Thursday, April 12, 2007

Don Imus

Two million is a big number.

298 million is a bigger number.

Don Imus' daily radio show has about 2 million listeners, that means 298 million Americans could care less about what he says. Now, just because Imus says a handful of stupid words the number of people who seem to care what Imus says has increased 20 or 30 times.

Logically and mathmatically this does not make any sense. If you don't listen to Imus and perhaps just have a vague notion of what his show is all about why do you now care if he used a deragatory phrase to describe a female basketball team?

Odds are you wouldn't. However, the wonderful media, of which I'm a small part, does care and wants to make sure you care. The press has blown what should have been a throwaway line heard by a tiny percentage of the U.S. population into the next coming of the KKK.

All because the press is always looking for the next big "gotcha" moment.

This could be Michael Richardson going insane at a comedy club, Mel Gibson going insane to a cop or maybe the press could use its power turn some innocent people into crimminals as it did with the Duke lacrosse players.

Yes, the Duke players. Here is a situation very similar to what happened with Imus. It had all the ingredients of grade A network news theater. White against black, rich against poor and a power crazed district attorney looking to keep his job. The press destroyed these young men well before any evidence concerning the incident was known.

The general consensus was they had to be guilty. After all don't all rich white kids attending a good school want to rape a black stripper?

Well, they were wrong. The kids were innocent the accuser a lier. Just like Imus accusation was wrong. But where is the press now. Some are attacking the district attorney, none are attacking the accuser and most importanly none are apologizing for what they did.

If I were one of the Duke players I would add to my law suit list CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS and every other organization that covered the event for defamation of character.