Thread: SO, what's the fuss about Don Imus?

Bill Bell: The story of ordinary
Article Launched:04/13/2007 08:24:28 PM PDT

SO, what's the fuss about Don Imus?

All it really takes to not care at all is to grovel in a familiar sea of low self-esteem.

I've got plenty of low self-esteem, so as far as I'm concerned, Imus didn't do anything so bad that he should be singled out by the likes of me. Basically, he just embarrassed the big boys and girls of advertising who had been quietly chuckling and profiting from his sleazy brand of humor, which goes way back over many years.

But now, apparently, his sleazy humor has thoroughly angered scads of people who are truly righteous or merely self-righteousness by their own questionable decree.

I guess you would have to blame that on the tender, wholesome, young girls on the Rutgers' University women's basketball team whose true grit and extraordinary athletic ability took them to the national pinnacle in their sport.

At that moment, Imus, with his usual genius for comic timing, swept across the federally-protected American airwaves with one of his calculated caustic quips. He characterized the black girls on the dream team as "nappy-

headed `hos."

Now, for us folks with low self-esteem who go through life expecting the worst out of most people, a crack like that coming from a millionaire entertainer like Imus or Howard Stern or Chris Rock or Michael Richards is just life as usual in this era.

Only later do I and my fellow mavens of low expectations realize that what we perceived as no more than life as usual actually is rising to the top of the public opinion heap.

Had not the giants named NBC, CBS, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, etc., etc., brought "nappy-headed `hos" to my attention, I would never have known it was said. I never ever listen to Imus. He and his ilk depress us folks with low self-esteem.

I hear enough of that kind of depressing talk and music waiting in traffic with my window rolled down when a throaty SUV or pickup truck beside me fills my brain with lyrics comprised mostly of the F-word and N-word while the percussions nearly send my heart into arrhythmia. I glance around at the other cars full of people being "entertained" and it depresses me.

Sometimes my mind wanders and wonders why nobody seems to care about that. Quickly, the wondering stops. Why, of course, the answer is always the same. It's because everything is driven by the profit motive. Just like phrases such as "nappy-headed `hos" have made Imus, the networks and the sponsors millions, even billions, of dollars over several decades, so too, do the F-word and N-word, laced in the gangland pop music of our era, bring in big bucks.

Of course, if you are still reading this depressing drivel from a self-confessed maven of low self-

esteem, you could conclude that I'm just jealous that sleaziness sells and what I do doesn't.

I've analyzed this thing from every angle and the only conclusion I can come to is that I am basically a prude, and I am a prude because I have outlived my "comfort years."

I love the planet, but I don't like what it's becoming. Now that I'm older, I realize that I really loved the sweet, melodic, popular music of the '40s on into the '70s. I liked it better when television and the movies were cornier with less swearing, violence and sex - just good, solid stories.

Somehow we got along better without the shock-

jocks.

You could go out for a drive on a summer night in a convertible with the top down and not worry about obscenity and stereos blaring from monster vehicles at every stop.

However, I guess I've always been a glass-half-

empty person in the self-

esteem department, which has given me fairly low expectations when it comes to a great many of my fellow creatures - especially the ones who entertain us.

Anyway, as far as I am concerned, my life now is filled with watching for great stories about people - whether they are ordinary people or not doesn't really matter.

The Imuses of the world don't really matter at all, but youngsters like those on the Rutgers University women's basketball team have truly magical stories to tell - minus Imus.

bill.bell@sgvn.com

Bill Bell is the editor of the Whittier Daily News, 7612 Greenleaf Ave., Whittier, CA 90602.


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