This is not about Don Imus

I promised not a word about Don Imus, so let’s say this is a word or two about democracy. Because what’s most depressing about the latest ritual of public humiliation is how irrelevant and inconsequential it is; how it is conducted at a level of incomprehension and obfuscation that’s perfectly attuned to the new American social order. Is he racist, isn’t he? Should he be fired, shouldn’t he? Does he do good works, doesn’t he? Did he really apologize, didn’t he? None of that comes close to touching the basic question.

That question is, how can it be, in a so-called democracy, that one man or putting them all together a small group of men get paid millions of dollars to monopolize the airwaves with their own opinions and prevent 99+% of the population from expressing theirs? This incredibly closed system of public communications is perfectly designed for an authoritarian state, the state of Caesar, of Bonaparte, of Peron, of Berlusconi, of Putin. It is a system designed to prevent democracy from happening and–in combination with various other aspects of the American polity that we need not go into here–that is exactly what it does.

Whoever you are, reading this, there is not one articulable reason in the world why Don Imus should have five minutes more of access to public space than you should; some of you in fact deserve a good bit more (I won’t name names). Democracy is a political system in which public policies are adopted and public leaders chosen by a majority (with the usual qualifications for a constitutional democracy), after full and free public discussion of all the available options. No free discussion, no democracy. In the name of “the free market” we destroy public freedom.

Someone will say something about “the people.” Please don’t do that within my hearing. What’s that got to do with anything? We’re not choosing someone to sing the national anthem at half-time, or casting a movie. If your opinions are so wonderful, write a book and let Amazon sell it, and anyone who wants to can buy it. And anyone else can write their own to answer you. But not if Fox or Clear Channels or CBS or whoever gives you the right–that is, the arbitrary power–to take over public space that they are (or should be) allowed to own only because they are providing a “public service.” They provide rather a fundamental disservice, as they prevent public discourse from happening and so clear the way for authoritarianism and oligarchy.

As Marx might have said (I’m sure he did, I just can’t find the citation), “Don Imus is not an evil man;” he is just one minor personification in the vast panoply of monopolized public life that represents capital’s insatiable drive, and its unchecked power, to reproduce and increase itself, and above all, to reproduce the social conditions of its own reproduction. Somewhere the god of Capital is chuckling at the spectacle of Leslie Moonves, through whom it really works its will, self-righteously condemning Don Imus, about whose nonsense it couldn’t care less.