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.
Black women are incredibly self conscious about their hair. Madame CJ Walkder is celebrated each year during Black History Month for inventing many of the chemical processes used to straighten, curl, and manage black hair. Using the word nappy definitely tinged the phrase with a lot more emotionalism than ho.
Ho is basically used like the word gal or doll was used in days gone by.
Jesse’s next rhyme, We canned the I Man, surely can’t be far behind.
Surely it’s a sign of the end times when I find myself agreeing so closely with Pat Buchanan. But he nailed in on this one.
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'Nappy headed hoes' is funny to you? I suggest you re-evaluate your self-assessment.
Boy, oh, boy. Didn’t Harold Ford comport himself in a manner to reveal his courage and loyalty? He got his marching orders from Sharpton and Jackson, and he followed them. Tennessee.....you are lucky by the skin of your teeth, that you have the junior senator which you have.
Pat makes more sense than Al.....what else is new?
LOL
But he nailed in on this one.
He sure did.
Who is Obama with in the photo you posted? I want to send a copy to him for his explanation.
Pat is a genius with words. He expressed everything I was feeling, especially his last line. Someone good at photoshop should take one of those old lynching photos and superimposed Imus’s head for the victim and Sharpton and Jesses head as the Klu Klux Klan, because this is what this travesty is turning into - a high-tech lynching. I fear that the liberals will try to get Rush and Hannity next.
What if they find out he’s not black, but just covered in dog feces...Will they be offended??
Hmmmm..Wonder what accent she’ll be using?....Think she’ll have a nappy hairdo?
I had forgotten that Obama met with Ludacris. Ludacris is incredibly profane. I wonder what Obama and he talked about..
Pat is spot on in this column.
It is amazing to see how all the liberals threw Imus under the bus .
Obama and Ludacris
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15972471/
"Them" are those who believe there have to be two languages and "whitey" is not allowed to use the black language. "Them" want discrimination and division.
signed, Cracker.
Fabulous article!! Pat hits a home run!
Before FOX News I used to channel surf in the mornings and sometimes watched Imus. The guy I could not stand was Bernie - what a sycophant!
Thanks. Is Ludacris one of the thug rappers?
You know, I don’t really know too much about him. But O’Reilly’s been after him at different time so I imagine so.
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