Imus-ta gone mad

  • The cur­rent flak over a stu­pid com­ment by a stu­pid radio guy is just too much to be believed. I wouldn’t have thought that an idi­otic sound-byte like call­ing mem­bers of a women’s bas­ket­ball team “nappy-headed ho’s” would be worth the time it even takes to type it.

    But then, it really doesn’t have much to do with Don Imus, who has a radio show and a TV show with almost no audi­ence, and it cer­tainly doesn’t have much to do with a com­ment that was really too dumb to be racist. But it has become some­thing that is going to either cement or erode the power of a cou­ple clowns to shape the national dia­logue. And that power strug­gle is attract­ing new­com­ers who just plain want to cen­sor.

    Once Jesse Jack­son and Al Sharp­ton stepped up to the mike, we all could have filled in the rest. I can’t think of any­one that has missed what bom­bas­tic grand­standers these two guys are. They picked a par­tic­u­larly silly thing to make into a bat­tle this time, though, and to be hon­est, it’s likely that the only rea­son they picked on this poor schlub is because his lack of sig­nif­i­cant rat­ings made him an easy tar­get. On both the right and the left, peo­ple have been quick to name oth­ers who have said more offen­sive things. The prob­lem is, those guys are too pop­u­lar to be taken out by poseurs play­ing the tired old race card.

    And even at that, they’ve been hav­ing to flex every mus­cle and invoke every hot-button word to get the required out­come. First, Imus apol­o­gized — nope, not good enough. Then he went on Sharpton’s radio show (which has even less audi­ence than his own) so he could apol­o­gize again — nope, still not good enough. Now, MSNBC has can­celled his pro­gram, and the direc­tor of CBS hopes they fire him. So is that enough pun­ish­ment for a lame two-word insult with an objec­tion­able adjective?

    Nope. Sharp­ton is just get­ting warmed up.

    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 the airwaves.

    That has a sin­is­ter ring to it. But before Sharp­ton even got this far, the feed­ing frenzy had bro­ken out:

    • Obama wants Imus fired. Very presidential.
    • Hillary noticed that no one was look­ing at her and let us all know that she has never wanted to be on his show. Thanks for playing.
    • Rosie O’Donnell took the oppor­tu­nity to slap on her shini­est tin­foil hat and say that the thought police are com­ing. Not that she’d have any worries.
    • Tom Delay decided to see if any­one was lis­ten­ing to him by say­ing that if “the left take Imus, we’ll take Rosie.” Now hon­estly. Why in the world would any­one bother to take out Rosie when she’s her own worst enemy? Besides, if Delay is try­ing to turn Don Imus into some kind of dar­ling of con­ser­v­a­tives, he would do bet­ter to get some­one who (a) is con­ser­v­a­tive, and (b) looks a lit­tle bit less like a heroin addict.

    I couldn’t resist going over to the pre­mier Left-screed blog Daily Kos to see how they were try­ing to make all this George Bush’s fault. They weren’t quite up to that chal­lenge, but some of the com­menters did start mak­ing some plans about the New World open­ing up. This com­menter wants all the haters up against the wall:

    And While We’re At It… (3+ / 0-)

    Ban the Gang­ster Rap­pers, Ms. Colter, Rush Limbo, and any­one, con­ser­v­a­tive, black, lib­eral, white, red, or yel­low, who is dis­parag­ing to other races, gays, or women. We so eas­ily stig­ma­tize Child-Molesters – why can’t we stig­ma­tize all offend­ers of the air­ways. If we’re going to screw Don – we need to screw them all – those forked-tongued devils.

    Whereas these two com­menters only have one mod­est demand — CNN’s only con­ser­v­a­tive ana­lyst, Glenn Beck:

    Beck. Please let’s go after Beck. (20+ / 0-)

    Come on, he doesn’t rate, CNN is eas­ily spooked, and he says some hideous [stuff].

    All we’d need to do is say ‘go’ and set the attack hounds on him and his adver­tis­ers and he’d be gone in a week.

    I agree (3+ / 0-)
    I think that CNN would be eas­ily spooked if they were in the sights next by mas­sive emails to cor­po­ra­tions that adver­tise on CNN. There are plenty of rea­sons to go after him. If we can get rid of him, after Imus, we might just see com­pa­nies like Clear Chan­nel re-evaluating their sup­port of the likes of Lim­baugh, ad nauseum.

    So there you go. If there’s any­one you don’t want to hear from, be sure to get in your sug­ges­tion. Appar­ently, we’re hav­ing a contest.


    Follow-up

    Just heard that Don Imus got fired by CBS. Well, I don’t know who gets to feel like the big win­ner in this. I sup­pose Jesse Jack­son and Al Sharp­ton think that they look big and bad, but I think all they’ve done is strip-mine a lit­tle more sup­port from those they claim to represent.

    Don Imus can team up with Bill Maher and the Dixie Chicks to do a “what the h*** hap­pened to my career?” tour.


    Related posts:

    1. New Orleans bring­ing out the best and worst
    2. Rad­i­cal Rosie
    3. NBC shocked and amazed
    4. When no one was look­ing, Cindy Shee­han went com­pletely mad
    5. When famous peo­ple fast

    April 12th, 2007 | Grace | 1 Comment |

One Response and Counting...

  • hand­maid Mary-Leah 04.12.2007

    This entire fiasco is only inter­est­ing in that it shows how far we are from a civil soci­ety. White’s point out how poor black behav­ior is when they say neg­a­tive com­ments and won­der why they can­not repeat the same things about them as a race; as if say­ing neg­a­tive things in any­way, at any time is ever alright. It is never alright espe­cially if you have a his­tory of hav­ing enslaved that peo­ple, this makes it dou­bly not alright, in fact wrong.
    Don Imus made a bone headed remark in pub­lic, on the air­waves. If he had called a woman he worked with a “knappy headed ho” or any other kind of “ho” he should lose his job, just because he is/was a radio per­son­al­ity doesn’t mean he has a spe­cial right to be demean­ing to oth­ers.
    Should we have to have black polit­i­cal action mov­ments or other PACs? No, not really. It shouldn’t be nec­es­sary to have to call for someone’s head enmasse by protest over this type of thing, cor­po­rate Amer­ica, just seems to need the reminder that this behav­ior isn’t right.
    Don Imus got spanked. Now, we just have to see if that was a good thing or enough of a good thing.
    I am bet­ting it won’t last very long or influ­ence any­thing. We are a harsh soci­ety who doesn’t care about the other human being right next to us and we are rais­ing our chil­dren to be very insen­si­tive to oth­ers. It seems to be all about our rights and not about our respon­si­bil­i­ties in this repub­lic.
    BTW, Bill Maher went to HBO, the Dixie Chicks went VH1 and Don will be the dar­ling of satal­ite, he’ll land on his feet, they all do…
    the hand­maid,
    Mary-Leah

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