Faced with the ongoing barrage of coverage of the tiresomely offensive remarks by longtime serial offender Don Imus, and all the self-serving posturing—both pro and con—that has followed, it’s difficult at this point not to simply want to cover one’s ears and begin humming every time the issue comes up—yet again.
But my friend Marc Cooper has pointed out that civil rights attorney, Connie Rice, has an exceptionally sane Op Ed in today’s LA Times that puts Imus and his loathsome comment in their place, while putting the whole kit-n-caboodle in its proper context.
It’s titled “Don Imus: the good-natured racist .” Here are a couple of to-the-point clips:
On the Imus insult meter, “nappy-headed hos” wouldn’t rate above a 3. It doesn’t even come close to one of his meaner riffs. Regular listeners of the show expect racist and sexist banter. As Imus explained to Mike Wallace on “60 Minutes” in 1998, his show has someone specially assigned to do “nigger jokes.” But rest assured, the Imus crew has plenty of kike, wetback, mick, spick, dago, Jap, Chink, redneck and unprintable Catholic priest jokes too…
…More to the point, Imus should only be fired when the black artists who make millions of dollars rapping about black bitches and hos lose their recording contracts. Black leaders should denounce Imus and boycott him and call for his head only after they do the same for the misogynist artists with whom they have shared stages, magazine covers and awards shows…
Go Connie!
(And, not to harp, but while we’re on the subject, Mr. Mayor, if you’re reading this, could we please get this Gang Czar thing worked out, and just appoint Connie? Getting a coherent city-wide gang strategy on the road would seem a whole lot more immediately relevant than, say, that trip to El Salvador you’ve got planned to talk about “transnational gangs” that, while sexy sounding, isn’t the main reason that 120,000 LA kids don’t have a safe route to school every day. Okay, thanks for listening. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.)
I already posted on this over at Marc’s site but I’ll give you the benefit of my comments here since I feel particularly verbal today.
Look, I like Connie. She’s the “Good Rice” and I’d love to see her run the Civil Rights Division after ’08 and help clean up the mess there. But on this issue she, and Earl Ofari Hutchison, are just plain dead wrong. First of all many people in the Black Community have denounced the use of derogatory lyrics in Rap (and noted that these “rebels” are doing it on labels financed by Whites and sold to suburban white kids. Its the modern form of “Mantan” Moreland and “Step-en-Fetchit” dressed up in gansta’ clothes)
Secondly, Don Imus is not just occasionally racist. He called Gwen Ifill of the NY TIMES a “Cleaning Lady” and refers to Barack Obama as “That colored Guy”. Oh, and Hillary is “a fat Bitch” and uses “fag” only slightly less than Ann Coulter. His producer, Bernie McGirk, is even worse and is often the guy who eggs the I Man on. Keith Olberman has discussed his role over at ESPN on the radio show he and Dan Patrick do daily and tells us that over at MSNBC no one was surprised as this was a very predictable trainwreck.
And it happend because this time he went way over the line. OK he dissed Ifill and Clinton and demeaned Obama. Well they’re big boys and girls and know how the game is played in DC. There Imus is one of the gatekeepers. If you get invited on Imus, whether as a pol or a pundit, you’ve arrived. Eric Boelhart of MEDIA MATTERS says its like getting the “Golden Ticket” – you’re now part of the “Club”. But, as Clarence Page found out when he took Imus to task, talk back and you are banished. And going on Imus does sell books. And the DC kewl kids love to stick together like a bunch of little Heathers. Really DC is High School and Imus is the leader of koolest clique.
But Imus didn’t trash his “friends” this time. He picked on some very articulate college Juniors and Seniors – as we learned yesterday. And accomplished young women who were called “Nappy Headed Hos” on a national radio program. I wonder how Marc would feel if the I Man dissed his daughter? Nothing new for him, by the way, he did it to Chelsea when Big Bill was in the White House. Such a kidder!
But his defenders tell us he’s a good man. Sure because he raises money for charity? For Katrina? Hell, Bush went to New Orleans to look concerned! That make everything OK. And does Connie think that Imus isn’t speaking for a lot of people out there who don’t harbor the same racist thoughts. I’ll shamelessly plug myself and refer people to what I said yesterday on BEAUTIFUL HORIZONS. Imus gets away with it up to now because a lot of people don’t notice this crap. Its all around them.
Look lets talk about the schools. Or that 94 year old man still in the joint that the TIMES covered yesterday. I’m sick of Imus and sick of all his enablers in DC who think he’s so cute and dismiss us Dirty Hippies and our concerns like, oh youknow, the war, civil liberties.
Hell We found out who’s the daddy! That’s news! Wonder what the I man will say!
Did you hear about the identity of the biological father of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby? Why didn’t Connie Rice cover that?
On the publics’ air waves I was glad when Howard Stern left, and I will be happy when Imus is booted out. We do not need their brand of humor on the radio.
I liked Connie Rice’s piece and I feel that’s it a bit disengenuous to call for his ouster when far more outrageous things get said every day. If Imus should get fired Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh should be pilloried, often and for extended periods of time. (wait, maybe they should). The point is, if enough people didn’t like this stuff, it wouldn’t sell. What would be nice is if a new level of civility broke out over the land and no one wanted to say or hear any of this junk any more.
“As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the talk show host can singâ€Â
Imus ought to be able to buy an INDULGENCE for this sins of his BIG MOUTH just the way Edwards, Pelosi and Gore buy CARBON OFFSETS for the exhaust of their BIG JETS, BIG HOMES and BIG CARS – (not to mention their big mouths).
Perhaps Imus can pay a bunch of people to say really nice things about black female basketball teams that he may have offended.
Pokey would be happy to throw some really nice complements their way for a few qq credits.
This is just selective outrage for which too much commotion is being made. It also shows the extent of the meaness and psychopathy of left-wing fanatics calling for firings and such.
rd – I’m gonna cross-post a couple of comments I made on this over at Coopers, just for the sake of argument –
Gwen Ifill wrote a much more incisive piece on the issue at hand, nailing Imus for the prick that he is. This one is sort of embarrassing. There’s definitely been, as Rice notes, a lot of hypocrisy and bullshit involved in this episode. The notion that what Imus “does best†is “tearing down the powerful†is one of the more laughable.
I don’t think Imus is the worst guy out there and I’m not for putting a pitchfork up all the way up his ass – he’ll survive because he makes money for people. But he asked for this and has been asking for it for a long time. He’s keeps a sidekick on the show who is totally off the hook – which is a neat trick to keep the crap flowing but not take responsibility for all of it. And his “enabling†friends in the media like Howard Fineman, Tom Oliphant and, apparently, Ms. Rice, leave a lot to be desired. This pretty much repeats what geniuses of racial sensitivity like Fred Barnes, Brit Hume and Morton Kondracke said about it on FOX – “black rappers are worse.†Thank god we’ve got black men waiting in the wings – either being mired in hypocrisy like Sharpton or rappers and comedians being mysoginistic – to rationalize cutting Imus slack when the heat gets turned up. But couldn’t we let Imus himself whine about that piece. And the last time I checked, Joe Biden and John McCain weren’t doing bits on stage with 50 Cent or Kat Williams.
(More)
I’m not particularly thrilled that Imus was fired from MSNBC. I’d have rather seen him take the suspension, respond to his critics with more than just words by making some significant changes in his cast & show content and move on. The serial apologies and stuff about raising money for kids were getting ridiculous and, given his history, were hollow.
Personally, ever since I read his “cleaning lady†comment against Gwen Ifill (who I don’t have particularly high regard for as a journalist, but who obviously is head and shoulders above Imus in the class and decency department) I’ve considered Imus a repugnant punk who’s attraction as an entertainer totally eluded me.
But I fail to understand what any of this has to do in any meaningful sense with either Al Sharpton (who has been the butt of many barbs regarding either hypocrisy or his own transgressions as his visibility rose in the protests) or rap music. That sort of demeans the specific criticisms by folks like Ifill – who was serially dissed in an utterly racist way by Imus, with none of her Beltway “colleagues†watching her back (other than Clarence Page) – and Clarence Page – who was dropped from Imus list of “cool people†for calling him on this shit years ago. It also diminishes the response of the young women themselves.
The more I think about that Connie Rice piece – i.e. “we shouldn’t protest Imus unless we also protest every rap star†– the more I think it rather wildly misses the point and – aside from ignoring the obvious difference between a guy who both wants to be accepted by the intellectual/political elite and also play the games of trashmouth jerks and guys who have little pretense other than being trashmouth jerks with a beat – sets a bar for protest that makes protest of anything essentially irrelevant, because it’s not valid unless you protest everything.
(Further)
To show just how far this discussion can go off the rails, Big Time Media Watchdog Howie Kurtz writes a column today bemoaning Imus fate in which he approvingly cites as context Michelle Malkin’s critique of Al Sharpton as a hypocrite and of black rappers being responsible for “dehumanizing†America. Yeah, the Michelle Malkin who wrote the book defending internment of Japanese-Americans for their ethnicity in WWII, all in non-too-subtle service of the notion that we should consider similiar measures for the Muslims among us. Nothing like “context†to put our national nightmare of demonization, hypocrisy and dehumanization into perspective.
I’m out of town so forgive the fact that I’m slow in commenting on the comments.
But some very good points made on this thread—particularly Richard and Reg,”…sets a bar for protest that makes protest of anything essentially irrelevant, because it’s not valid unless you protest everything…”
Yeah, upon reflection, I’m beginning to be won over to that POV.
Reasonable woman also makes a good point: I’m sure why the verbal equivelent of a public stoning, using excrement for stones, passes for “entertainment.”
Logging into this website should be a requirement for anyone knowledgeable on earth these days…