"Ms. Ifill: What was missing in this debate was someone saying, “You know, I understand that this is offensive.” ...[P]eople will say, “I didn’t know,” or people will say, “I wasn’t listening.” A lot of people did know, and a lot of people were listening, and they just decided it was OK. They decided this culture of meanness was fine until they got caught. My concern about Mr. Imus and a lot of people and, and a lot of the debate in the society is not that people are sorry that they say these things. They’re sorry that someone catches them. ...David’s right, about the culture of meanness, about the culture of racial complaint, about the internal culture in our community, about the way we talk to one another. But this week, just this week, we finally said “Enough.”"



"Mr. Brooks: The big picture is that cultures are organisms and they change. For a while in our little world of talking heads, we had the world of “Crossfire,” and I think that’s waning. In the movies, we had the “Porky” movies, a lot of boob movies. And that waned as audiences got sick of it. Things come, and then people realize we’re in an environment, it affects us all, we’re all connected by it, and let’s police it, let’s clean up the environment. And I do think this is a big step in a motion of cleaning up a certain sort of a rottenness, and then a new form of rottenness will arise.



Ms. Ifill: You know why the sponsors bailed on Imus? ...Just look at what happened here at NBC. Black officials, black vice presidents, black corporate directors said, “No, this isn’t worth it.” They weren’t there 10 years ago in these companies. So, you know, it all trickles.



Mr. Brooks: I think if you’re Howard Stern or Bill Maher or Glenn Beck or Michael Savage, you have got to watch out. The only caution I’d say, is that there’s comedy. A lot of this is comedy....

Ms. Ifill: Doesn’t comedy have to be funny, David?

Mr. Brooks: Well, it, it tries to be funny.

Mr. Harwood: It’s hard to know where you draw the line in the entertainment realm.

Ms. Ifill: Except that it’s really not hard to know where you draw the line. We know where the offense is. We know what’s acceptable and what’s not, and the best way to dilute the argument in the moment we’re in is to say, “What about this? What about this? What about that?” ...We can say it’s not a big deal because it’s happened all the time or it’s been happening for a long time. It’s precisely because it’s been happening a long time...

Mr. Brooks: Right, I’m not comparing “Borat” to what Don Imus said. What Don Imus said is so obviously over the line that it’s not worth debating. But the hard choices come further in, and “Borat” is a good example. I thought it was a very funny movie, but extremely cruel. He is picking on people who aren’t good on TV or in the movies. And so I think those are the hard cases. And I don’t think it’s unfair to ask the question of this case, of that case, how much of it is just make believe. Human beings are extremely good at separating make believe from reality.

Ms. Ifill: Unless they’re the targets. And when you’re the target, somehow it seems a lot more real.



Mr. Robinson: Part of the reason it hit home so hard was that [the players of the Rutgers basketball team] are the best of our society. We hear so much about dysfunction...[but] there are so many fine young African-Americans who, often despite having had to overcome really difficult circumstances—sometimes not—are doing just great and are going to be the leaders of society in the next few years. And we like to celebrate that. We should celebrate that more.

Mr. Brooks: The paradox, of course, is that the generation under 30 is tremendously wholesome. You look at the crime rates, divorce rates, teen pregnancy rates, they’re all going down, and they’re behaving in that way when the public culture is more rotten than it has been before. And in some ways they’re doing it despite a lot of the stuff they listen to and talk and watch on TV. But it’s the nature of who they are, and that’s the difference between reality and make believe.