Posted on 04/12/2007 8:10:58 PM PDT by curtisgardner
Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.
You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.
You’ve given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor.
Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.
The bigots win again.
While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’s or Young Jeezy’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos.
I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don’t have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.
It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.
Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and wait for someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves.
It’s embarrassing. Dave Chappelle was offered $50 million to make racially insensitive jokes about black and white people on TV. He was hailed as a genius. Black comedians routinely crack jokes about white and black people, and we all laugh out loud.
I’m no Don Imus apologist. He and his tiny companion Mike Lupica blasted me after I fell out with ESPN. Imus is a hack.
But, in my view, he didn’t do anything outside the norm for shock jocks and comedians. He also offered an apology. That should’ve been the end of this whole affair. Instead, it’s only the beginning. It’s an opportunity for Stringer, Jackson and Sharpton to step on victim platforms and elevate themselves and their agenda$.
I watched the Rutgers news conference and was ashamed.
Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for eight minutes in 1963 at the March on Washington. At the time, black people could be lynched and denied fundamental rights with little thought. With the comments of a talk-show host most of her players had never heard of before last week serving as her excuse, Vivian Stringer rambled on for 30 minutes about the amazing season her team had.
Somehow, we’re supposed to believe that the comments of a man with virtually no connection to the sports world ruined Rutgers’ wonderful season. Had a broadcaster with credibility and a platform in the sports world uttered the words Imus did, I could understand a level of outrage.
But an hourlong press conference over a man who has already apologized, already been suspended and is already insignificant is just plain intellectually dishonest. This is opportunism. This is a distraction.
In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no threat to black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so destructive and must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about the idiot rappers on BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the country who use words much more powerful and much more destructive?
I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?
When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim.
No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.
Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton.....
Race Hustlers of the first order.
Gotta love that CBS.
They keep Dan Rather, who produces fake news stories to try to swing an election.
They fire a foot-in-mouth shock jock for saying pretty much what he typically says on every show.
Yep.
Wow. An articulate voice of reason. Whoda thunk it?
Bill Cosby is still right, and his ideas are gaining steam.
Not to worry. CIRUS is probably already knocking on his door.
“An articulate voice of reason.”
Almost as articulate as Barack Obama, and just as clean.
Haven’t posted a word about this mess till now, Jason Whitlock is right on!
It is us."
It's not about "heart:"
You just can't play that ol' "victim" card if the fault is your own.
It's just ever so much more satisfying to blame "whitey" for your inability to stop doing drugs, inability to think clearly, inability to speak understandable English.
And if a certain girls' basketball team doesn't want to be called "hos," then maybe they should cut out the gangsta tatoos and stop trying to look like hos.
I may be really reaching on this, but there is one tiny bright side to the firing of Imus.
Jackson seemed all set to start his extortion racket with CBS. You know, that crap about “not having enough black people in high positions, but if you pay me money and hire a couple of people I like, then we can forget about it...”
Well, since CBS fired Imus, they kinda pulled the rug out from Jackson. He doesn’t have Imus as leverage to pull off another blackmail scheme.
I SAID it was a stretch, didn’t I??
SPOT ON.
The divide separating the races in this country IS NOT RACIAL: IT IS CULTURAL! And, with the exception of the guilt riddled liberal, those who respect themselves and their HONORABLE, God honoring traditions and culture are not about to abandon them in order to sink to the level of the culture of the rappers, hip-hoppers and gang-bangers.
If they do, it’s over over here.
Too little, too late. He got fired.
Not that big of a stretch...
Imus’ ratings weren’t all that great, and maybe the execs at CBS figured he wasn’t worth the trouble, and this would be an opportune time to dump Imus anyway....
Could be true.
Personally, I can understand the lower ratings. I’ve tuned in to him maybe twice and I couldn’t understand 2 words out of 5 because he was eating the microphone.
Another thing is that I’ve been hearing about Imus for 20 years, but this week is the first I’ve ever heard him called a “shock jock”. Where the heck did that come from?
When the United House of Prayer, a large black landlord in Harlem, raises the rent on Freddy’s Fashion Mart, Freddy’s white Jewish owner is forced to raise the rent on his subtenant, a black-owned music store. A landlord-tenant dispute ensues; Sharpton uses it to incite racial hatred. “We will not stand by,” he warns malignantly, “and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.” Sharpton’s National Action Network sets up picket lines; customers going into Freddy’s are spat on and cursed as “traitors” and “Uncle Toms.” Some protesters shout, “Burn down the Jew store!” and simulate striking a match. “We’re going to see that this cracker suffers,” says Sharpton’s colleague Morris Powell. On Dec. 8, one of the protesters bursts into Freddy’s, shoots four employees point-blank, then sets the store on fire. Seven employees die in the inferno.
They will continue to win as long as everyone ignores the rotgut being spewed from the rap music community.
I’ve never heard that before either.
He was on the air for awhile where I live. I tried listening a couple of times and didn’t get it either. He didn’t last long in my area.
I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas,
OK,let me say it for ya,THEY’RE GOLD DIGGAS !!!
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