Tim Wildmon

AFA president

June 2007 – Observing the controversy over radio talk show host Don Imus and what happened with Rosie O’Donnell on The View television program, I got to thinking about what is acceptable or unacceptable public discourse in our country these days.

First off, like most Americans, I found repugnant the words of Imus in describing the Rutgers University women’s basketball team who played in the national championship game. He used street slang for the word “wh--e” when talking about the team, who are mostly black and have an African-American coach as well. Because Imus is white, his comments were taken as not only offensive, but racist. Although Imus was trying to be funny, his remarks caused a national backlash against him and he was subsequently fired by CBS radio and NBC television.

To his credit he later met with the Rutgers team to personally apologize. But it was too late for his talk show. It was canned.

The irony is that Don Imus actually would have learned this common slang use of the word “wh--e” from the popular rap and hip-hop music community whose music is laced with this kind of language and worse. And these are mostly black rappers and hip-hop artists using this language to describe young black women in their music. In addition, these singers often use the word “ni--a” or “ni--as” when they talk about young black men in their music. Now if you are not familiar with rap or hip-hop music, you might find it hard to believe that black musicians would demean their own community with this kind of talk, but it happens every day on radio stations all over America.

However, some good may come out of this situation. This story appeared on the CNN Web site just a few days after the Imus story became national news:

Prominent U.S. hip-hop executive Russell Simmons Monday recommended eliminating the words “bi--h,” “ho” and “ni--er” from the recording industry, considering them “extreme curse words. …

Simmons, co-founder of the Def Jam label and a driving force behind hip-hop’s huge commercial success, called for voluntary restrictions on the words and setting up an industry watchdog to recommend guidelines for lyrical and visual standards.

“We recommend that the recording and broadcast industries voluntarily remove/bleep/delete the misogynistic words ‘bi--h’ and ‘ho’ and the racially offensive word ‘ni--er,’” Simmons and Benjamin Chavis, co-chairmen of the advocacy group Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, said in a statement.

I understand that this is a small step in the effort to make the popular culture more family-friendly, but it is a good sign that perhaps some of these people in the entertainment industry are seeing the need to be more responsible about the messages they are sending to America’s youth, both black and white.

Rosie O’Donnell is best known for being an outspoken liberal on The View, a nationally syndicated talk program for women. She is also known for being loud and obnoxious. It was only a few months ago that O’Donnell made the statement that “...radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America.” That is a totally ridiculous statement and most Americans realize it. However, it is interesting to note that she was not roundly criticized in the secular press the way Don Imus was, which reminds us once again that Christians are the only group of people in this country who can be held up for contempt or ridicule and nothing is said about it by media types who would otherwise take on the messenger who said such things. Imagine had O’Donnell said this: “Radical Judaism is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America.” She would have probably lost her job immediately for being anti-Semitic.

Bill O’Reilly was the only member of the national secular media who criticized O’Donnell for her slam on Christians.

Now O’Donnell has lost her job as well. Technically she “resigned,” but most observers think she was finally fired by Disney/ABC for making so many irresponsible comments.

Hopefully, what has happened with O’Donnell and Imus is a sign that we do still have some standards of public decency left in our society, and perhaps we can see a reversal of the “anything goes” media that has dominated our society for the last 20 years.