Ho no

It didn’t take long for the first presidential candidate to get on the censorship bandwagon, and we can thank Don Imus for that. Or maybe Al Sharpton.

Republican presidential nobody Mike Huckabee says that if Imus gets the boot for “offensive comments,” so should everyone else, like Rosie O’Donnell and Bill Maher.

Huckabee didn’t specify exactly what these two said that deserved firing, but it was probably something he didn’t agree with. And of course racist hate speech is the equivalent of someone stating opinions contrary to your own.

This is the hornets nest that Sharpton kicks over when he says that Imus was just “round one” in this crusade and now we should go on a witch hunt to  eradicate all other aspects of “racism and misogyny” in entertainment, art and the media. Starting, presumably with the Old Testament. The problem is that once censorship gets legitimized, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to remain the one who decides what’s acceptable.

As big a pig as Imus is, canning him ultimately will result in three unintended consequences:

1. He will become a martyr, he has in fact already has, for those who think the same way. No doubt he will have a venue on Fox TV before long.

2. It will be open season on free expression. Not just movies, but print, internet, TV, radio will be scrutinized for objectionable material that any opportunistic politician or group can turn to their advantage by condemning.

3. We will never learn the truth about 9/11. But don't get me started on that...

Are they crazy? Do you want the terrorists to win? Don’t they know that the Army has bought a channel on the Global Gaming League website where they can allow access their own top ten ranked game “America’s Army” and others as a means of recruitment. Of course we want impressionable minds to imitate graphic video game violence; somebody’s got to fight the evildoers in Iraq.