Steve and the Tank!

Don Imus

Everyone who hasn't been living under a rock over the past couple of weeks has probably heard of Don Imus' racially and sexually insensitive comments about the Rutgers Women's basketball team.

Instead of Sunday's 60th celebration of Jackie Robinson breaking baseball's race barrier taking center stage as it should, we are distracted by an odious slur.

The question isn't if Imus is right or wrong -- he was clearly wrong and even he admitted as much. The question was how to punish him.

As a so-called civil society, we struggle about how to balance hate speech versus free speech. Imus' comments belie an ignorance of the Rutgers Lady Scarlet Knights and their gifted coach, C. Vivian Stringer.  Rutgers became the Cinderella of Women's tournament playing against traditional powers like Tennessee, LSU, and North Carolina in the Final Four. Would Rutgers pull it off? I watched them rout a motivated LSU team playing for their very recently resigned Coach Pokey Chapman in the National Semifinal.

I enjoy watching women's sports because they are usually play with better fundamentals -- two hand passing, defense, etc. than men's sports. Even if women make it to the WNBA or the international leagues, they receive a fraction of a fraction of their male counterparts. In essence, they are playing for the love of the game which is refreshing in this day and age. The women's tournament had plenty of positive storylines for Imus to comment on. Imus chose the low road and for we are all the worse for it.

Though I am someone who cherishes free speech, I was tempted to call for firing Imus from the FAN and MSNBC. He may get a chance on satellite radio or elsewhere on terrestial radio sometime down the road so his rights are preserved.

What Is To Be Learned From This: I hope basic human decency and respect will prevail here. Have we devolved as a society to where insults get better ratings and get ahead in the world? I have often been misunderstood and subsequently criticized for my "Passion for Compassion" (Tony Robbins), Zero Resistance Living (Dr. Maxwell Maltz and Matthew Furey), and other positive attitude philosophies. I would prefer to foster a positive uplifting world than a downward one. Instead of tearing each down in a zero sum game to get ahead, we can grow the pie of opportunity and results with hope, nurturing, and hard work.

We can constructively criticize each other without degrading one another. Political correctness popped up in the last 20 years, I believe, because how we as a society forgot to respect and love one another and had to come up speech codes and the like. Let's hope we learn from this unfortunate incident and focus on encouraging one another than tearing each other down. Our time here on earth is short, let's make the best of it.

Until Imus resurfaces elsewhere, he may literally ride into the sunset of his ranch for disadvantaged children. It was ironic listening to his wife, Deirdre, Friday morning on the FAN during the annual Radio Athon raising money for children's cancer and other diseases. One of the guests talked about how close they are to a "cure" for SIDS, God Willing. Imus' intolerant and inopportune comments robbed the SIDS and other researchers of an optimal opportunity to raise much needed funds. For that, we all lose from hate speech.

Posted by the Tank in NY.

College Basketball | Editorial

Monday, April 16, 2007 8:53:08 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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