Posted on 04/12/2007 10:33:35 PM PDT by jdm
Are we really a better country because, after he was publicly whipped for 10 days as the worst kind of racist, with whom no decent person could associate, he was thrown off the air?Cards on the table.
This writer works for MSNBC, has been on the Imus show scores of times, watches Imus every morning, and likes the show, the music and the guys: the I-Man, Bernie, Charles and Tom Bowman.
And Imus is among the best interviewers in our business. Not only does he read and follow the news closely, he listens and probes as well as any interviewer in America. Because he is a comic, people mistake how good a questioner he is.
Is "Imus in the Morning" outrageous? Over the top at times? Are things said every week, if not every day, where you say, "He's going too far"? Yeah. But outrageousness is part of the show, whether the skits are of "Teddy Kennedy," "Reverend Falwell," "Mayor Nagin" or "The Cardinal."
And when Imus called the Rutgers women's basketball team "tattooed ... nappy-headed ho's," he went over the top. The women deserved an apology. There was no cause, no call to use those terms. As Ann Coulter said, they were not fair game.
But Imus did apologize, again and again and again.
And lest we forget, these are athletes in their prime, the same age as young women in Iraq. They are not 5-year-old girls, and they are capable of brushing off an ignorant comment by a talk-show host who does not know them, or anything about them.
Who, after all, believed the slur was true? No one.
Compare, if you will, what was done to them a single nasty insult to the savage slanders for weeks on end of the Duke lacrosse team and the three players accused by a lying stripper of having gang-raped her at a frat party.
Duke faculty and talking heads took that occasion to vent their venom toward all white "jocks" on college campuses. Where are the demands for apologies from the talk-show hosts, guests, Duke faculty members and smear artists, all of whom bought into the lies about those Duke kids because the lies comported with their hateful view of America?
And hate is what this is all about.
While the remarks of Imus and Bernie about the Rutgers women were indefensible, they were more unthinking and stupid than vicious and malicious. But malice is the right word to describe the howls for their show to be canceled and them to be driven from the airwaves by phonies who endlessly prattle about the First Amendment.
The hypocrisy here was too thick to cut with a chainsaw.
What was the term the I-Man used? It was "ho's," slang for whores, a term employed ad infinitum et ad nauseam by rap and hip-hop "artists." It is a term out of the African-American community. Yet, if any of a hundred rap singers has lost his contract or been driven from the airwaves for using it, maybe someone can tell me about it.
If the word "ho's" is a filthy insult to decent black women, and it is, why are hip-hop artists and rap singers who use it incessantly not pariahs in the black community? Why would black politicians hobnob with them? Why are there no boycotts of the advertisers of the radio stations that play their degrading music?
Answer: The issue here is not the word Imus used. The issue is who Imus is a white man, who used a term about black women only black folks are permitted to use with impunity and immunity.
Whatever Imus' sins, no one deserves to have Al Sharpton hero of the Tawana Brawley hoax, resolute defender of the fake rape charge against half a dozen innocent guys, which ruined lives sit in moral judgment upon them.
"It is our feeling that this is only the beginning. We must have a broad discussion on what is permitted and not permitted in terms of the airwaves," says Sharpton. It says something about America that someone with Al's track record can claim the role of national censor.
Who is next? And why do we take it?
I did a bad thing, but I am not a bad person, says Imus. Indeed, whoever used his microphone to do more good for more people be they the cancer kids of Imus Ranch, the families of Iraq war dead now more justly compensated because of the I-Man or the cause of a cure for autism?
"We know of no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodic fits of morality," said Lord Macaulay. Unfortunately, Macauley never saw the likes of the Revs. Sharpton and Jackson.
Imus threw himself on the mercy of the court of elite opinion and that court, pandering to the mob, lynched him. Yet, for all his sins, he was a better man than the lot of them rejoicing at the foot of the cottonwood tree.
Did a google search and it looks O’Reilly was after him for explicit lyrics.
Personally, I don’t care for Imus’s remarks, but the furor over this seems out of proportion. Also, listen to the original broadcast - someone else in the studio brought up the joke and Imus REPEATED and EXPANDED it after laughing, but was not the originator of the comment.
A second or two before Imus used the phrase “nappy-headed ho’s” another person in the studio used the phrase “hardcore ho’s,” so yes, you’re exactly right.
Nappy headed ho is no worse racial slander than TV dramas showing the majority of murderers in major American cities as white year after year.
There exists in this country vast and growing no-go areas where white people can't even walk in safety. The people who fired Imus don't have anything to say about that.
We've seen an explosion of black on white racist rape over the last half century, the people who fired Imus have remained silent in the face of this racist rape holocaust, thus helping to sponsor it. One could go on and on . . .
:o)))
Was that a tiny bubble?
Exactly. I would have a lot less problem with this if Sharpton and Jackson had made that their case and called for the FCC to review and revoke MSNBCs broadcast license. If they want to make a case against "hate speech," racism and inappropriate language it would have at least had a smidgeon of credibility if they had held up the entire range of filth and biases that MSNBC embodies.
But that couldn't happen because that would encompass filth, lies and prejudice of all types which would mean Sharpton, Jackson et al would have to go too. They are just two more heads on the ugly hydra of anti-American leftism.
It may seem a beautiful irony that there was some leftist cannibalism here but they simply made a dramatic display of trimming a tentacle. That show created a shockwave of fear which they hope will stun the prey they'd really like to kill. Conservative talk radio and FOX News right-wingers.
"It's two a.m. in the morning and it uhh..
Light showers and you're probably hookin up with that girl
That's been, two-wayin you all week. her baby daddy's out
Of town so uhh, you can f#*k around. it's okay to check in
That motel 6. $59.95, not a cent more, for that dirty-ass ho.
Yeah. stop by that convenience store and pick up them rubbers -
Magnum i hope. this is phazon love and uhh, i love hoes.
I just don't pay 'em!"
"Cut up! know we like that, get that cut up
Freaky thangs, we be bout 'em
Get that cut up! oh-whooooooo, cut up
Freaky thangs, we be bout 'em"
Ludacris - Word of Mouf
(Warning: The rest of the lyrics are, more blatantly, XXX)
Ludacris has about six albums worth of songs like this.
Probably 10% are about drugs and/or violence instead of just hoes. It's obvious how much he "loves" black women.
...and therefore needs to get a life.
If he had called Condi Rice a "nappy-headed ho" he would have been universally praised by the left, and offered a raise by his employers.
Thanks for this. I’ve been wondering where was Harold Ford all this time. I-man sure kowtowed to him for months and months ad infinitum . . . Where was Tim Russert? Andrea Mitchell?
First I wish to make it clear that I hold no brief for Don Imus. If Don Imus gets fired the airwaves will be better off for the loss of this vulgarian. The public airwaves are saturated with jocks like him. He attacked young women who were not part of the public discourse for anything other than being great athletes. My concern is with what Crown Heights-Freddie’s Furniture Mart-Tawana Brawley Al Sharpton said as Imus groveled on his show. Al REPEATEDLY said that these statements were made on “FCC REGULATED AIRWAVES”. The stench of the Thought Police immediately filled my nostrils and the prospect of them being unleashed (especially against conservative media venues)by a liberty hating Democrat Congress and speech code liberals concerns me far more than Imus’s remarks, especially in the wake of the veiled threats after the ABC 911 movie controversy..
There is a single factor explanation for this trumped up tempest in a chamber pot orgy of wailing and victimization bathos that is now approaching self-parody. The politically correct and corrupt are divorced from the idea of confronting offensive stupidity with eternal truth and rationality, but prefer to hector with bullying threats, speech codes, and the implied corrective of the re-education camp. The latter is held out as the only approved penance to allow the sinner to reenter polite society. Today offenses against political correctness seem to be the last public sin. No longer do abortion, homosexuality, disloyalty to nation in a time of war, public display of vulgarity of the basest kind (unless aimed at an approved minority ala Imus) count as iniquities to be vigorously condemned. Instead, affronts to self-esteem are the worst sort of tort that CANNOT be tolerated in any context. (As long as you aren’t Christian, male, white or both preferably)
Imus breathes in the same air as the rest of us, air that has been suffused with the smog of cultural decay from innumerable sources, most notably the patois of gansta rap, and he got a contact high from it, and we know how intoxication impairs your judgement. Imus is aware that the American culture is a stew of numerous ethnic influences, and we are generally free to sample from them as we wish. But he ran afoul of the rules established by the Politically Correct multiculturalists, who evermore are establishing a new regime of Balkenazation, not one based on racial segregation and racism, but on racial identity and speech codes. Only the anointed are allowed to sample certain items from that PC menu. Imus was not a made man just because he flashed liberal credentials.
So now we witness an orgy of victimization that negates most of what the young Rutgers women have heretofore personified, succeeding on merit, hard work, and academic and athletic excellence. The exalting of their victimization is singularly unseemly.
Everything that I believe or say arises from my set of core beliefs that remain consistent whether or not white or black conservatives and liberals, libertarians, cultural Marxists, racial identity nationalists, feminists, or trans gendered bisexual dwarves agree or not.
Obama sits like a girl.
Painless Arkancide?
To me, that word was really naughty.
You are absolutely on target.
Having successfully escaped the Academy more than two score years ago with sheepskins in hand, I evaded the more egregious excressences of political correctness. It was there but it was not so blatant.
Consider the remarks of Professor Becky Thompson, head of the women's studies department at Brandeis University-the College named after the first Jew to attain the Supreme Court-who described to a meeting of the American sociological Association her teaching methodology: "I began a course with the basic feminist principle that in a racist, classist and sexist society we have all swallowed oppressive ways of being, whether intentionally or not. Specifically, this means that it is not open to debate whether a white student is racist or a male student is sexist. He/she simply is. Rather, the focus is on the social forces that keep these distortions in place." a history of the American people by Paul Johnson. Page 959.
When I was in college and law school it was considered necessary for the professors to put up a show of earnest debate. Now even the façade has been abandoned. To quote Paul Johnson again:
the worst aspect of PC, critics complained, was not its foolishness but its intolerance, and its tendency to stifle free speech. Thus, a classic statement of PC was the "Policy on Harassment," drawn up by President John Castine of the University of Connecticut and printed in student handbook 1989-90. This urged black, Hispanic, and female students to report all derogatory remarks they heard to the authorities and in order to those administrating the complaints procedure to ' avoid comments that dissuade victims from pursuing their rights since' such behavior is itself discriminatory and a violation of the policy.' Paul Johnson, ibid.
It seems that somebody has stolen respect for reason while I wasn't looking.
To describe this situation as "political correctness" is to mislead by euphemism. I am not a conspiracy bot nor do I wear a tinfoil hat, nevertheless, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we are dealing with a very sinister movement which must be described by its true name: Cultural Marxism. Consider these remarks by William S. Lind:
the totalitarian nature of political correctness can be seen on campuses where "PC" has taken over the College: freedom of speech, of the press, and even a flawed are all eliminated.
the second major parallel is that both cultural Marxism single factor explanations of history. Classical Marxism argues that all of history was determined by ownership of the means of production. Cultural Marxism says that history is wholly explained by which groups-defined by sex, race and sexual normality or abnormality,-have power over which other.
The third parallel is that both varieties of Marxism declare certain groups as virtuous and others evil apiori, that is, without regard for the actual behavior of individuals. Classical Marxism defines workers and peasants as virtuous and the bourgeoisie (the middle-class) and other owners of capital as evil. Political correctness defines blacks, Hispanics , feminist women, homosexuals and some additional minority groups as virtuous and white men as evil. (Political correctness does not recognize the existence of non-feminist women in the finds blacks reject political correctness as whites).Introduction & Chapter 1 - Political Correctness: A Short History of an Ideology Edited by William S. Lind http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005_docs/PC1.pdf
Political Correctness is not at all about "being nice," unless one thinks Gulags are nice places. Political correctness is Marxism with all and implies: Loss of freedom of expression, thought control, inversion of traditional social order and, ultimately, a totalitarian state.Chapter II - The Historical Roots of Political Correctness by Raymond V. Raehn http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005_docs/PC2.pdf
The jigaboo word was used by Imus’s sidekick in that Rutgers discussion. It was used as a reference to a basketball game in a Spike Lee movie, in which one team was called the Jigaboos. The whole thing in context was just silly parody/comedy and a pop culture reference. Problem was with Whitey saying it. Black comics can do their fake white voice all day long and get big laughs with no one complaining. I don’t like Imus or agree with what he said but this double standard crap and hypocrisy has to go. Unfortunately it only gets worse every day in this insane and fading country.
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