It's Over, but for the misconceptions, and notes on raunch culture generally

About freedom of speech, just one more time. Because there was a man on the Diane Rheim show yesterday on the subject of Imus, Inc. who was agreeing that raunch culture is raunchy and dumb, and possibly dangerous, but that if we "censor" it, then there's the slippery slope down which we'll all have to say the same thing all the time.

Nonsense. Balderdash. Not even wrong. (Oooooh, how I love using that phrase!)

The cultural arena is one in which speech is the primary method of assaying, assessing, and choosing ideas and values. Yes, Imus can say what he said. Yes, other shlock jocks can speak. Yes, hardcore rap can make scads and oodles of money denigrating women, men, and the world generally by worshiping at the altar of quick money and easy sex and general narcissism. Crikey, I remember teaching this very same debate in Grad School in my Frosh Comp class, but the offender was 2 Live Crew who were invited to leave and not play in Florida or face public obscenity charges for .... rapping hideous things about women. Ta Da. Rinse. Repeat.

There was a political point in rap once, but it's dead mostly, having morphed into a simple adolescent fear of women and of growing up and of participating in the world in a generous way. In short, rap came to know that its first audience is Male Anglo Teens, and revised its content accordingly. And we can choose to listen, and we an choose to buy, and we can launch arguments into the realm of culture saying, "Look, this is harmful." And every once in a while someone goes down in the culture war.

Don't worry. Imus can move to XM or Sirius, just as Stern did. He's doesn't have to shut up. He just has to change audiences and media outlets. And if you love that "rebel" then you will follow him. --- See ya. Buh-bye.

What's amazing to me is that Imus doesn't get this point either. Saying of Us, the people, as well as his employers, that Those Bastards Really Got Me This Time. ---- That is not the level of contrition he ought to be showing. He's just too old to indulge in that kind of self-pity. It's almost more unbecoming than the offenses he's perpetrated.

Yes, we, the bastards, really did get you this time. It's a thing to remember.

We have the freedom in this country to create our own culture, its content, even its form. And a whole bunch of people, with varying political and cultural agendas, said Ok, Enough, Shut Up Mouthy Jerk. And that's really just fine. Protecting freedom of speech does not mean that we Must glut our airwaves with Just Anything That Sells.

Freedom of speech means that we, as people and communities, have the right to Think About What Is On The Airwaves and Make Choices About It. That's what it means. And the advertisers on MSNBC and CBS Radio are keenly aware of this rather complex point. What we don't watch, buy, read, consume --- those things Go Away.

Sometimes its Arrested Development, sometimes Don Imus. Win some, lose some.

Content directors and cultural creatives put stuff out there. If we don't want it: they can't sell it: it dies. And that is perfectly fair, fine, right, and just what freedom of speech means. All the ideas and styles get their test and run, and some of them make it. Not all of them make it in all contexts.Speech is contextual. You can't say just anything just anywhere. And grown-ups know that.

What creative types and programming directors also know, that most people don't, is there are Many More Ideas in the Hopper. Always. And we won't run out. So, most people also won't run out of entertainment. Relax. We're not going to make you make your own entertainment. We know that's really hard to do.

Two kinds of ideas generally make it: the very easy to swallow, and the very hard to swallow. Easy ones get out and catch on and burn out. Hard ones sometimes simmer around for a loooooong time, or become the bones of a culture, like the bones of our culture, both religious and philosophical. But, rarely is an idea, or a meme, both easy and hard.

What we are saying out here in America is that we're pretty well fed up with low-brow, adolescent, raunchy meaninglessness that we found entertaining and kinda subversive, or so fringe that we didn't look too hard, a few years ago.

Roll with it.

Or, make something other than the slippery slope argument in support raunch culture. Make a real argument extolling its values, virtues, stylistic complexity and innovation, its critique of values and styles that now impede cultural growth though they served at one time, its brave new themes or deepening treatment of timeless themes, its deep honor for the rich and surprising complexities of sexuality leading America out of its totally schizoid relation to sexuality, its role in forming a brave and culturally adventurous new generation who will bring us closer to the fulfillment of our own great possibilities.

Do it. If you can. But don't tell me that when a community says, This idea/meme is bad and harmful, that all ideas/memes are now in danger. They are not. Stop being so lazy and alarmist. Leave that to the Administration. Imus is not Cicero, killed and dismembered by the Senate of Rome for defending democracy and human dignity against its internal enemies. We all know it. We are acting accordingly.

One of those hard ideas is Freedom of Speech. And our ancestors died for it because we wanted to be able to have open debates about Rather Weighty Matters, like war and other rights and how to distribute wealth and so forth without winding up like Cicero. That this Freedom of Speech also means your favorite way of vegging out or turning on is also protected, that's really just gravy. And you can titter, or get off, or veg out WithOut your entertainment drug of choice. You will still be you. I will still be me when Lost goes off the air. Some of us might have to learn to use our imaginations while we masturbate, but I promise, we can do it. I believe in us.

Do good (but not perfect) ideas like Humanism and the Enlightenment get attacked in the arena of ideas? Yes. And lately, they've been punched pretty hard. They are, however, very muscular ideas, deeply ingrained. They are not a style, they are not a performance, they are not designed to shock. That's why this trend, the schlock jock, and the raunch culture, will eventually either burn out or be burned out.

It asks nothing of us.

But eventually, in a kind of seasonally cyclical way, people want to be asked-of and they want their minds well fed, or at least not poisoned, and that season seems to be edging its way up out of the cold, cold, profitable ground. Maybe. We shall see.