Am I the only one who thinks the firestorm over Don Imus referring to a group of young black female basketball players as “nappy headed ho’s” is just way over the top?
I mean, the guy’s not a church deacon, or a senator, or even a sports broadcaster. He’s a shock jock. It’s his job to push humor to the edge and beyond the edge. So he made a joke that was in poor taste. He admitted it. He apologized for it. He was suspended for it, for crying out loud. And there are STILL people who want to drive him off the air? While the Reverend Al Sharpton is railing against him, has he never bothered to crack the Bible he ostensibly preaches and stumbled over the passage about erring being human and forgiving divine?
It’s IMUS, for crying out loud. If Imus referred to a group of young Jewish basketball players as Matzoh-slinging Jewboys, I’d just shrug and say, “Whatever, man. It’s Imus.” The guy’s filling however many hours his show is every day, and it’s live. If he goes over the line and then admits he did and apologizes, I’m sorry, but that should be the end of it. Anyone who’s flogging it beyond that point has their own agenda and is just using this to further it. If Al Sharpton is that upset about Black women being spoken of in such a disrespectful manner, then why not spend his time going after the radio stations playing rap songs that call Black women “ho’s” (when they’re not talking about killing cops.) Or are slurs and racism only acceptable when they stem from Sharpton’s own constituency?
PAD
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Meh. I think Jon Rogers got closest to it. Imus made a sexist, somewhat racist comment on a group of people who had less money, power and stature than he did. A year from now, nobody would have remembered these kids; they certainly are not going to be rich or wield a lot of influence.
Make the same comment on Whitney Houston or Lil Kim? Nobody would have batted an eye.
It was the confluence of all three factors that was so offensive.
I think we have too much of a black or white mentality these days. There doesn’t seem to be much consideration for context or content.
Imus is an old man who made a dumb joke. He apologized and that should be it.
Sharpton has no right to hold a meeting with the head of the network to demand Imus be fired. Why not have a boycott like King did with the buses?
Or, better yet, why not take all the time and money he spends on these little non-issues of racial sensitvity and work to get tuition and scholarships for all the young black kids who live in inner cities and don’t see college as an option. If he wants to improve the community then this isn’t doing anything helpful for anybody.
Has the video of the German soldier training his men by telling them to shoot on African-Americans have much of an impact in the US? How is it viewed?
“The price of free speech is that sometimes you get offended.”
“The problem of saying something is accepting the consequences that follow.”
“Has the video of the German soldier training his men by telling them to shoot on African-Americans have much of an impact in the US? How is it viewed?”
This has flown beneath my radar. I don’t know what you’re referring to.
PAD
Posted by: Peter David at April 15, 2007 07:56 PM:
“”Has the video of the German soldier training his men by telling them to shoot on African-Americans have much of an impact in the US? How is it viewed?”
This has flown beneath my radar. I don’t know what you’re referring to.”
Here is a link to this news item.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2443240,00.html
I had to google for it in English, since I heard about it in the Hebrew media. Al Sharpton’s name was mentioned, so it reminded me of this discussion.
Apparently it’s a video posted by a German soldier showing a serjeant training his men by telling them to imagine they are shooting African-Americans in the Bronx.
I don’t know how long this story has been running, and whether it has made it into the Israeli media today of all days because it’s the Holocaust memorial day. Maybe it’s not a major event except for us here.
“The problem of saying something is accepting the consequences that follow.”
And why is the consequence of words ANYTHING more that more words?
Destroying a man’s livelihood over words is pretty fascist in my book.
Has the video of the German soldier training his men by telling them to shoot on African-Americans have much of an impact in the US? How is it viewed?
Anti-American craziness by Europeans has become too commonplace to have much of an impact anymore, even when it’s really ugly, like this one. When the best selling book in France was one that claimed the Pentagon was not actually hit by an airliner but was blown up by the government…you just roll your eyes and move on.
The only surprising thing is that he would bother making a distinction between Black and White Americans. I wonder, would a Black man in Germany be most likely an American soldier? Anyway, we have enough idiots of our own to worry about.
“Anti-American craziness by Europeans has become too commonplace to have much of an impact anymore.”
I’ve heard that there is an anti-american sentiment among some europeans, but I don’t think this is one of those cases.
I think if you went through every army in the world you’ll find drill serjeants saying racist and sexist things to hype up their soldiers. And I think the only think this german soldier knows about blacks is what he’s seen on TV: i.e. scary criminals.
Anyway, I don’t consider it a major event, just something of interest considering the original discussion. And I wanted to hear if it had any impact.
By the way, being an Israeli with American family ties I have to admit I have some prejudices about Europe that are not always justified.
I noticed something interesting during this whole Imus coverage, besides the fact that he was still alive, all the TV coverage has focused on the outrage being over the “nappy-headed hos” comment. I first read about the incident in the newspaper. The paper mentioned the “hos” comment, but it also referred to Imus calling the teams “the jigaboos vs. the wannabes”. I think this is why some people are surprised about the backlash of saying “hos”. The TV media has yet to say anything regarding the “J vs.W” comment, at least as far as I’ve seen. Selective journalism or censorship or fear of using the term “jigaboo”, I’m not sure which it is other than being sloppy for not reporting the whole story.
I noticed something interesting during this whole Imus coverage, besides the fact that he was still alive, all the TV coverage has focused on the outrage being over the “nappy-headed hos” comment. I first read about the incident in the newspaper. The paper mentioned the “hos” comment, but it also referred to Imus calling the teams “the jigaboos vs. the wannabes”. I think this is why some people are surprised about the backlash of saying “hos”. The TV media has yet to say anything regarding the “J vs.W” comment, at least as far as I’ve seen. Selective journalism or censorship or fear of using the term “jigaboo”, I’m not sure which it is other than being sloppy for not reporting the whole story.
I noticed something interesting during this whole Imus coverage, besides the fact that he was still alive, all the TV coverage has focused on the outrage being over the “nappy-headed hos” comment. I first read about the incident in the newspaper. The paper mentioned the “hos” comment, but it also referred to Imus calling the teams “the jigaboos vs. the wannabes”. I think this is why some people are surprised about the backlash of saying “hos”. The TV media has yet to say anything regarding the “J vs.W” comment, at least as far as I’ve seen. Selective journalism or censorship or fear of using the term “jigaboo”, I’m not sure which it is other than being sloppy for not reporting the whole story.
I realize that I am coming back to this party way late, but I did want to clarify something. In regards to a comment that Micha made way upthread, I was not saying that Don Imus is necessarily a racist. He engaged in bigoted speech often, but I don’t know if he actually is a racist, or if he was just employing a schtick. Just as I cannot say that he isn’t a racist based solely on his repeated comments, I cannot say with certainty that he isn’t a bigot because he has Black children at his ranch also. Just because they are there does not mean that he doesn’t feel that they are inferior. All I can say is that I don’t have enough information to judge what is in his heart. Either way, I for one had grown tired of his bigoted comments, about all groups, not just Black people. As I said before, I was very offended by what he said and what he had said before, but I didn’t want him to be fired. I had hoped that the suspension and firestorm would serve as an educational tool for him. I had hoped that he would realize that the time had come for him to lose the hate speech from his repertoire. I wanted he and others to utilizing the same tactics that people have had enough of this and are not going to just sit back and be denigrated any more. Enough has been enough. It is possible to do crude, shocking humor without resorting to the basest stereotypes and generalizations there are. I also want to say that hip-hop has also played into that feeling for me as well. As many other Black people have, I am tired of the depictions of us that are prevalent in the music to be the defining image of us as a people. We are so much more than that, and I want other groups, and just as importantly, us ourselves to realize that. Just because it hasn’t gotten the media coverage doesn’t mean that there aren’t those of us who have had many negative things to say about hip-hop.
One thing that I have gathered from this incident, is that Imus is quite intelligent. He apparently promised to learn from this incident, and I would have liked to seen whether he would have been true to his word. I have to say that even though I don’t know whether he actually is a bigot or not I have gained some measure of respect for him. He owned up to his responsibility for these remarks and acknowledged that his own behavior brought about this incident. It sounds to me as if he may have actually learned a great lesson from this, but it is possible that we’ll never know. I hope that if he does move to sirius or xm that he doesn’t forget the lessons that he’s learned here, even if the message has gotten drowned out by all the noise from either side of the debate.
1″ The paper mentioned the “hos” comment, but it also referred to Imus calling the teams “the jigaboos vs. the wannabes”. I think this is why some people are surprised about the backlash of saying “hos”. “
Actually, that comment was made in reference to Spike Lee’s movie School Daze, and it was made by one of Imus’ sidekicks. And eventhough Imus is considered a shock jock, he speaks from a different platform than other shock jocks because his show is politically charged, for the most part, so his comments have more weight than say Howard Stern whose show is purely comical in nature.
Marcus, I stand corrected.
Your post seems to me to be most balanced assessment of this whole issue. It is the only only one that bridges between the point of view that saw Imus’s words as offensive and those that are concerned with the implications of the response to his words.
I’m a big fan of balance.