IMUS t've Missed Something

The media frenzy over Don Imus's insulting remarks seems strangely out of proportion to me. Last night the NBC Nightly News devoted over ten minutes--nearly half its daily allotment--to the story. Slow news day, you say? Sure, there were no "jetliner hits building" stories to displace the Imus piece, but c'mon, folks; we are still at war and gas prices are spiraling upwards. The attention given to the Imus story was seriously over the top.

Why would I say something so jarringly politically gauche? Is it because I don't think his remarks were all that bad? Not at all. I cringe at his brand of demeaning speech and have made a personal vow that anytime those kinds of words are said in my presence, they won't go unchallenged. Or is it simply that I'm resigned to the fact that, even in these enlightened times, there is still an irreducable minimum of ignor-Imuses out there? Nope. Imus deserves to be abandoned like a South Bronx tenement by advertisers and listeners alike. Or maybe I think Imus has been unfairly singled out. That's a bit closer. I have to admit that the I-man doesn't register anywhere near Howard Stern or Tom Leykis on the Gross-O-Meter. But that's really not why I think this thing is out of balance.

Here's my theory. We have severely whittled down the SWWPUW (Stuff We Won't Put Up With) list. Most the sins that used to be cause for public censure--adultery, drunkenness, cussing, pornography, temper tantrums, rudeness, and shirking of duty--have been recast as life-style choices or at worst, adjustment problems. You just can't get a consensus on any of them any more.

So what's left on the SWWPUW list? Racism and sexism (and in most elite circles, homophobia--however that's defined). That's about it. And since Imus committed two of the sins on this truncated list (and he's a repeat offender), he got the full force of the media's outrage.

Long ago, every town square had stocks and pillories specifically for publicly shaming those who dared violate the much more extensive SWWPUW lists of the time. We don't have such barbaric devices any more, but it doesn't change the fact that the public still enjoys a good pillorying from time to time. And the folks in power enjoy dishing out said humiliation, as long as they can maintain the appearance of righteous detachment in so doing.

The whole experience is cathartic for just about everyone. You have a few people who get caught publicly expressing thoughts and attitudes that many harbor secretly. Subjecting them to public scorn helps keep the focus off the personal (and secret) sins of the rest of us. Lots of us live with the guilt and fear of exposure that are the inevitable result of our sins--even if those misdeeds were struck from the SWWPUW list decades ago. Pillorying the likes of Imus, or Michael Richards before him, provides a temporary respite from our guilt. It also allows us to celebrate the fact that we're not so stupid as to actually express our basest impulses in public.

But if anything at all is to be learned from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, it's that the secret sins are by far the more dangerous ones. Pillory Imus to your heart's content, O Masters of the Media. His words were indeed reprehensible. But don't be fooled. It is the arrogance, greed, lust, anger, jealousy, and selfishness in all of our hearts--sins so subtle, internal and unverifiable that they never made the SWWPUW list--that threaten to unravel the gossamer fabric we call civilization.