What do we value most? Certainly not the unborn, or even marriage. We value things more than people, unless they are celebrities who live in multi-million dollar houses or celebrities who earn multi-million dollar salaries.
Remember Don Imus, the so-called “shock jock” who was fired by CBS for making a racially disparaging remark about the mostly black Rutgers women’s basketball team? CBS has now reached a contract settlement with Imus and will pay him $20 million. He is now free to work for someone else and earn more millions so long as he doesn’t disparage CBS.
I would agree not to say anything bad about any network if they’d pay me $20 million, but then I don’t do trash talk. There’s my problem.
We pay for the base and tawdry and are then surprised to find more of that behavior. If you get what you pay for, we are getting a lot of really bad merchandise. But you don’t have to pay for it. You can turn it off, or get rid of the device that brings it to you.
Twenty million dollars in hush money for Don Imus is appalling, but then so is he.
Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C.
