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Cowards kick away another piece
of America's soul
KINKY FRIEDMAN
NY
Post
Sunday April 15, 2007
Author, musician and former Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky
Friedman has been friends with Don Imus since 1975, when they met
on stage at The Bottom Line.
I MET Imus on the gangplank of Noah's Ark. He was then and remains
today a truth-seeking missile with the best bull-meter in the business.
Far from being a bully, he was a spiritual chop-buster never afraid
to go after the big guys with nothing but the slingshot of ragged
integrity. I watched him over the years as he struggled with his
demons and conquered them. This was not surprising to me.
Imus came from the Great Southwest, where the men are men and the
emus are nervous. And he did it all with something that seems, indeed,
to be a rather scarce commodity these days. A sense of humor.
There's no excusing Imus' recent ridiculous remark, but there's
something not kosher in America when one guy gets a Grammy and one
gets fired for the same line.
The Matt Lauers and Al Rokers of this world live by the cue-card
and die by the cue-card; Imus is a rare bird, indeed - he works
without a net. When you work without a net as long as Imus has,
sometimes you make mistakes.
Wavy Gravy says he salutes mistakes. They're what makes us human,
he claims. And humanity beyond doubt, is what appears to be missing
from this equation. If we've lost the ability to laugh at ourselves,
to laugh at each other, to laugh together, then the PC world has
succeeded in diminishing us all.
Political correctness, a term first used by Joseph Stalin, has
trivialized, sanitized and homogenized America, transforming us
into a nation of chain establishments and chain people.
Take heart, Imus. You're merely joining a long and legendary laundry
list of individuals who were summarily sacrificed in the name of
society's sanctimonious soul: Socrates, Jesus, Galileo, Joan of
Arc, Mozart and Mark Twain, who was decried as a racist until the
day he died for using the N-word rather prolifically in "Huckleberry
Finn."
Speaking of which, there will always be plenty of Al Sharptons
and Jesse Jacksons around. There will be plenty of cowardly executives,
plenty of fair-weather friends, and plenty of Jehovah's Bystanders,
people who believe in God but just don't want to get involved. In
this crowd, it could be argued that we need a Don Imus just to wake
us up once in a while.
There probably isn't a single one of Imus' vocal critics who come
anywhere close to matching his record of philanthropy or good acts
on this earth.
Judge a man by the size of his enemies, my father used to say.
A man who, year after year, has raised countless millions of dollars
and has fought hand-to-hand to combat against childhood cancer,
autism, and SIDS - well, you've got a rodeo clown who not only rescues
the cowboy, but saves the children as well.
I believe New York will miss its crazy cowboy and America will
miss the voice of a free-thinking independent-minded, rugged individualist.
I believe MSNBC will lose many viewers and CBS radio many listeners.
Too bad for them. That's what happens when you get rid of the only
guy you've got who knows how to ride, shoot straight and tell the
truth.
INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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