm some of the more rabid of the RW political candidates who traffic in weasel words that mean the same thing.

Just a thought.

[wake.up.america]

1. Very well thought out. If we stck to civilty and to the facts - we are likely to draw out...

civil behavior and more social justice.

Imus' behavior and other people's like behavior will be punctuated if we act more civil, even while venting our disgust.

[xchrom]

2. for me the libertarian over lay in our image heavy culture

has gone too far.

i'm not sure if words matter anymore when people don't read.

or where words have lost their meaning.

we can come here to du and get our sexism on with prison rape humour make fun of trannies through ann coulter or gay folk through bush and rove -- and it just doesn't matter.

i am extremely non-plussed at the moment.

and somewhat bemused by the general level of ignorance.