Prometheus 6

Okay, I got my rant off. Back to rationality.

Misogyny in the Morning

Drive-time radio has become a free-fire zone, a forum for crude and objectionable speech that would be out of bounds anywhere else. There's an intimacy about radio. The medium creates the illusion of privacy -- it's just the jock and his or her entourage speaking to you, the listener, alone in your car where nobody else can hear.

Let me tell you my beef with Imus. It is not limited to his most current offense. In a way, it's not even Imus' fault that I have this problem with him.

Imus invented the shock jock thing, as far as I know. He was madly popular in NYC here, so people picked up the genre to compete. They reinforced each other, pushed each other into greater and greater outrages until it culminated with the likes of WABC Radio. Hate Radio.

Would it surprise you that the most listened-to talk radio station in the country, owned by one of the most important media companies, has as its highest rated host a man who sounds like a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan?

The station is New York City's WABC, flagship of the ABC Radio Network, and the host is Bob Grant.

Politicians have always appreciated hate radio's ability to pull together a large audience with a simple, coherent message, and are fully aware that by standing in its ambit they are seen as "one of us."

Grant is an important player in regional politics; conservative politicians like U.S. Sen. Al D'Amato, New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and New York Governor-elect George Pataki have called in to Grant's show to thank him for his support, often saying that it made a crucial difference in their elections.

And though Grant in particular is not a local issue anymore the whole damn thing has metastasized.

So my problem with Imus is that he's the root of a tree that bears some foul smelling fruit. It's like he was the first gangsta rap artist.