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Thursday, April 17, 2008

Time to put Imus in the corner again
Posted by Jill | 7:08 PM
If Randi Rhodes gets suspended for things she says about Hillary Clinton when she's NOT ON THE AIR, why is Don Imus able to say things like this while ON THE AIR?


IMUS: Stephanopoulos I thought was great, and the debate was fine. I thought Senator Obama was on the defensive most of the night. But they're both sissy boys or sissy girls, or whatever. Because they talk big when they're out on the campaign trail, wolfing on each other.

McCORD: But then --

IMUS: And then when they show up at the debate, they fold up like a couple of cheap lawn chairs. I mean, I don't understand that. And he's almost a bigger pussy than she is.


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Wednesday, August 29, 2007

White Noise
Posted by Anonymous | 7:01 AM
When Michael Richards, Andy Dick, and Isiah Washington forgot to lie, they got in trouble. Don Imus got a vacation and more money. If you're a "shock jock", people don't care if you're racist, I guess. Ask Rush.

Some people think that angry, trash-mouthed talk show hosts like Don Imus (who are usually obnoxious white guys) are just free-thinking iconoclasts passionately exercising their First Amendment rights. I think they're big, loud, empty barrels keeping themselves busy by giving the rest of us splitting headaches. But whatever your opinion is, you should never make the mistake of thinking that this is "news".

It's not. It's thinly-disguised racism, and I'm sick of it.

I'm tired of cowards with a microphone hiding behind the First Amendment. Imus wasn't a fearless trailblazer like Lenny Bruce who was harassed, arrested, and finally banned from performing in public. Imus wasn't the controversial Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour being cancelled by CBS. Imus wasn't the subversive Bill Hicks being censored by David Letterman.

Whenever I hear a stupid white man vomit the word "nigger", "nappy-headed hos", or any other racist slur, it feels as though a dirty-fingered bum with a bad cold has suddenly grabbed me like a napkin and blown his nose. I still hate the word, and I hate the smug white sons of bitches who casually delude themselves into thinking they have a right to use it. (Yeah, that's right, Quentin Tarantino's idiotic rant in Pulp Fiction still outrages me.)

You don't.

Yeah, I'll admit that you're exercising your freedom of speech. Legally, you're entitled to that.

Morally, however, as an African-American male, I feel that you're exploiting your white male privilege. That's not "freedom"; that's acting out a mental disorder you inherited from your ancestors who imprisoned hundreds of thousands of innocent Africans centuries ago and brought them here.

But you don't own that word anymore, because you don't own me anymore.

Believe me, African-Americans know what happens when white people forget we're human beings and treat us like we're their property:

Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X are assassinated because they're niggers.

Clifford Grover, Eleanor Bumpers, Amadou Diallo, Patrick Dorismond, Michael Stewart, Abner Louima, Sean Bell, and all of the other innocent human targets who found themselves on the wrong end of a cop's billy club or "warning shots," are brutalized and killed because they're niggers.

The men, women, and children of New Orleans either drown, are shot, or slowly starve to death in front of the whole world, because they're niggers.

And Barrack Obama will never be elected President because he's a nigger.

Uh-uh, "nigger" isn't just a word in the African-American community, It's a burglar alarm. It's telling me that somebody who hates me is knocking down my front door. That old saying "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is a dangerous fallacy. When I hear the word "nigger," I know the damned sticks and stones are gonna be close behind, followed by an angry mob armed with nooses, knives, brass knuckles, baseball bats, and guns.

Remember Cabaret, the brilliant Oscar-winning musical by Bob Fosse? The Kit Kat Klub, a sleazy cabaret in Berlin during the 1930s, is used by Fosse as a grim mirror to reflect the gradual corruption of Germany before World War II. As the Nazi Party grew in power, the "comedy" routines on stage became more viciously anti-Semitic. And I'd bet you money there were "good" Germans who didn't think it was a big deal. What's the matter, you don't have a sense of humor?

Whenever an ugly racist slur turns into a punchline, look out. Not only isn't it funny-- it's deadly.

That sister from Rutgers who's suing Imus knows. I hope she has a good lawyer.

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Wednesday, April 11, 2007

This Is Not Over
Posted by Jill | 9:22 PM
Not by a long shot.

NBC may have shitcanned Imus from its MSNBC simulcast, but if anyone thinks that's the end of it, guess again. Because there are still the little matters of people like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Michael Weiner Savage.

LTR notes:

So, should Imus be fired once and for all? Who knows? Often, these scandals disappear after a short time, once another scandal comes around that our alleged media finds something else to pound into the heads of America. But this is just one of many audio nasties blasted out over the airwaves of our great country. There were many more prior to this. For example:

"(Cynthia McKinney) looks like ghetto trash. Get a braider over there ... quick!"

Oh wait, that was Neal Boortz who said that.

Or, "You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray . We miss you, James. Godspeed."

Oops, sorry. That was Rush Limbaugh.

"...Slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back; I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark."

My bad. Limbaugh again.

"Take that bone out of your nose and call me back."

"Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?"

"The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies."

Yep. Limbaugh again.

"You open the door to them (immigrants), and the next thing you know, they are defecating on your country and breeding out of control."

Threw you all a curveball. That was Michael Savage who said that.

"(If) you wanted to reduce crime ... if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down... (aborting all African-American babies) would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do.. but the crime rate would go down"

That was Salem morning guy Bill Bennett.

Oh, and don't get me started on Glen Beck and Ann Coulter. I'm trying to keep this article short.


Imus may be a political non-Euclidian, an equal-opportunity basher, but Limbaugh and Beck and Savage and Coulter are not. And the amount of bile and vitriol spewing out of these people, the wishing people were dead, the advocating of murder, has gone on among the reptilian brains of the right wing for years. Funny how there was no outcry when Rush Limbaugh referred to a then thirteen-year-old Chelsea Clinton as "the family dog." It's one thing to point out the Bush twins drinking themselves into stupors when their peers are off fighting a war, because that's a FACT. Making fun of a thirteen-year-old's looks is just plain cruel, just the way calling a bunch of high-achieving collegiate athletes whores is just plain cruel, just the way saying that an 11-year-old kid who was kidnapped and held captive by a pedophile "liked his circumstances" is just plain cruel -- and crosses any kind of line of decency.

This isn't political discourse, this is whacking a hatchet at people just because you disagree with them. It isn't debating points of view, it's resorting to ad hominem attacks because your side of the fence has decided that this is the way to retain power. And the near-monopoly that the hatemongers who call themselves conservatives have had to spew their bile over the airwaves has contributed to the coarsening of the debate of the future of this country far more than a bunch of hip-hop artists working as cash cows for white guys have.

And don't talk to me about Randi Rhodes. I have my own beef with Randi Rhodes, most of it having to do with her excuses for the ineffectuality of the Democratic Party over the last six years and her propensity to scream at callers who disagree. Randi Rhodes doesn't have an H.R. from Staten Island, the progressive talk radio equivalent of Doris from Rego Park. H.R. is an old guy from Staten Island, a knee-jerk wingnut conservative who called Sam Seder at least once a week, just to argue. The thing is, H.R. is fond of Sam, and I think he respects Sam for standing up for what he believes in, even if H.R. doesn't agree. Randi doesn't have one of those. But I'll give Randi credit for this: She does her homework. She doesn't just pull stuff out of her ass, and the one time she went over the line, she recognized that it was offensive and apologized profusely. And she hasn't done anything like it since -- unlike Imus, unlike Glenn Beck, unlike Rush Limbaugh, unlike Ann Coulter, and the other lizardbrains of the right who spew this kind of thing daily. And those who would crucify Rhodes might recall that when North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms told Bill Clinton if he traveled to North Carolina, he'd better have a bodyguard, the Secret Service didn't investigate Jesse Helms.

Imus may very well have done us all a service with this latest stunt. Because certainly Keith Olbermann gave every indication on Countdown tonight that whether anyone else makes the connection between the Imus fracas and what the lizardbrains of the avowed right say, he's made the connection. And I am telling you Keith Olbermann is not going to let this go quietly. And neither am I.

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Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Is there someting going on with Don Imus??
Posted by Jill | 7:29 PM
I kid, of course. This evening I received an e-mail from Scott that referenced his post about the Don Imus Fracas.

I haven't weighed in on all this, mostly because I really don't care about Don Imus. I haven't listened to his show in years and I've thought for a long time that it's shameful the way everyone in the Washington Hackocracy (and that includes government AND punditry) sucks up to him. I think he's misogynistic, racist, and a generally Angry White Old Man, and while I give him credit for his charitable work, work of which one is reminded every time one drives down Summit Avenue in Hackensack past the children's wing of Hackensack University Medical Center that bears his name, that doesn't mean he's not an ass. And frankly, I've been more concerned with the early destruction of Air America Radio under the Green Regime.

I'm as big a free speech advocate as anyone, but the fact that you have a right to free speech doesn't give you a right to be paid millions of dollars and be given a platform for your worst instincts. And it seems to me that guys like Al Campanis and Jimmy the Greek were banished to Media Invisibility for comments far less derogatory.

Forget for a minute how ludicrous a sixty-something white guy sounds trying to sound like black rappers. Has this man never heard of the "It's OK to knock your own team" rule? I'm not excusing the kind of disgusting, misogynistic lyrics that one hears in hip-hop culture, but it's unseemly for a man in his seventh decade saying such things about a bunch of nineteen-year-old girls.

It's been appalling to see a bunch of white giys wondering just what the fuss is about calling the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed ho's". I'd like to see how Imus would react if someone called him a saggy-scrotal pencil-dick. Of course, if it were a member of the Washington Hackocracy that seems to want to liine up and kiss his ring, at least we'd be talking about people playing on the same field, so to speak; two equals in terms of being able to get a message out. But this is a sixty-something white guy using not one but two pejoratives -- one racial, one sexual, to describe a bunch of teenaged girls that he doesn't even know.

If you want to know why this isn't something that black women can and should just "shrug off", don't ask me. Ask Pam, who knows of what she speaks:


This isn’t about School Daze and socio-political commentary; this is about Imus and Co. demeaning those women using a common racist denigration of hair texture — nothing more needs to be telegraphed — kinky hair=bad, ugly, animalistic, straight hair=good, attractive. And to top it off, those nappy-headed gals at Rutgers are therefore ‘hos as well. Nice.

And people wonder why so many black women have a complex about their hair, gooping it up with nasty lye relaxers, frying their scalp with hot combs? The self-loathing is so culturally ingrained, so pathological, and it’s reinforced by the messages like the ones Imus and friends are having a great laugh over. It’s toxic and ignorant. From my post, The politics of hair (again):

I am old enough to experience the “pleasure” of the thermal hot comb — you rested it over the gas flame of the stove to heat it up. Then the grease was carefully applied to your hair and that comb sizzled through the kinks till it was bone straight, hissing as you prayed the comb didn’t touch your scalp — inevitably you got scalp burns because the “stylist” f*cked up. [By the way, the “stylist” for most folks was usually a relative, but in my case, everyone in my family had straight hair, so my mom had to take me to a salon till she figured out what to do.]

Once the chemical relaxer came into vogue it was the same problem with a different twist, it became a watch-the-clock endeavor to see how long you could leave the vile-smelling chemicals on to achieve maximum straightness before your scalp started to peel, burn and get open sores. Anything for that damn straight hair.



Substitute the word "fat" for "nappy-headed" and "pig" for "ho's" and THEN I can relate.

Which of course brings us back to Air America and Lionel, and I have to wonder if Mark Green is now wondering about the "special brand of humor" that Lionel brings to the progressive network and when the other shoe is going to drop. I wonder if that "special brand of humor" is going to be continuing to refer to Rachel Maddow as a "thick necked lesbian" and the next overweight woman in the news as a "fat pig."

Context is everything, and this is hardly the context into which you want to bring a guy with a track record of hateful remarks about women into a progressive radio network.

Grab your popcorn, folks. It's going to be interesting.

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