John Mayer Comments On Imus, Opie & Anthony

In a posting at his official web site’s blog on Wednesday (May 16), John Mayer shared his thoughts on the firing of Don Imus and the XM suspension of Opie and Anthony over controversial remarks from the respective radio shock jocks. “In the case of Opie and Anthony, and yes, even Don Imus, they were hired and respected for their ability to stare the dealer in the eye and hit on their 16 against an ace,” he writes. “When they drew a five, they were revered for their gambling acumen. But when they busted, as anyone in the ongoing gamble of speaking freely (now semantically different than ‘free speech’) does from time to time, they were asked to hand in their player’s cards and escorted to their vehicles. I believe that free speech protects not what has already been spoken, but what has yet to be said. Sure, once a sentence is constructed, the words can be determined to be either winning or losing, as are the cards in the discard pile. Except instead of obeying a static rule, society is left to sift through the played cards and argue what should beat the dealer, when we should have hit and stood, and just what the hell we were doing that night in Vegas in the first place. It seems to me that in this gamble, we should change either the odds or the payout.”