MONEY TALKS The essay All About The Money continues to resonate with a nigh irresistible force. MSNBC's decision to drop the Imus in the Morning simulcast is a case in point. The bottom line is the bottom line. It is indeed all about the money. The executives at MSNBC couldn't care less about racial sensitivities, per se. They wouldn't be executives if they concerned themselves with such matters. The decisions of GM and American Express to withdraw their advertising support of the show (to take away the money) made the decision a no-brainer. Henry has already said as much (What's Wrong With This Country), but the issue is so disturbing that I feel compelled to underscore its significance. The Marketplace (with a capital M) is indeed running the country. Money talks, as the saying has it. Ideologies be damned. No one really cares about such pristine notions, not really. The African American community is not persuading anyone to do anything on the basis of an ideology. Its persuasive successes are all monetarily based. They threaten boycotts of products and services if their perceptions of being offended are not properly assuaged. And their proprietary sensibilities on the matter stem from the same place that all sensibilities proceed from, their personal feelings. There really is no ideology spurring them, as much as their words would try to convince us otherwise. Feelings are their real driving force. They feel offended, used, misused and abused. And why do they feel this way? Because they believe that they are equal with white people but are not being treated as such. They are greatly mistaken on this score. From a purely natural perspective all people are indeed equal. Their is a common humanity that courses through all our veins, no matter what color we are. The very fact that all the so-called races may successfully procreate with each other is all the proof we need for the support of this opinion. But from a purely social stance, all people are anything but equal. Apparently African Americans and Anglo Americans are not equal in terms of word usage. As I pointed out in Offensive Words, African Americans are susceptible to the poisonous barbs of certain words in a way that Anglo Americans are not. Whether we like to face it or not, this is indeed an inequality. Why is it that Anglo Americans (especially the males) are virtually impervious to verbal insults as a class? The sub-class of females (within the Anglo American class) is not as impervious as the males, to be sure (being yet sensitive to the same sexual language as all other females of any race), but they are equally insensitive to any sort of racial epithets that any other racial group might care to devise and throw at them. Why is this? We may never know. The answer may lie in factors that are nothing more than historical. But whatever the reasons, the fact remains that African Americans are using the power of the Marketplace to - at very least - water down some privileges that even they enjoy. I refer to the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression. The ruling coming from The Marketplace speaks loud and clear: watch what you say. If this is not a form of deleteriously compromising the First Amendment, I would like to hear the argument for such a position.
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