The Don Imus debacle just gets worse. For years he has been the biggest purveyor of racist hate speech on the air waves. He is also very powerful, so even prominent liberals like Frank Rich will bow and scrape in order to stay in the very lucrative Imus circle.
After describing the Rutgers University women’s basketball team as “nappy headed ho’s” he first apologized and then had a two hour long come to Jesus meeting on Al Sharpton’s radio show. He was still slapped with a two week suspension. Clearly his bosses were not amused by his comments and were not impressed with his contrition. Thank God for small favors.
Now the truth is coming out. Don Imus is popular because he is so hateful. Like Howard Stern, he has a large white, male audience because he gets away with making the racist, misogynistic statements they wish they could get away with saying. It is at the very least impolite to call anyone a “ho” or to talk about a former first couple as “Bill Clinton and his fat ugly wife, Satan.”
Now the apologists are coming out of the wood work and some of them are black. Congressman Keith Ellison says that black people should think of “redemption and reconciliation” if Imus is truly contrite. Gwen Ifill, host of Washington Week on PBS, was herself a victim of Imus’ bigotry when he called her a “cleaning lady.” She criticized Imus, but in a strangely detached way. In a New York Times op-ed she asked, “Why do my journalistic colleagues appear on Mr. Imus’s program? That’s for them to defend, and others to argue about.”
Ifill knows the real deal. Don’t complain too much about powerful white men. They can do what they want, including insult and offend, with impunity. Why shouldn’t she ask about her colleagues who sully themselves to suck up to this misogynistic bigot? Ifill certainly knows her bread is buttered with the corporate media and that she had better not step out of line if she wants the spread to stay on the loaf.
Here is a good rule for everyone to follow. Don’t trust anyone who apologizes for Imus. They are all believers in white male supremacy, whether they admit it or not.
Read the whole thing. “Enabling Imus” is also good, same article is also here.
I look at those girls’ faces and want so bad for Imus to get exactly, precisely everything that is coming to him doubled and tripled. What an irredeemable ass.
Heart
Clearly his bosses were not amused by his comments and were not impressed with his contrition. Thank God for small favors.
Bullshyt. His bosses could have care less. They only became “un-amused” when places like media matters and others started complaining to the point it was causing problems with sponsers. They were his enablers all along. I hate this technique of trying to act like Imus is an island. He has been able to survive exactly because of this:
“he has a large white, male audience because he gets away with making the racist, misogynistic statements they wish they could get away with saying. ”
And as bad as the “nappy-headed” part is/was, I am sure the “ho” part would have went unchecked if it stood alone.
Yeah, cm, I think Freedom Rider was being sarcastic with that “Thank God for small favors.”
It makes me ILL. Me, the pacifist, wants to start knocking heads together.
Heart
I think we should all throw out our television sets. I’m not outraged at Imus, becaues it’s typical of shock jock behavior.
I’m outraged that people continue to let themselves be used as tools by cable TV and corporate media.
Everyone is rushing around and googling Don Imus, pushing his profile higher, but its not Imus that is the issue it is his bosses. It is this culture of as long as it get ratings and catering to the lowest common denominator of society and that’s what the corporate media does.
It distracts people from talking about the real issues like how we’re all going to die if we don’t stop polluting and how the US tried to get that toned down in the report. To me that’s what we should be talking about right now, but we’re not, because we’re talking about this idiot and the idiots that are his bosses.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/06/AR2007040600291.html?hpid=topnews?hpid=topnews
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc/regional/index.htm
I wonder is there a connection in that…
Lo
There is an element to the media deciding what topic and when that said topic is discussed. To me the scary part is after the topic is beaten to a pulp there will be a mainstream sentiment that the problem is solved because that topic was covered already. Old hat and all that jazz.
I was appalled when I heard about what he had said – more appalled when I found out people didn’t think it was a big deal. I don’t listen to Don Imus, never have, and more than likely never will, but I know that Opie & Anthony of XM Satellite fame like him, and that’s enough to let me know there’s something wrong with him.
i love how kia vaughn, one of the rutgers players, responded to imus’ comment:
“I achieve a lot, and unless they have given this name of ‘ho’ a new definition, then that is not what I am.”
such a beautiful, strong statement. brava, i say.
That should finish his career if I could have any say in the matter! It is beyond infuriating that his ilk get so supported, fawned over, yadda yadda.
I particularly can’t believe Keith Ellison’s remarks.
GAH!! Sorry, no eloquence here, just sputtering rage…
Sure guys like this are hired to do what they do. No question. Controversy, what they’re getting away with is what sells publications who employ columnists like him, and what sells ads for radio and tv shows like Imus’s. Whom I’ve never heard of by the way. Oooh sorry guy.
I gave up tv long ago, 11 years now, and never listen to commercial radio. Recently I visited a home which had over 80 channels, and a wall sized tv. I could not find a damn thing I wanted to watch. I believe I spent 25 minutes one night flipping through trying to find something. Nada.
The more people like him are tuned out, and the advertisers who back his show hear from angry consumers who tell them they refuse to buy their product, the sooner he’ll be gone.
OT, but the Duke Lacrosse Players have been declared ‘innocent’ by the Attorney General of last year’s rape of Crystal Mangum.
It’s a good day to be a wealthy little white boy. I can’t see their smug, cleanshaven faces without wanting to stab them through the eyes, and I already got into one argument with a family member about this.
Crystal Mangum wanted to go forward with the charges. She wanted to take it to court. That tells me that she was serious about the accusation.
Sorry. Needed to vent.
Imus is going to pay:
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/ustv/a45114/msnbc-drops-don-imus.html
There are no words for the level of sadness and frustration that I feel. How do people sleep at night with that much hate inside them?
ACK!
Hmmm. Turnabout is fair-play:
Imus makes male chimpanzees look cultured. Obviously, the reason why he is such a testosterone-shrew is that he and his hairy-palmed right hand have broken up. If he took care of his skanky-looking body better and maintained his spinal flexibility, he could just bend over and suck on his own dick, which would be an appropriate use of his oral skills, and I’m sure he’d be happier as well as a lot less hormonal. I think however, that there is a distinct chance of his sad little sausage scuttling right into his abdominal cavity when it gets a look at that gnarly grimace headed for it– he needs at least a half-dozen face-lifts to even begin to pass for human. Butt-implants and a new wardrobe wouldn’t hurt, either. Since he has given up thinking and is settling for being a tinker-tool, he needs to start working on his looks. I suggest he starts with a flea-dip, deodorant, clean underwear and lots of periodontal work. Then, as soon as he’s presentable, he can hustle his punk little ass up to the bar, and bring the Rutgers Women their beer.
Ah, Free Speech…
HA!! 😀
It is interesting, really interesting, turning the tables on these guys rhetorically, doing to them the rough equivalent of what they do to us. How would it fly if we did, said, what they do and say to us all of the time?
Heart
Nappy headed ho’s? And who does he imagine himself to be? The cracker pimp who gets to sell us all?
Game over, Imus. There will be no overtime.
http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=33WrC5z0l7Odu0NNaZIFQeoAEsWvv2tq
It hasn’t escaped my attention that similar remarks haven’t been made about men’s/boys’ college sports teams even though many of those players are also black. Separatists can say what they want to say but the truth is that even racial remarks are okay just so long as they’re said about women and not men.
It hasn’t escaped my attention that similar remarks haven’t been made about men’s/boys’ college sports teams even though many of those players are also black.
Well, I don’t know about college, but the NFL sure didn’t find anything to smile about when Jimmy-the-Greek, NFL tv sports commentor, made racist remarks about the black players’ physiques being a result of their great slave breeding. They fired his sorry ass. Oops, Jimmy, guess people didn’t find it oh so great.
http://www.hollywood.com/news/Snoop_Dogg_Rappers_Hos_Are_Different/3679198
So Snoop says that rappers are different. Lets connect the dots…Snoop MSNBC is owned by NBC and Universal and Snoop is on what record label, oh Universal….oh ok, so what he says means what…How long people are you going to keep watching corporate crap? How long are we all going to be tools to these assholes?
Lo
Excellent post and links – thanks – Z
Glad to bring a smile to you, Heart!
I see doing ‘turnabout’ things as serious Heyoka Magick: when taken-for-granted ‘truths’ are reversed via the Sacred Trickster-energy, it is really easy to see both the inequity in certain things as well as how that inequity is enforced. This is why xtianity is so quick to demonize the Sacred Contrary as ‘Satan’– the male hierarchy running the show does NOT want the basic inequity of their religion pointed out by the inversion-joking and gender-bending of Heyokas holding up a Trickster-mirror to what they are doing.
As far as actions go, I think hordes of secretaries ought to band together on their lunch hour, go to construction sites, and whistle and yell obscene anatomical comments at the workers. Undoubtedly, the police would soon be called, which would clearly point up the inequity: men have harrassment protection and privileges in everyday life, but Women don’t. If any of the men even think to ask why the Women did this, the response could be, ‘Well, you know– girls will be girls…’
I also read Lo’s link to the ‘Snoop’s Ho’s’ article above, and I have to say that corporate sponsorship of rap strikes me as a white slave-owners’ distraction-measure: make sure that when black men lash out, they do it in a ‘safe’ direction, i.e., at Black Women and not at white men. More ‘divide and conquer’ is the way I see it, and Snoop is part of the problem. He needs a dose of Heyoka-wisdom: trick him up, pimp him out, and let him walk a mile in the moccasins of all those ‘b*tch ho’s’ he complains about. Then he’d *really* see what the word ‘abuse’ entails.
Another thing that the above issue brings up is the inequity between men and Women when it comes to the Arts. How is it that the most puerile ravings of men are automatically ‘great poetry’, ‘serious music’, ‘true fine art’, ‘profound’, while Women still have to deal with labels like ‘Women Poets’, ‘Female Rock-Stars’ and ‘Feminist Artists’? I’m sorry, but the default setting for ‘creativity’ is not ‘male creativity’, and I long to see Women do a ‘creative Heyoka’ thing in the arts, and fetishize male subjects in photos, paintings and poetry in the same way that Women themselves have been. I see this as an area where Women could do some serious Heyoka-Work without facing immediate jail-time for ‘harrassing the massa’…
Imus has been fired by CBS:
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/202512
I suppose that it’s not terribly surprising that a white, male “shock” jock would say something like this, but it seems especially cruel. I mean, you’ve got the Rutgers’ women’s team, who just kicked some serious ass in the NCAA tournament, and despite not winning it all were probably on a serious emotional high, and all Don Imus has to say about them is that he thinks they’re “nappy headed hos?” What a dick. Like, even by the racist and sexist standards of shock jocks, that’s a real dick move.
I wonder how Imus managed to convince the Rutgers team he was really sorry. I doubt that. He is probably sorry that he lost his cushy job, but the coach C. Vivian Stringer seems to think he deserves a chance to move on, whatever that means.
She also said, “These comments are indicative of greater ills in our culture. It is not just Mr. Imus, and we hope that this will be and serve as a catalyst for change. Let us continue to work hard together to make this world a better place.” I agree with that.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4712862.html
Barbara Ehrenreich has some good things to say. Try to avoid the comments though, unless you are feeling particularly masochistic. Argh. Why do feminists allow these idiotic white male supremacist comments through? They are EVERYWHERE, why are they allowed on feminist blogs?
http://ehrenreich.blogs.com/barbaras_blog/2007/04/nappyheaded_hos.html
Heart
Robin Morgan: Beyond Imus — It’s the Hypocrisy, Stupid!
April 16
http://www.womensmediacenter.com/Daily_Exclusives2.html
Heart