Why now? Why take down Imus now? He has said outrageous, obnoxious and offensive things for 30 years. What’s different? The recent uptick in his outrage about this administration and this war and the mistreatment of our troops could not be allowed to continue. The ’08 elections are getting closer. He has been getting louder and louder about this. If you listened to him every day you just knew that someway or the other he was going to have to be silenced. The ONLY thing he has done differently is to increase his opposition to this war and this administration.
I am a 61 year old female with a graduate degree in Social Work. You can certainly imagine the training I have had in a myriad of multicultural areas. You can well imagine that my life has been dedicated to helping those who are unable to help themselves. I am so frustrated seeing this administration and these big corporations dupe our country into believing that this Imus debacle is really about "prejudice." They have us spinning. They couldn’t possibly care less. They just wanted him off the air. Honestly do you think anything is going to change? Nothing is going to change. There has only been talking about talking about talking about and on and on and on. It will be over very soon. He's gone and we don't have to talk about it any more. And millions of people who we don’t regularly interface with will no longer hear about the criminality of the neocons.
The conservatives won the election by reaching out to millions and millions of Americans that liberals may not have ever interacted with – the religious fundamentalists. Liberals have few areas of interface with them. Conservatives courted this group of people whether they agreed with them or not. Conservatives did whatever they had to in order to get the vote. Fundamentalists were listening and conservatives were talking directly to them. Liberals were not talking to them in a way that they could hear, not through a venue that they listened to.
There are venues that talk to millions and millions of people every day to which Democrats pay no attention. Many of these are offensive but millions listen – millions of people that liberals don’t connect with. The majority of Americans don’t read Daily Kos, don’t watch Keith Olbermann, don’t read The Nation. It seems that Hillary is starting to get a clue. She appeared with Timberland. And then there is Obama with Ludacris. Whether that will work or not – who knows. But they both just reached out to a venue that interacts with millions of people. It appears that they are willing to do what it takes to get a Democratic president into the White House. Why aren’t more of us willing to do what it takes? We have to be willing because there has never been anything more important than getting a progressive into the White House.
The conservatives are willing to do whatever it takes and that is why they keep winning – or stealing -- elections. Liberals are not willing to do whatever it takes. After seeing what devastation our country has endured from the conservatives, we should be willing to do whatever it takes., If that allows a shock jock to reaches millions and millions of people that Kos, Olbermann, and The Nation, do not – OK I am willing to do whatever it takes to save this country. I am not above letting our party do whatever it takes.
When we talk about this administration we are also talking about big business, corporations. With Imus’ increasing focus on the environment, autism and children’s health he was becoming a huge irritant to corporations and big pharma. He just had to be stopped as he was reaching too many people and talking about real stuff. Just as there are red staters combing this site constantly for a statement they can use to take it down, there were those appointed to listen to every word on Imus’ show – needing something to take it down. And he gave it to them. Fool.
I feel so strongly that it was the neocons behind this whole Imus deal. They had to get him off the air. He was talking to millions and millions of people every morning and he was becoming more and more insistent about how illegal this war is, what war criminals those in this administration are, how our troops are being sacrificed for oil., etc., etc. etc.
Did you notice the warp speed with which this anti-Imus thing developed? Do you really think it was possible to get all MSM on board with the speaking points, to get all the slick banners and posters printed and distributed, without some experienced organization behind it? Just like the films of the falling Saddam Hussein statute where it appeared that there were thousands of Iraqi’s rejoicing, years later when we were shown the pictures from the long shot view, we could see that we had been duped. There were not thousands. The camera angle fooled us. Just like the picture of George and Laura laying a wreath at ground zero, when we saw the long shot, it was a lie that there were lots of people around them. The camera angle on this protest against Don Imus will show that there was no where nearly the masses of people being reported. Fooled us once, can’t get fooled ... uh.... Ok, go ahead fool us again. Olbermann is next. It will be harder to take him down. I really worry about him. I know we all do, but he is smarter than Imus.
I was wondering about how this was going to play out with the issue of protecting Limbaugh, Beck, Savage, etc. I finally heard it yesterday. The right wing hate mongers are yelling that the Liberals are trying to take away all our rights and that is so very important to protect these broadcasters from the liberals. Remember all the times that these Machiavellians have blamed the liberals for what the necocons were doing? And almost always they get away with this. Bob Schaeffer certainly got the message from the corporations. Dick Cheney got a nice advertising moment for his war this morning. Newsweek is getting pummeled for having so many people appear on Imus. Newsweek is closer to being "our" magazine than most of the others Oh, and another great thing this morning – Meet the Press spent so much time talking about Don Imus that they didn’t have time to talk about Gonzales.
Graduate school taught me how to look for the real reasons behind a situation, find it, and never fall for what they are trying to feed you. Kos reinforces this for me every day. It’s the corporations, it’s the neocons behind that curtain. Can’t you see them?