(HOST) Commentator Willem Lange doesn’t mind change – but he doesn’t much care for erosion.
(LANGE) A man came across a rattlesnake trapped in a rain barrel.
"Pull me out of this water," pleaded the snake, "and I’ll grant you any wish!’
"Nothing doing!" said the man, "You’re a rattlesnake, and you’ll bite me."
"No, I won’t. I promise I’ll grant you a wish."
So the man lifted the snake out. Instantly it sank its fangs into his leg.
"You promised you wouldn’t do that!" protested the man, as the poison spread through his body. "You said you’d give me a wish!"
"Don’t be stupid. I’m a snake. Don’t blame me for biting you. You knew what I was before you picked me up."
I was intrigued by all the attention given Don Imus’ remarks on his radio show earlier this year. Folks from Al Sharpton to Condoleezza Rice to network executives professed themselves shocked and appalled by the epithets he directed at the young ladies of the Rutgers basketball team. But no one used the word, "surprised." Probably because they knew what he was before they tuned in.
Many talk show hosts are like adolescents, constantly pushing against the boundaries of acceptable behavior until they provoke outrage, but not quite enough to get them grounded. Then they tread this no-man’s land, but always with an eye to the next escalation. Radio hosts, of course, have the Federal Communications Commission as a check, but the FCC is often justifiably reluctant to act as a censor. So the radio guys push ever harder, talk a little bluer, and insult a little more harshly, until finally their sponsors disown them.
Imus’ remarks were in very poor taste, but the words themselves were less offensive than those used routinely by hip-hop or gangsta rap artists. Many of his listeners found what he said quite mild and very funny. But his sponsors bailed out, and he left the studio, looking shaken, in a black limousine.
Imus thought he could get away with language like that because he had before, many times. In other words, we had let him. Many of us were unaware of him, or had never heard him. Those who did listen applauded his "speaking truth to authority," as one supporter put it.
But consider how much erosion we’ve allowed in our own speech. How many teachers routinely use "like" as a subordinate conjunction? How many radio announcers have no clue about the difference between "convince" and "persuade"? Does "Honey, I shrunk the kids!" make your teeth grind? Have you heard the word, "whom," lately? It’s now, "Who do you trust?" And poor "only" wanders around in sentences like a child in a fun house, looking for a word to modify properly.
Now, none of this is a big deal. Most of us speak colloquially, and we understand each other. But somewhere down there ought to be a line below which we will not go. If we keep lowering that line, we lower the level of discourse, and implicitly endorse the speech of bottom-feeders. I’d hate to think that Imus is inevitable.
This is Willem Lange up in East Montpelier, and I really should be returning to my labors.