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.
“Why does everyone hate Pat ?”....perhaps because, no matter how often his “betters” smear, tar and feather, and attempt to lynch him he rightly or wrongly; according to ones perspective; grins, laughs and continues persuasively to speak his own mind.
I agree wholeheartedly. MSNBC should change its logo to HSAL — Hate Speech and Lies — that is all they have on the air from start to finish. CHris Matthews is a flat out liar, and his key “reporter” David Schuster has been caught in so many lies its incredible. The olberidiot is just that — an idiot who spews nothing but propaganda and hate from start to finish on his one hour show. MSNBC allows Fat Dim Russert on the air, the man who filed a false affidavit in the Libby case, with the knowledge of yet another rogue prosecutor (Fitzy).
The whole MSNBC agenda is hate speech; they whole channel should be canned, and everyone on it should be fired.
I think Buchanan has it wrong.The word that got him fired was probably “nappy”.That was the racist insult I think that upset the black people.
I think sending Imus to atone at the Governors mansion is hypocritical.Black people should be protesting in front of Russel Simmons mansion for putting on those vile videos and rap songs in the first place.
If I am ever accused of racism, please ask Pat Buchanan NOT to defend me.
Pat Buchanan gets it. He was always a great guest on the program.
I continue to wonder also.
“While I view at least half of everyone as idiots and/or knaves, here’s the image of blacks that blacks communicate to the world:
(1) Watts riots.
(2) Rodney King riots.
(3) In Wash D.C. the black mayor (M.B. was it?) was corrupt enough to manage to get himself put in jail. Yet, upon release, he was voted back in by the black populace.
(4) That blacks vote about 90% for Dems, almost in lockstep.
(5) That in Africa today, there is not one modern democracy or otherwise non-corrupt government in any black run country.”
Don’t forget that mess in New Orleans and all the race hustlers who defended the incompetence of the leadership and the actions of the ungovernable criminal element that took over the city after Katrina.
There are so many good people in the black community, it just makes me ill to see them ignored and these kinds of circumstances held up as honorable.
I’ve always considered Imus to be a self-serving, tasteless, blowhard, however, his comments were entirely within the context of the character that he has nurtured for years. This attack by Sharpton and Jesse is also in character with their own agendas. I don’t actually believe Imus to be a racist, he selected words that he thought the audience wanted to hear and was lynched for it.
I think he got a raw deal.
The media should embrace him again and see Sharpton and Jackson for what they actually are, opportunistic racists and hate-mongers who are still living in the 50s and 60s.
Doogle
I can agree with that.
My interests turn to people who comment and add substantive thought and content to the issues. In doing so, they put themselves out there and are easy targets for criticism and derision because none of us agrees with everything anyone says. But, people like Buchanan need to be recognized and respected, even though we may not always agree with them. For without commentators like Buchanan, Coulter, Boortz, Rosie, Carville and Franken, et al, we would be left with a politically correct echo chamber.
In essence, that is what upsets me about the Imus lynching. We need to protect the right of our opinion-editorial personalities to say stupid things.
Bttt
Not sure if it was the “nappy” or the fact that these girls were not really public figures. I mean, aren’t they people’s children at the end of the day?
Other than play basketball for the sake of getting a scholarship, and then play really well, they really didn’t do anything to put themselves in the political line of fire.
Had Imus’ remark been made about politcians or muscians or even professinal atheltes, perhaps it would not have resonated so negatively.
That much said, I still don’t think he should have been fired - although I do not like his show much.
Don Ho!
(5) is not quite fair: Botswana is the counter-example. Continuous constitutional democratic-republican form of government since independence in 1966, an independent judiciary, economic policies that have keep the economy growing in spite of having the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the world. Of course, the track record of African government is still pretty dismal.
Don Ho!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.