There has to be an Imus event every once in a while. Ethnicity being the volatile thing it is, gratuitously inflammatory remarks have to be discouraged, so bounds of acceptable speech have to be clarified. Clarity comes when, inevitably, someone oversteps and gets slapped down.
But is America's machinery for stigmatizing bigotry really working coherently?
Which brings us to Ann Coulter. Full disclosure: Ms. Coulter once cited an Op-Ed essay I wrote for this newspaper about the Danish cartoon controversy as evidence that people like me had "affection" for terrorists. Thus ended any claim I might have to evaluate her work objectively. If you want a subject on which I report and you decide, today's not your day.
In a speech last year before the Conservative Political Action Conference, Ms. Coulter used the word "raghead." This is a dual-use slur, applied to both Arabs and Muslims, but she was talking about an Iranian, so presumably she was focusing on the religious dimension (consistent with her post-9/11 advice that we "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.") The word raghead - whose only function is to denigrate - seems as legitimately offensive to Muslims as Mr. Imus's utterance was to blacks. The difference is that Ms. Coulter didn't apologize.
Brace yourself for the seismic damage done to her career. The leaders of CPAC reassessed their relationship with her and ... invited her back to speak the next year, an occasion she used to trot out the word "faggot." And Ms. Coulter continued to be interviewed respectfully on CNN and (again and again) on Fox News - treatment that presumably wouldn't be accorded a pundit who used the "n-word" without apology.
Why the Imus-Coulter disparity? Maybe part of it is that Ms. Coulter isn't as structurally susceptible to sanction as Mr. Imus. She doesn’t have her own radio or TV show, so advertisers on CNN and Fox have two degrees of separation from bigotry. Still, there are pressure points big enough for an Al Sharpton to find. Ms. Coulter's column appears in newspapers with major advertisers.
Maybe the problem is that Muslims don't have an Al Sharpton. And, truthfully, I wouldn't wish one on them. But couldn't they at least have an NAACP?
I'm not making a moral argument. If I were, I would get into homophobia and anti-Semitism and other varieties of bigotry. This is a pragmatic argument about social cohesion. By my lights, the two American fault lines most likely to become chasms in the long run are between blacks and whites and between Muslims and non-Muslims.
And if anything, I'd say that the second fault line is the more treacherous. America has already done things abroad that are helping to make the "clash of civilizations" thesis a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let's not make that kind of mistake at home.
Mr. Wright makes some good points about Coulter's money spinner - bigotry and hateful slurs without consequence, but he's missing a larger point:
The "clash of civilizations" is what we, as a nation of white people, have historically done best. This Arab/Muslim thing is nothing new, just the latest manifestation of it.
"Let's not make that kind of mistake at home." Sorry, Mr.Wright, you're 400 years too late.
Our forebears sort of systematically murdered and kicked to the curb everybody they ran across in their 250-year march from sea to shining sea. When they fought back in self-defense, as any of us would when our home was invaded and our way of life destroyed, they were labelled "savages" and efforts to overcome them were redoubled. For all their fighting heart and determination, American indigenes* never stood a chance against human waves of westward migration and technology.
The first African slaves arrived on these shores in 1619, so that's how long our wonderful white/black relationship has gone on.
Those two examples were about lebensraum and profit from agriculture and natural resources.
The new "clash of civilizations" has switched from the fulfilled lust for internal hegemony and profit to as yet unfulfilled lust for hegemony and profit half the world away. We don't exactly have those people right where the Bush administration wants them, and modern technology is a great equalizer on everything but all-out military action, so the issue remains in doubt.
It's only natural that
The difference is that we don't have the mass audience platform these people do and most of our readers (thanks to all 12 of you - our numbers are up! ["Our number's up" may not have been the best choice of words! Heh.]) agree with us. We pick on the strong and deserving, too. Anything else is just bullying.
Bullies, whether in the schoolyard, at work, in a bar, on the air or wherever, need to be slapped down in an appropriate way 'til they quit it. An apology might matter to some folks, but it doesn't to me. They can do that just fine from flat on their backs if they care to, and most apologies are phony attempts to get out of a jam anyway. Sincere apologies are OK, but rare.
There'll be bullying and hate, aka 'business as usual' and 'twas ever thus', until folks teach their kids that it's wrong. Don't hold your breath.
A tip o' the Brain to Tennessee Guerilla Women.
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