Hate Speak For Dollars
Is there no low too low when seeking fame and fortune?
Misogyny, racism, and hatred of gays fill the airwaves because hatred sells. Those who pander hatespeak are well paid media darlings.
The air waves have been full of the insult that fell like pearl's from shock jock Don Imus's lips, pearls that quickly turned into slime that drug him from the pinnacle of fame to the depths of racism and misogyny. Hate speech has successfully filled the airwaves across America with an almost giddy abandon. Radio and cable television shows tout their hate-speak practitioners and pays them well for their offensive ideologies. So, at what point did socially unacceptable hate speech become a multi-million dollar business?
Political correctness was supposed to be the tool that would bridge and unite the disparate groups that inhabit these United States. Clearly, the social experiment failed. The white heat hatred that fanned the fires of Jim Crow was supposed to have been eradicated in our nation's quest for true equality. Yet today, legions of dissatisfied, hate filled individuals indulge in a sick kinship by supporting hate speech shock jocks and divisive political commentators. These media darlings insult and impugn while breaking the social contract that is supposed to bind all Americans together in the common pursuit of equality and democracy. And the commonly accepted targets of many of these ominous, hate filled diatribes are minorities, women, and gays.
Don Imus et al are merely a symptom of the suppressed cauldron of hatred bubbling just beneath the surface in our society. The truth is that there are growing numbers of disenfranchised Americans who feel powerless and unable to regain the power and respect that was once afforded them. History has chronicled the actions of the weak and the weak and powerless have always lashed out with hate speak that eventually escalates into violence.
Clearly, these shows are the daily diet of men who are frustrated and powerless. These people are the angry anonymous Bloggers and callers to radio shows who either engage in off-color time-worn jokes or brazenly threaten women, gays and minorities with unspeakable physical debasement because they disagree with their ideas or lifestyle choices. This directed vitriol is almost always delivered against a target that doesn't have a chance in hell of effectively responding against or combating the onslaught of matter of fact hatred. This new type of attack dog does so only to tear down and annihilate an opponent who simply disagrees with them. Most rational people flail about ineffectively under this type of assault because most people are unprepared to deal with unrelenting personal attacks from anyone much less a total stranger. For this group there is only one rule: win at any cost.
So the question becomes, how does such seething hatred arise in a country like the United States, land of untold opportunity? The answer might lie in the perception or reality that many Americans began to perceive that their government no longer cared about what was important to them. Waves of immigrants, women, minorities and gays began to infiltrate the workplace and Americans workers began to be displaced as the country shifted from an industrial economy to a technology driven service economy that left the low or marginally educated without steady employment. As the dreams of many Americans began dry up and blow away like the economic lifeblood of their cities, discontent and hatred began to simmer like molten steel in the hearts of the disenfranchised. As this disease quietly feeds the airwaves and emboldens its practitioners, the once submerged evil threatens to topple the very foundation that once united and made this country great.
