A Matter of Perspective

Washington, DC
So the Don Imus period has ended, appropriately and very sadly. One can only hope that the economic pressures forcing the termination of Imus in the Morning will be applied to the racist, misogynist and homophobic banter that remains the province of certain local sports-talk radio hosts in Boston and elsewhere.

The Imus controversy gave Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton yet another forum for their polemics. I wonder whether Jackson and Sharpton would have been as forceful in their advocacy of human rights and decency had the victims of Imus' abuse been African-American gays and lesbians, Asian-American women, or citizens of Jewish or Islamic faiths. They are certainly not immune from their own brands of intolerance on some matters of race, religion and sexual orientation. We will have evolved as a society when human- and civil-rights advocates speak for all oppressed peoples and not just those in their special-interest group.