Dear Talk of the Nation,

Anybody passing within 30 feet of a news outlet in the last few days has heard of Charles Ramsey, the fellow who helped rescue those 3 kidnapped women held in Cleveland for ten years. It's a pretty grim story, more so as news comes out. One bright spot, in addition to his heroism, willingly entering what he thought was a domestic dispute situation, notoriously dangerous even to cops, is his colorful language. His 911 call has to be bleeped in order to air on radio or TV. His use of language when speaking to reporters can be amusing - and telling - as well. Auto Tune has even given it a soundtrack and made it an instant hit.

This apparently bothers some people. How they addressed it on today's first hour of Talk of the Nation annoys me. Now, trying to be fair, they only had the last 10 minutes or so of the program to address it. Perhaps they could have said something better given more time. I doubt it, however. I think they were quite clear in their point. That's the part that bugs me.

They worried that due to race and lower socio-economic status, the colorful language and direct speech are entertaining the rest of us for all the wrong reasons. Apparently (I'm culturally deprived here, so this is news to me) this is the 4th such episode of taking someone's colorful words and turning them into entertainment. "Worse", the other three times the people happen to also be black. I guess this means there is no good way to find them entertaining. So shame on all of us.

The rest of the show was spent telling us that they also listened to Mr. Ramsey. They also laughed. And here's (rest of the show) why they were so much more morally superior to the rest of us for doing the same things we did. All I got from it was they knew they were noble and assumed we weren't.

So what am I missing here?