Web 2.0 The Dark Side

Few recent issues have garnered as much press, so quickly as the current Don Imus fiasco, where he hurled a racial insult at the Rutgers women's basketball team in a lame attempt to make a "joke".

There has been a tremendous amount of conversation about this incident - 24 hour cable news coverage on MSNBC (which, until today simulcast his radio show) and of course, CNN. The scene was completed with the usual suspects, Rev Sharpton and Jessie Jackson who immediately lobbied for his dismissal and in my opinion overshadowed the very articulate response from the Rutger's coach and team.

But here's the Dark Side of a participatory web..... just a few minutes ago, I searched Google: Here are the results:

Personalized Results 1 - 10 of about 1,970,000 for "nappy-headed hos". (0.19 seconds

In three days, the racial epitaph has exploded (almost 2 million references) on the web. The anonymity provided by the web allows all sides to be judge and jury, without the scrutiny of personal accountability.

No one is in the middle on this issue. Fire him (the majority) or give him a second (or third or fourth chance depending on who you listen to) seem to define the entire discussion.

The Dark Side of Web 2.0 has amplified the slur and polarized the discussion without providing adequate direction and discussion to address the underlying issues.

I can't help feeling that the entire incident is coated with hypocrisy; whether from the self-righteous bloggers (on both sides), MSNBC who "listened to their internal employees" just as sponsors were pulling their ads, to Rev Sharpton and Jessie Jackson, (who have had more TV airtime in the past 72 hours than the previous 3 months) and who give some Rappers and Comedians within the Black community a free pass to sling the same mud.

If however this incident causes all the media to re-evaluate and enforce their standards of conduct, the FCC to review enforcement of their policies and practices, Rev Sharpton and Jessie Jackson the voice to address racial injustices regardless of their origin, then perhaps it will be an outcome worth talking about.

I'm not holding my breath.

The voices I'm most interested in listening to over the next week are those of the Rutger's women's basketball team.