More Contemptuous Statements

Dr. John Gottman has researched the relational health of couples for the last quarter century. One of the things he discovered was a very strong correlation between the ways lovers or former lovers speak to one another and their stability as a couple. When Dr. Gottman sees a high level of Criticism and Contempt occurring in a relationship he predicts their divorce.

As I noted yesterday, Death or life are in the way we use our tongue. The remarks of Don Imus about the fine young student athletes on the Rutgers' Women's Basketball Team were both Contemptuous of these young people as well as disrespectful to their gender and race. The comments ended in the divorce of Imus from the radio and TV networks. He was fired.

The Imus scandal along with the scandal of the Duke University students being railroaded by the District Attorney in Raleigh, N.C. have provided the public with a great opportunity to see how disciplined and honest the talking heads of various news divisions can be in reporting these two different but related by race and scandal.

Many commentators are pulling out all the stops to assail various persons other than the ones who are guilty. For example, Keith Olberman of MS NBC railed against Rush Limbaugh but I cannot figure out how he was involved in either of these matters. Maybe Olberman is just mad at Rush and is looking for an excuse to slander him.

But Terry Moran Terry Moran of ABC News seems to have really lost control of his mouth. He actually attacked the Duke students again, adding insult to injury. He lectured his audience to pay attention to:

Let us also remember a few other things:
They were part of a team that collected $800 to purchase the time of two strippers.
Their team specifically requested at least one white stripper.
During the incident, racial epithets were hurled at the strippers.
Colin Finnerty was charged with assault in Washington, DC, in 2005.
The young men were able to retain a battery of top-flight attorneys, investigators and media strategists.

Moran went on the accuse the students of "Guilt by class:"

As students of Duke University or other elite institutions, these young men will get on with their privileged lives. There is a very large cushion under them--the one that softens the blows of life for most of those who go to Duke or similar places, and have connections through family, friends and school to all kinds of prospects for success. They are very differently situated in life from, say, the young women of the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

The disrespect Moran showed the Duke students is matched by the contempt he shows for the Rutgers women. He assumes that all women of African American descent must be poor, unconnected, ignorant and certain to fail in life. What an slur.

The women I saw and heard on TV were smart, well spoken, articulate and thoughtful. They were not obviously poor ghetto girls from a life of chronic poverty as Mr. Moran seems to assume. They did every bit as well as the Duke students but Moran thinks otherwise, perhaps because these Black women could not make it in college otherwise. And, Moran slurs Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Rutgers is a fine school with a wonderful representation.

Moran also seems to say that wealthy or well connected students who are wrongfully arrested, shamed and forced to spend many thousands of dollars on legal fees suffer less pain than a Black woman. By that reckoning, we ought not arrest pedophiles who accost children from Middle Class homes.

I am not at all sure why some reporters and public figures need to denigrate families that have done well and are trying to give their kids a chance for a good education. Why is class warfare rhetoric acceptable to the American public?

Being arrested, railroaded and called awful names is a terrible trauma for anyone, rich, poor or middle class. There was as much death in the way the President of Duke treated the students from his own school as there was to the students who were verbally accosted by Don Imus. The teachers at Duke who wrote, marched and went on TV to denounce the students as rapists, goons and spoiled rich kids need to be held accountable just as Imus was. The pain they caused will pass away but there needs to be some way to remind them not to do it again.

Death and Life are in the power of the tongue!