Snoop Dogg and Chris Rock can say it.
Don Imus can’t.
Find that confusing, infuriating or unjust? Welcome to the pop- culture maelstrom, where entertainment, politics, ethics and good judgment are one big mash-up.
On the one hand, public discourse is more crude than ever, with blogs inflaming every controversy, YouTube videos documenting private sentiment, and a backdrop of CDs and DVDs promoting intentionally offensive content.
On the other hand, the public is demanding that America’s daily narration be more civil than ever, at least from politicians and semi-authoritative figures like New York shock jock Imus. Try using words like “ho” or “nigga” or “fag” outside of a comedy club, and you will pay a price in confrontation, humiliation and retribution.
“It’s fair to say the culture is sending mixed signals about what is wrong and where it’s wrong,” said Barbara Kellerman, a Harvard University lecturer on public leadership. “That’s why you’re getting such a lively debate.”
True – and please get over whining about those mixed signals, says New York publicist Ronn Torossian, who has worked on “crisis communication” with everyone from Sean Combs to Pamela Anderson. Snoop Dogg, another former Torossian client, can rap on and on about his “hos and bitches,” yet remain a celebrated crossover star, because people “get it,” Torossian said.
“There’s a huge difference between what a 65-year-old white guy can say and what a 30-year- old black guy can say,” he said. “That’s just a fact of life.”
Are slurs a firing offense?
To Torossian and many others, that difference means Imus should be fired from his job, hosting a popular syndicated morning radio show that is simulcast on MSNBC cable TV. Imus has been suspended from the airwaves for two weeks, though it’s not clear whether he’ll lose pay.
Last Wednesday, Imus and his studio cohorts were commenting on the women’s college basketball championship between Rutgers and Tennessee, and Imus wound up calling the Rutgers women a bunch of “nappy- headed hos.”
Imus is just the latest in a recent spate of mindless celebrity word dumps.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden paid a backhanded compliment to competitor Sen. Barack Obama, calling him “clean and articulate” while implying that other black people are not. Right-wing shock columnist Ann Coulter took heat for using “faggot” and the name of Democratic candidate John Edwards in the same sentence.
Chris Rock could probably shout ethnic slurs back at a heckler, but Denver Nuggets coach Dan Issel lost his job for doing so after a game in 2001. Rock’s 10-minute comic rant about how he loves black people, but certain people who act like “niggas” drive him crazy, is one of the most popular videos on YouTube. It’s been viewed nearly 1.2 million times. And he hosted the 2006 Academy Awards.
“It does seem to be OK in a separate sphere of entertainment,” Kellerman said. “Imus himself has contributed to the blurring of a line between a serious show and entertainment.”
Or is it all in the context?
Denver writer and educator Patricia Raybon was outraged by the Imus remarks and is not mollified by arguments that Americans have learned how to navigate these treacherous cultural waters.
“Have we become a nation of people who will listen and watch, spew and utter, say and do anything on radio or TV? Then, in the name of free speech, of all things, call it entertainment?” she asked, responding by e-mail to a question about the Imus controversy.
“It’s a perversion. Yet some of the best companies in America advertise on Imus and these others shows, and don’t even hold their noses,” she said, noting plenty of politicians and celebrities also are eager to appear on such shows. Others talked about varied levels of responsibility. A white teenager might listen to a misogynistic rap song without repeating those words in the classroom. Imus, many emphasized, speaks from a far different platform, on a major radio station and a nationwide TV show owned by one of ours largest corporations, General Electric.
“The struggles people have gone through to overcome that kind of hatred are too great to allow major media companies to profit off it just because it’s exciting,” said Eric Burns, senior communications director for Media Matters in Washington, D.C. The watchdog group has for years documented frequent Imus slurs.
“Because Mr. Imus is a radio- show host, he has a certain responsibility to all his listeners,” said Gavin Lawrence, a Denver actor starring in a racially charged role in the Denver Center Theatre Company’s “Pure Confidence.” He plays a Civil War-era slave who is a jockey and is the constant target of that tricky N-word.
Context is key, Lawrence said. “You don’t expect to hear racial slurs about anyone on a radio show.”
Those most angry at Imus are especially wary that he, on some level, will profit from all the fuss.
Raybon, for her part, wants the listeners to go beyond their surface outrage and accept their own responsibility.
“The harder challenge is to ask why we keep paying for it,” she said. “As a nation of media consumers, we’ve sold our souls to the devil – to get the devil.”
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-954-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com
