Saturday, April 14, 2007
Don Imus fired from MSNBC and CBS Radio
Let this be a lesson. It doesn’t matter how many awards you have won. It doesn’t matter how much money you have raised for various charities. It doesn’t matter that you are in your profession’s Hall of Fame.
If you make a derogatory comment about black women, you had better do it on a hip hop album or on BET.
Even if you say it only in jest. Even if in your profession saying dumb funny things is not only acceptable, it’s expected. Even if you then go on to apologize repeatedly for what you said.
I will be the first to admit that Imus could be a jerk. He could be extremely offensive. What set him apart from so many other jerks was that he was an equal opportunity offender. It didn’t matter who you were. If you were in the public eye, he would probably get around to saying something offensive about you. He would ridicule anyone, including himself. Especially himself. It’s what he did best.
Some will argue that Don Imus is a racist. They will say that by saying “nappy-headed ho’s” on his radio program, he proved his racism. I would argue that a racist wouldn’t dare say something in public that could be interpreted as racist. They wouldn’t make a dumb joke about a woman’s college basketball team where most of the woman were black. No, a racist is more careful with what they say in public. A racist wouldn’t endorse an African-American candidate for the U.S. Senate. A racist wouldn’t then go on and aggressively defend that African-American candidate when racists attempt to smear the candidate with lies.
I’ve known real racists. Don Imus wasn’t a racist. He was just a guy on the radio that liked to make jokes.
Now that this whole ordeal is over and racism has finally been eradicated, I hope this means Jesse Jackson now has time to do what Don Imus did. Jesse Jackson said some awful things about three college athletes. Young men that played lacrosse at Duke University. The men had been accused of raping a woman. Something that proved to be not true. The woman lied.
Jesse Jackson said awful, untrue things about the Duke lacrosse players. At least he never made fun of their hair.
I’ve written the Imus thing to death in the last week too, but I haven’t managed to say anything as clear and eloquent as what you’ve written here. I agree with everything you had to say and only wish I’d been able to say it so well. No, scratch that — I also wish that someone with the stroke to make a difference had had the balls to say it and convince MSNBC or CBS to let Don Imus keep his job instead of firing him in the middle of a charity telethon for insulting a basketball team.
I’m gonna go think about something else now, since the Imus thing just fucking infuriates me.
–Steve
[...] thought much of the Imus outrage the last go around was overblown. I thought what he said about the lady basketball players was stupid, but I did not think it was [...]