Either the "Free Market" always works itself out, or employers don't have the right to fire employees.
The right wing wants it both ways.


Good riddance, Mush Mouth

CBS and MSNBC dumped Don "Mush Mouth" Imus because neither network could survive airing his show without the ad revenue they'd lose if they did. It wasn't a decision based on morality, or social responsibility. It was based on economics. Simple as that.

Some think Imus has been deprived of his First Amendment rights, but he has not. Remember - civil liberties are freedoms you have that (supposedly) protect you from the government... Imus hasn't been charged with any crime. It's not the government punishing him. It's his employers. And, just as you can't expect the same privacy at your job you can expect in your home (again, supposedly), your freedom of speech at work is trumped by your employer's rights. An employer can levy her or his own rights against you, just as MSNBC and CBS did with MarbleMouth.

If your teenager works in McDonald's, and is fired for telling customers, "Burger King is a lot better than this crap," or, "hey, at least our french fry cooks aren't wetbacks," I doubt you'd get very far trying to recover damages from McDonald's for firing your kid.

This "I-Mess," as Olbermann calls it, serves as a fine example of capitalism at work; it should be embraced by the right wing as such. It was, after all, the market working itself out. Manufacturers and customers are only two components of a market; let us not forget about the employer-employee relationship -- just as much a part of any market as the manufacturer-client relationship.

But the choir of right-wing noise makers have conveniently changed their tune for the moment. Instead of shouting, "the market has again worked itself out," too many of them are singing "hypocrisy! The liberal media are having it both ways!" Imus, they remind us, was only repeating what hip-hop/rap stars say in their music. FOX News, talk radio, and the editorialists of various "news"papers have expressed this sentiment for nearly a week now.

They obviously think the majority of their audience is dumb.

Usually, the right wing wisdom machine (sic) reliably reminds us why a free market is such a grand thing: it's a self-regulating entity. No matter what bumps lie in the proverbial road, the truly free market always "works itself out." This obvious fact is a reliable fall-back for the right.

For instance, if Limbaugh was wrong for asking a black woman to take a bone out of her nose, or for suggesting a Latino runner won a marathon because an immigration official chased him the last ten miles, then, say the neoconanderthals, "the market would've taken care of itself." I.e., either he'd have been fired by an employer fully in its right to dump him, or he'd have eventually lost enough listeners to become nonviable economically. "The market didn't negatively react, his employer didn't fired him, and therefore it was OK." And, technically, they are correct.

Why? Because the free market does always work itself out. Oh, not in a way that preserves (or restores) what most would define as ethical behavior. But in a way that preserves itself.

Which is why an honest FOX News would use this episode to illustrate the virtues of the free market, and then move on.

Wait -- did I just say, "an honest FOX News"??? HA!! I need a minute...

..!..