TheGibsonReport.today.com

Since 1984 federal regulators at the FCC have told parents that the best control for avoiding violent TV is to “turn the TV off.” The FCC’s argument for more than two decades has been that broadcast regulation is based upon “the public’s interest” (marketplace model) rather than the original mandate and narrative of “the public interest” (trusteeship model). Without acknowledging that it is now proposing RE-REGULATION,” the FCC is now trying to get away with trying to get Congress to do what the FCC had the mandate to do… before it redefined the situation and deregulated TV in the 1980s.

The memory the FCC lost about regulating in the public interest for the common good can be found in my unpublished dissertation (1995) — Ideological Narratives and The American Airwaves: Reconstituting the Public Interest.

This work tells the story about how regulatory words came to lose their meaning. Now the shift in regulatory metaphors is coming back to haunt a deregulation-driven agency. But with the broadcast playing field finally leveled, I would argue, that the FCC willl put itself out-of-business without help from Congress. In other words, the FCC which has refused to regulate Cable TV (hence, rising rates), now wants to hide behind Congress with warmed-over and out-of-date TV violence proposals.

With a changed telecommunications landscape, however, Congress may well need a new and different kind of telecommunications regulator. Could it be that FCC now stands for “fainthearted changed choices?”

Surprise! You can’t define “excessively violent” TV programming. In fact, neither Congress nor the FCC has the time to play content police. Perhaps, that’s why we hear swear words being bleeped on one channel but heard loudly on another. Furthermore, just think of all the people who will have to be hired just to respond to the thousands of letters the FCC will get about what is “excessively violent” and what is not. Open the can…. and some funny looking regulatory worms are sure to follow. The FCC has yet to explain, for example, why it regulates some of the channels but not others on our TV sets.

There is a simple solution, however. RE-REGULATE TV again with a mandate that says television should be family programming before 10PM on any kind of TV. That will level the playing field for cable and what will soon be, former over-the-air broadcasters. It’s still a well-kept secret that, thanks to the FCC’s selling of the public airwaves in the 1980s and 1990s, the TV sets we have today are going to be obsolete in two years when over-the-air TV signals go digital. That means the public will be forced to pay more to convert or purchase new TV sets.

Talk about a regulatory nightmare! Rather than getting looped into re-defining the regulatory mandate of the FCC, legislators would do well to take an extremely long look at why the FCC is really urging limits on TV violence. To congratulate the FCC, as some legislators in the Senate have, for issuing an out-of-date TV violence report is to keep the game going… that the FCC matters.

It’s obviously a win-win situation for the FCC: legislators will be blamed no matter which way the regulatory wind on TV violence blows. The pivotal first step to avoid repeating the problems caused by TV deregulation is to examine FCC’s dismantling of key regulations that created the environment for “excessive violence” on TV, in the first place.

It’s hard to wrap your mind around the insane violence inflicted on dozens of innocent people on the Virginia Tech campus this week. Having experienced a gunman aiming a gun at a room full of people in Boston when I was a TV news anchor, I know what panic and fear feel and taste like. My heart goes out to families and friends coping with such an intimate tragedy. I also feel a bit of rage and frustration with academic settings that often allow madness to fester. It’s rather frightening to be intimidated by students who make veiled threats when they don’t like the grades they’ve earned. It’s equally unsettling to identify students with obvious mental health problems on a college campus and find institutional practices that prevent taking action. I once had a male student disrupt a class of 75 with his threatening behavior. Fearing for the safety of myself and others, I went through the chain of command letting administrators know about the student. I was told there was nothing that could be done. That of course wasn’t true. Citing the law, the professionals refused to do more; they fell back on 20th century practices rather than thinking outside of the box and creating new ways to handle old problems. At a time when depression and suicides continue to plague college campuses… more innovative approaches must be developed in university settings.

My situation with an obviously troubled student was resolved a month later when he was arrested for having drugs and stealing from others. Contrary to what an editorial in The Washington Post reported on 4-19-07, there are things that can be done on any campus when mental health questions are raised. The problem is that the letter of the law is being followed, but not its spirit.

So we need to treat Seung Hui Cho’s [sung hee JOH] damaging behavior as a wake-up call; we need to ask urgent questions AND we need to be kinder and gentler to each other. What, for example, caused so many teachers during his entire education to just pass him along? How did he get into Virginia Tech with such anti-social skills; how did he get to be a senior? Why isn’t there a clearing house on any campus for team assessments of individuals who pose possible threats to the quality of life of a university community?

The shooter has been repeatedly described as a “loner, anti-social, weird.” What a shame that young college students in his living situation were forced to endure the shooter’s alienating behavior. They were the only individuals to actually seek professional help for a disturbed student. That happened because Virginia Tech, like most universities, didn’t have an adequate mental health safety net. Finally, since the shooter’s Great Aunt in Korea has told the world that Cho was a “cold” child before he was even eight years old, it’s difficult to understand how professionals over a 16 year period didn’t make referrals for mental health care.

As a social psychologist, I have found enough information in the literature that indicates when individuals are “loosely coupled,” they tend to be loners, isolated, withdrawn, and typically angry. Certainly you don’t need a college degree or any kind of professional certification to know that a poor ability to relate to others is a key indicator that something is wrong.

When Cho’s roommates observed that he never went home over breaks, they became concerned enough to call the police. While these students should be applauded for trying to help, they should not have had to endure being around someone who demonstrated a total disregard for other human beings.

Seeing the shooter’s total disconnect with reality in his video, we are forced to wonder how many others like him are roaming our streets, campuses, workplaces, and even, our temples, mosques, and churches.

The Virginia Tech massacre is a serious wake-up call for every state that has cut its mental health budgets and closed its mental health institutions. Shame! We have enough money to fund a billion dollar war but not enough to help our citizens who are in pain? Shame! We have only to look to our prisons and jails to see where so many of the mentally ill and homeless individuals have landed. We need to face the fact that homelessness is a socially constructed phenonmenon. Can we not see, now, what a student killer has shown his family and the nation: the United States of America is in the midst of a serious mental health crisis?

Now is the time to insist that Colleges and Universities stop shutting out parents by insisting that students are their sole customers. Now is the time to stop overloading young college students with massive debt and stop pretending that their parents just want to “hover” when they ask questions about their children. These institutions have created a serious debt problem at the same time that they have made lots of money for loan agencies and debt collectors. The intitutional wagons were circled when Virginia Tech’s president supported his security system before the facts were even investigated. In the end it will be the parents and love ones of the students who will bring about change…

Should Walter Reed Army Medical Center be closed as soon as possible (Washington Post, 4-12-07) as a top level Pentagon review panel has concluded? Absolutely Not!!! Who are these guys? Have they every visited Walter Reed? Are they even aware of the relationships that have been formed over the years between families and the institution? The panel is wrong! I grew up in DC and I know the importance of Walter Reed to the community. My dad had a liver transplant at Walter Reed when he was a Chaplain in World War II. I remember him coming out on a balcony and waving at me and my brother. Over the years, I’ve had many friends who live on three sides of Walter Reed. The Medical Center has been good for the neighborhood and vice versa. The fact that casualties overwhelmed the facility and the staff can be changed with a rearrangement of priorities. Certainly if you want to support a policy to close, realign, and expand the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda… you would not want to make improvements in northwest Washington. But… the patients, the staff, and the neighborhood deserve better. Time for them and us to say, “hell, no… we won’t go!”

Finally… what should have happened last week, happened this week - Don Imus is off the air completely, FOR NOW! But then, I predicted on April 10th that Imus would not be returning to the airwaves. In fact, we should thank Don Imus for being stupid and culturally deprived enough to say things that most Americans just will not tolerate. And for having people around him who couldn’t prop up his better judgment with theirs. In other words, his listeners really do reflect not very silent majority. And that may well demonstrate the growth of this country since the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mrs. Coretta Scott King, and Rosa Parks.

The real value of Don Imus is that he reflects those marginalized men who still believe that white males should rule; history shows it’s their brain damage that assumes that pubic hair is a genuine requirement for being part of the PUBLIC! I’ve long had experience of white men who live in different time zoneS. As a young reporter in Boston in the late 1970s, I watched Jimmy the Greek attempt to demean me when he told a white male assistant that the question I had just asked him was “stupid.” His obvious sneer of disdain IN FRONT OF ME… was the same as saying I was a “nappy hair ho.” I never told anyone about his bad behavior; I knew it was not just my race that caused a big, ugly, overweight, white male, full of righteousness and food stains, to believe he was superior to me. I just did my job and filed my six o’clock TV report. The fact that Imus never “got it” (that he was offensive) also shows the extent to which time has passed him by and the extent to which a priviledged environment can hurt.

But I can assure you that after he met with the coach and women of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team at the governor’s mansion in New Jersey on a Thursday night… he will never be the same ! In spite of what he claimed to the contrary, I have absolutely no doubt that one DON IMUS had a “coming to Jesus moment.” You see, when you are not exposed to people who are different from you, as Dr. King observed, you are at a tremendously disadvantaged. So I am encouraged to see that this is not really a black or white issues, a male or female issue, but an issue of being human in a civilized society.

Imus and his studio producer “pre-judged” some extrordinary women… and that is the very definition of prejudice. Yet, contrary to the claims of Al Sharpton, the Imus remarks were not really about what was said on the airwaves BUT what a stupid individual said in the 21st century about some young ladies who really symbolize the American dream. It would have been just as wrong if Imus had made the same remarks to a bunch of print reporters. Moreover, the very fact that no one in the Imus circle censored the remarks about “hardcore ho’s” or any of his past repugnant remarks that denigrated women… is revealing. Imus AND HIS suporters just didn’t get it - the times have changed.

So thank you Don Imus for being the one to raise the awareness of America, again, that times have indeed really changed; make no mistake, he will continue to have supporters among the uneducated or conservative audience members, regardless of color or gender. Perhaps, the good thing about Don Imus’ behavior is that he has brought more attention to the fact that BET, Russel Simons, Nelly, Snoop Doog, and others continue to sell out the Black community with videos that degrade young women of color… while making millionaires of Hip Hop artists. It’s time to tell those young stupid Black males who are so dirty between their legs that they can’t pull up their pants… that it is time to stop imitating loser jail behavior. So let’s start the healing by forgiving DON IMUS, applauding CBS (formerly Westwood One); NBC for finally realizing that the times have changed. Let’s, instead, demand an end to the garbage that comes from Black and White music producers. And let’s ask why only Cal Ripkin initially “got it” and refused to appear on Imus In the Morning. In fact, why did feminists, churches, and John McCain not get the bigger picture and respond quicker to remind Imus that he was out of sync with American values.

Under what conditions does Don Imus does deserve another chance?

He blew the privileged he had; he really didn’t get what it meant to share power. Until he met with the young ladies of the Rutgers team, Don Imus had no clue that he was profoundly wrong. But then, most African-American have been progressing inspite of the short-comings of those who still have a slavery mentality.

It’s easy to predict that Don Imus will be back on the airwaves in less than a year because some station somewhere will hire him because he has a well-known name and an audience that listen to him because they admire what he did when he degrated two categories: women and Blacks. Believe me, someone will want to make money off of him. But you can count on Don Imus never again having the impact he once had - he’s been transformed and that may not be good for radio.

Thanks for healing, Don!

The question is not should Don Imus quit… but when? The question is not should complaints be filed with the Federal Communications Commission… but why? And, the question is not should Don Imus be fired… but how has he lasted so long?  The answers are:  Immediately, the FCC is an impotent institution and needs to be replaced, and preaching to the choir.   Because profits come before principles, I would predict that Imus will be gone by May 1, 2007. The fact that he was neither fired nor suspended immediately, indicates that the wagons are being circled; he’ll be eased out the door with a hefty severence pay and pension package. At 66 and already in the NBC Hall of Fame, now may be a good time for Imus to start blogging. The other reason Imus is a goner is because his preaching to the choir has attracted the attention of others with money who don’t agree with him.

As a recovering alcoholic and cocain abuser, Imus has always lacked a three-second delay mechanism on his mouth. Of course, he’s sorry when he is called on his politically incorrect behavior. The problem is that absent a three-second delay brain, Imus will periodically forget and repeat what he hears around his water cooler, as reality.  He didn’t make up the notion of “nappy-headed hos.” Imus surely heard it from someone of power that he admires.  As a loose-cannon he has to go when he begins to substantially affect the bottom line of his admirers or their reputation. 

So, it would be wiser for the reverends -  Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, who both have had experience with the power of redemption - to develop some newer tactics. Instead of protesting a lone AM radio station in New York or complaining to the FCC, they would do well to carry protest letters and demands higher up the food chain - Westwood One & MSNBC Headquarters; Black advertisers, churches, greek organizations, universities, White advertisers who depend upon diversity and goodwill.  It should not be forgotten there are some business-as-usual reasons why Imus was not immediately publicly disciplined and why his apology was conspicuously delayed: his closest friends are not Black and do not represent a wide spectrum of opinions.  That is to say, he didn’t immediately hear rage from Chris Rock, Oprah, Senators Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, Bill O’Reilly, Tavis Smiley, our watchdog agency - the FCC, the academic communities’ women studies programs, you or me.  We obviously were not in his choir of appreciative listeners. But some did respond for us - Essence Magazine, the National Association of Black Journalists, a Daily News columnist, the reverends - and they should be commended.

But it is Al Sharpton’s warning that he is going to write the FCC that is equally distrubing.  It only takes a quick read of an unpublished University of Michigan dissertation (Ideological Narratives and the American Airwaves: Reconstructing the Public Interest Concept, 1995) to see that the FCC is more the problem than the solution. As the author, I established that the FCC changed its mandate when it redefined the public interest concept and decided in 1984 that “the public’s interest,” that is to say, the marketplace should determine television standards. Since the mid-1980s, the FCC has not operated under the belief that broadcasters must provide programming that is in ”the public interest” or for the common good. That is why CBS and other stations never should have been fined for the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction. It didn’t make sense because most people who claimed they saw and/or were offended by the incident really didn’t see it on over-the-air broadcast stations but on cable television. Since the FCC does not regulate the content of cable television, how did it get away with regulating some of the channels on cable TV. Unfortunately Rev. Sharpton assumes, like even most members of Congress, that the FCC is continuing to carry out a mandate that would prohibit the airwaves being used for sexist and racist remarks. Deregulation killed that narrative; an uneven regulatory playing field makes it unlikely the FCC will do anything.  Where was FCC action when Imus called a PBS journalism - “a cleaning lady?” It is paradoxical that the FCC which goes through the motion of licensing TV stations makes cable TV watchers experience words being excessively bleeped on one channel while being clearly and frequently heard on the next or near-by channel.

Rev. Al Sharpton would thus do well to lead the push to dismantle the FCC  and encourage those who believe in a diverse society to speak out when the free speech rights of one or some pounce on the free speech rights of others. Don Imus’ behavior is thus an important and a timely reminder that we do not live yet in a color-blind society, that some individuals still believe in white and/or male supremacy, and that hatred is the kind of addiction that is rarely found separate from other kinds of addictions.  For this reason, the issue is not whether the Rutgers University women’s basketball team will accept the apology of Don Imus.  Of course, he is humiliated he was caught or called on his remarks. But all Imus can say as he collects his weekly pay check before being suspended next week on April 16th is, “I’m sorry.”

The women on the Rutgers basketball team and the rest of us will ultimately forgive and move on.  But we will never forget that Don Imus has demons that keep him from being a happier individual.