The Indelibility of Events

What do you have to do to be called a racist these days?  Shoot Medgar Evers?

                                  --Chris Rock on “Real Time with Bill Maher”

Ding dong, the wicked old witch is dead.  Or something like that.  Of course, the week’s big news is the furor and aftermath that erupted over Don Imus’s remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team. 

Some interesting commentary includes posts from Leon Wynter and Meera Bowman-Johnson, as well as Gwen Ifil’s New York Times Op-Ed piece.

So here is where we get a better sense of the new rules of the road: Not so long ago, a comment like this would’ve come and gone.  Oh, there would’ve been people who were upset by it, no doubt.  But events used to be finite.  Something happened, and then it was over.  You were either there to witness/experience it, or you weren’t.  These days, that’s not the case.  Things happen and, thanks to technology, the event and the experience of it sticks around.  Certainly, interest in a particular subject can keep it popular and in the forefront of people’s minds.  However, fast forward six months, a year or even two years into the future, and if you want to find out what the Imus flap was about, all you have to do is a quick search on YouTube and you’ll be able to watch this video.

Indelibility is upon us.  Just ask Michael Richards.