Case Study 2
You can do an Issue Essay on the ethics of racial and gender
stereotype humor in the mass media. Is the audience too large for the
practice?
Or you may do this as a CASE STUDY on the Don Imus firing. But don't do both.
The difference is that as an Issue Essay, you are not trying to
resolve a particular organizational problem in the world, such as
what should be done about the Don Imus situation, but would include
other examples and be arguing a thesis on the topic, like should
racial and gender humor be reined in or not.
Granted that racial humor may be a good tool for diffusing racial
tensions and promoting reconciliation, good humor depends on adapting
to the audience. Perhaps excessively large audiences or multiple-purpose venues
are simply not the appropriate venue for this kind of humor. Even well-intended
humor is only good if it is understood according to the intentions by
which it was conceived. Assuming Don Imus's good intentions, might we
still fault him for playing the act to the wrong audience?
Another angle: what is the Imus in the Morning program's target
audience? Would it matter to this situation if it turns out his
target audience is the middle-class white male, as opposed to a more
diverse target audience?
Another possibility: Compare Imus to other race- and gender-baiting
humorists such as Andrew Dice Clay, Dave Chappelle, and Carlos
Mencia. If Imus went wrong, in what does his wrongdoing consist? Is
it that he said certain words that should not be said on the air,
like "ho", "nappy-headed", etc.? Is it the words in combination?
Is it that he targeted a group of college girls? Should they and
their ilk be off limits to the shock-jock genre?
Another angle is the role of Al Sharpton: is this just the result of
one racism-watchdog shock-jock competing with a racial stereotype-invoking humorist
shock-jock for turf? Would the Rutgers ladies even have taken offense
had Sharpton not made an issue of it? Is a guy like Al Sharpton in
the "cat-bird's seat", i.e. in a privileged position where he can get
any comedian in trouble any time he wants simply by taking their
material out of context? After all, perhaps not many young African
Americans listen to Imus, but more of them listen to Al Sharpton. So
Imus is a dead duck with them just because Al Sharpton decides to
take issue. Imus has little chance of establishing to their
satisfaction what his context was, because they are not even familiar
with his humor.
Maybe Sharpton is not quite a hero; maybe he is just being a
demagogue here. Would anyone in the African American community right
now have the guts to step up and criticize Al Sharpton?
But on the other hand, is Imus at fault here because he hasn't
courted the African American audience enough for them even to know
his schtick? If you are going to play radical racial humor in the
mass- media, shouldn't you make damned sure that you are tight with all
involved communities first?
Another angle: suppose Imus's humor does have a racist edge to it. Is firing the racist humorist the best way to fight racism, or might it even be counterproductive? Isn't engaging the racist more effective than firing the racist? Compare the policy of shutting up every racist as a way to combat racism to the policy of killing every terrorist as a way to combat terrorism. If the latter doesn't work, why should we expect the former to work? If these policies don't work, why don't they?
Possibly: Compare this to the movie Borat. This movie is definitely
an intentionally over-the-top wildly inaccurate and stereotypical
caricature of Eastern European/Central Asian immigrants. Has it been
complained about? What Imus was doing may have been
similar to Borat: he was engaging in self-deprecating, pseudo-racist
humor, which is intended to make fun of the racist attitude rather
than the alleged target. But this is a very sophisticated brand of
humor. Is it too sophisticated for the mass media? Or is it possible
that this kind of humor actually works in two ways, one good and one
bad, with many missing the deeper level of irony and simply
identifying straightforwardly with the racism being portrayed? If so,
how come Borat seems to have worked? Is it just that the targeted
group in this case lacks a powerful Al-Sharpton-type voice in the community?
