hate

my own rickshaw crash of racism aside, this has been quite a week.

long ago, i gave up on the shallowness of tv news and the pundits who'd become shouting heads. "shut up -- you're stupid!" sounds like 6-year-olds on the playground, not highly paid media analysts. however without the tv, i sometimes miss when stories blow up.

when i was a very little girl, don imus was a d.j. in nyc, on am radio. he played top 40 hits and made fart jokes. i was 5 or 6. i had a transistor radio and danced around in my room. he was funny. i lost track of him.

eventually, i had an uncomfortable awareness of howard stern, rush limbaugh and the resurgent imus; hannity and colmes and bill o'reilly. just reading their words made my skin crawl.

at the same time, shows like "def comedy jam" started on cable. "damn, niggah" 20 times in a 2-minute skit ain't funny. well, not to me. rap opened up the vernacular of bitches, hos and niggahs; poppin' caps in pigs. i hated it.

all these words i was raised to believe as hateful were suddenly pouring out of boom boxes, call-in radio and late night tv. i'd hear kids on the streets and the t calling each other nigger. it made me flinch even though i knew they embraced the word. how messed up was it to hear white kids using it with each other? yeah, tupac might be in your walkman, but kid, you are not black.

this was not lenny bruce or richard pryor holding up a mirror to themselves as well as to us. this was lazy vulgarity, not insightful smarts. indolent shock, and it seemingly led to numbed indifference.

where then is the line of decency? where does shock end and hate begin?

every now and again, a shock-jock would get a slap on the wrist. i'm sure they laughed about it on-air the next day. as revolting as it seemed to me, these guys got paid to be offensive, so i always thought the fines or reprimands were absurd. oh! he said something insulting! um, that's his job. shouldn't he get a raise, not a fine?

as this hate speech seemed to expand, i just became confused. why was it ok? why was it accepted, expected and then thought funny for some fat-ass 60-year-old millionaire to drench the airwaves with words my parents never said out loud?

it seeped further. inflammatory whores like ann coulter and rosie o'donnell, dozens of local radio personalities, began routinely using this kind of language. oh, let's add "faggot" to the mix -- an especial favorite of cunter's.

then: "nappy headed ho's."

without the internet, it never would have been a story. everybody gnashed their teeth and pretended this was *outrageous*!! jackson, sharpton, the usual suspects. on npr, i heard a black female professor defending hate speech in hip-hop as contextual. i wanted to smack her.

imus admits he said something stoopid and apologized sincerely to the girls and the public numerous times. he's fired. i smell scapegoat.

a.j. liebling said, "freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." imus was an employee. we all know he'll turn up elsewhere soon enough, anyway. so what's changed? what's different? the genie does not go back into the bottle. ever. people feel *the right* to talk this way. try taking it back.

i believe in free speech. can the dissemination of *hate speech* be stopped in the mainstream media? if it's only hate speech when whities say it, what happens then? you put a 10-second delay on live radio? you fire all those guys? you prohibit anne coulter from giving public speeches? none of that is right either.

the whole thing just makes me want to take a very hot bath.

in opposite land, the charges against all the duke lacrosse players were dismissed. talk about a ho. she falsely accused 3 men of raping her. she had the semen of at least 3 men in her, none of whom were the accused. why did she cry wolf? obscene karmic pay-back for all the black men falsely accused in the past? 15 sordid minutes of fame? she's a mother, ffs. what will she eventually tell her kids about this? why did the d.a. go all rabid, in a bizarro attempt to not seem racist or classist? a year later, she walks away, and these boys and their coach try to pick up the pieces.

the day of imus' slur was the anniversary of the killing of martin luther king jr.

today is the anniversary of jackie robinson's debut in the major leagues.

tomorrow is patriot's day. arguably one of the most provocative defenses of personal liberty and freedom from tyranny in history.

kurt vonnegut died this week. "there’s only one rule that i know of, babies — god damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” much like faludy, malamud and orwell (plus so many others), he despised man's most base impulses -- hatred, stupidity, cruelty and prejudice. ironic they all should be on such high peacock display when he passed.

the hateful hypocrisy of the christian right will be saved for another day. as will the astonishing corruption of the administration by its assumption of absolute power.

i have struggled with this post. it's too long. i'm too angry, and too confused. sufficient parallel to the situation, i suppose.

don ho also died this week. tiny bubbles? i don't think so.