April 13, 2007
Anus In the Morning
Full disclosure — I hate the guy. But he got shafted.
The man is a bloated, overweening, star-fucking shock jock with little juice left in his fusebox. He parlayed a modest soundbyte knowledge of contemporary issues into interviews with important guests who came on his show to promote their career or latest book.
Imus was made to grovel before his accusers, not the Rutgers basketball team, but to the professional race baiters, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Imus took the media bullet for comments that were nursery-school tame compared to the horrid, despicable, daily flood of garbage the culture has for years sadly accepted from the mouths of rappers, MTV, BET, music videos and reality shows, about which the above morality monitors have said little.
I have heard Imus and his crew say horrible, inappropriate things about all groups. Like those remarks, the tone of the Rutgers’ exchanges was no different from what you’d hear when four or five friends gather to knock back a few beers and let down their cultural super-egos. Everyone has engaged in loose, stereotypical talk in settings like this and do not consider themselves racist for it. So let’s not be holier-than-thou here. If we scrutinize Imus for what he said, we must also scrutinize ourselves.
What’s different, however, is that Imus didn’t speak in the privacy of a living room or pub booth, but on a national radio and television show, a forum that transforms such comments into inappropriately offensive remarks.
Offensive according to Jackson and Sharpton, whose tongues were got by the cat when Harry Belafonte called Condolezza Rice and Colin Powell house slaves. JackSharp, Julian Bond, others, have become the bottom feeders of race relations, roiling its remaining bitterness to promote their ego driven agendas and bludgeon us into behavior that suits them. They sing the sour notes in the song of racial harmony. When racial understanding takes two steps forward, people like JackSharp take it one step back.
These people are fading blips on the radar of our public consciousness. They were once influential spokesmen who are desperately hoping that this racial contretemps will take them out of the holding pattern of oblivion and land them somewhere on the boondocks of relevance. The man who once held the dying Martin Luther King in his arms has himself become an assassin of honesty and truth.
JackSharp and their whining, bleeding-heart counterparts make a living denouncing the dust bunnies of racism. They reiterate the mantra of white oppression, of institutional racism, of the defeating message that the playing field is never level for minorities. These are the people who have made themselves the arbiters of free speech, these phony First Amendment protectors, these totalitarian purgists, these destroyers of democracy. They threw Imus under their bus. With it went any hope for a honest grasp of the issue of race.
Make no mistake. The Imus complainers and whiners are not the countless, successful blacks who have left in the dust the curse of enslavement and victimhood and chose instead to move forward and accomplish great things for themselves, from many obscure, hard working people raising a solid family to great superstars. Hallelujah to that. This is evident from the decent, measured comments of the Rutgers’ team itself.
And I do not believe for one moment that these terrific ladies were hurt by Imus’ remarks. Did they grow up in a bubble? Were they raised in a vacuum packed family, in a hermetically sealed neighborhood and never made contact with boyfriends, brothers, uncles, cousins, gang members, hip-hoppers, MTV, recordings, street-jivers, passers-by or clubs who used the word “ho” and, indeed, were probably even called that and worse by someone in friendly jest or with malicious intent?
I believe they were encouraged to say they were hurt. “Hurt feelings” are the payoff words in today’s culture. Oprah words! Dr. Phil words! The words of stupid newscasters shoving a microphone into the face of a grieving mother and asking how she felt when her child was found mangled in the weeds. These words are the passports to television, visas to news coverage.
Let us be clear on who is responsible here. Not Imus, although he should be held accountable, but the executives of CBS and MSNBC. This is morning drive time, the gathering place for the delinquents of radio, always provocative and outrageous, sometimes funny — Imus, Stern, Opie and Anthony, others. They push the envelope every day because CBS and MSNBC have paid them to do it. These corporations made money because these guys spent years insulting, trash talking and creating obscene stunts for our entertainment. And the corporations ignored it because the cash rolled in. Suddenly they now have a conscience and call Imus’ remarks “repulsive.” What kind of vacuum were they living in?
There should be a new sport, let’s call it Ultimate Hypocrisy, where the self-righteous leftists can collide and spew their sanctimony. The referees will be Al “Tawana Brawly” Sharpton, who has never apologized for ruining the life of New York prosecutor, Stephen Pagones, in that shameful episode, or Jesse “Hymietown” Jackson, the well known, adulterous minister.
Those who’re trying to find a sense of proportion in life can sit back, watch and flinch. But we can take little enjoyment from it. The referees are skewing our sense of morality every which way and loose.
What about Rush Limbaugh? He lies everyday. Big lies. Lies that millions of his asshole listeners, (oops, I couldn’t resist an Imus style obscenity) take as the absolute truth. His words do more damage and cause more hate in the country than anything Imus has or can say and yet not one of the stations in his vast network has ever called him on it or even forced him to allow someone on the phones who could give his asshole listeners (oops! There I go again) the real facts. Imus is probably getting what he deserves. Now it’s time get “fat fat the water rat.” -(Oops! You’re right. Inside all of us self-rightous liberals, and I didn’t even have a few beers or a glass of chardonny, but I did have some brie on a Ritz cracke,there’s a little bit of Imus) and hold him some kind of honest and moral standards.
By the way, I wouldn’t worry about Imus being out of a job. He and Michael Richards are opening chain of Sensitivity Centers — and a restaurant in Harlem. To be called, “Whitey’s.”
Howard, you can’t discuss the merits of one issue by saying “what about another one.” The Rush discussion has its own set of parameters, different from Imus’s.
To all who would read these comments with an open mind…
Mr. Albrecht is correct in his swings at Mr. Limbaugh. He is the media equivalent of a street corner bully-tyrant. However, let us also remember that everything said in Mr. Boni’s colloquey regarding the Imus affair is true. He hasn’t bothered to share his comments on Limbaugh which is another subject. Anyway, this really isn’t an either-or situation.
The fact that both Albrecht and Boni, are both saying the same thing, but directing at different targets suggests that Mr. Albrecht may tend to see only part of the truth. Knowing John as well as I do, I tend to think that he is closer to Albrecht’s position than Mr. Albrecht realises regarding Limbaugh. Only John can say, and I suspect he will! Right, John?Perhaps there are more demagogues and phonies out there than we suspect. Perhaps we should all take a long look at the knee jerk reactions we tend to have about these things and note that our public figures frequently travel on feet of clay, getting rich as they plow through the mud.
Regards to all you good people,
Jay Stuart
Great article. Imus said nothing wrong as far as I’m concern.More wrong has been said by the accusers.Where has freedom of speach gone in America.CBS should be ashamed of what they have given in to.
MB
This is exactly what I expected to find out after reading the title . Thanks for informative article
Don Imus
I’ve never been a big fan of Don Imus or for that matter, Howard Stern. I’ve never gotten into the ‘Shock-Jock’ phenomenon, preferring to listen to music when I switch-on the radio.
But… Apparently this Mr. Imus called a fine group of Rutgers female basketball players… “…nappy headed ho’s…” He was calling this predominately black group of athletes by that descriptive, which is not racially acceptable, especially if you’re a ‘whitie,’ which Mr. Imus clearly is, and since a video of the players was running in the show’s background and everyone could clearly see that this was a predominately black group, there was NO mistaking to whom these words were directed.
As a ‘sidebar,’ thank you Judge Ito and “Court Tv,” there are a lot of ethnicities that have “nappy” hair; it’s not a phenomenon reserved exclusively for blacks, for “nappy” references anyone with “downy or shaggy hair.”
However, there is another problem… actually several problems:
There’s a double standard: If you tune to any radio station or watch any music video or take in a film geared to a black audience, you will hear those above-referenced words… along with, “Bitch,” “Bitches,” “Ho’s” “Motherfucker,” ad nauseaum. These are black people calling other black people these disgusting words, the same words which were used to force Don Imus from his Shock Jock Seat.
Furthermore, there is the problem of ‘Freedom of Speech.’ Yep… just blow-off the First Amendment, which supposedly allows anyone in the United States to say anything (aside from yelling “Fire” in a theatre) without fear of censorship or retaliation from a Federal agency.
Ah… but there is the usual band of Tv-mongerers, those who wait for a way to make a fast buck through others’ misspoken words.
Why… the honorable Reverend Al Sharpton, that paragon of righteousness, a man who championed Ms. Brawley, a challenged young woman who claimed she was mistreated or, I believe the accusation was, “raped” by another… at least until it was proven she hallucinated (I believe that’s a kindly way to categorize the reduction in accusation) or the other times when he gone-off half-cocked, spewing unsubstantiated accusations, has intruded into our consciousness, ensconcing himself in front of cheap hotel podiums, a plethora of microphones planted in front of his honorable mouth.
Where were the honorable Jesse Jackson or the equally honorable and formidable Gloria Allred, one might ask? Well… apparently they were snoozing… or involved in other hugely important cases involving ample coverage from television cameras.
When America has ‘slow news cycles,’ editors are at a big disadvantage, for they have to fill giant “Breaking News” voids with newsworthy events…. And what could be more newsworthy than a silly Shock Jock suffering a brain fart during a live show?
Of course, the Coach of the Rutgers basketball team quickly condemned the “brain fart,” calling it a deliberate smack against womenkind. During this conference, she reminded us of the trials and tribulations of her childhood, and then extrapolated those experiences onto the backs of these valedictorians and honor students, these….
…Wait… Hold on – Are all these basketball stars, these scholarshipped students “honor students” and “valedictorians?” If so, this must be quite a team!
When I went to college, most of the scholarship’d athletes were shoehorned under the radar of the Admission’s process, owing to the lack of scholarship that usually accompanies outstanding athletic prowess.
Look – Being committed to athletic excellence requires that one put aside the books and practice… practice… practice! It’s not easy to be outstanding in both academics and athletics… because not even Job would have enough time to excel at both.
Since Rutgers and all colleges need athletics to attract alumni money, etc., athletics is BIG business – Ask any television network what they pay the universities for the privilege of broadcasting their games? Those universities NEED those dollars, so believe me, they court outstanding athletes in the hope of having a winning team and, therefore, overflowing university coffer’s. You can bet this event will probably cause more than a few Alumni to pull out his/her checkbooks…
But that’s not the issue: The issue is… Wait… What exactly IS the issue?
How does the honorable Reverend Al Sharpton, or for that matter, any of these honorable self-appointed Guardians of public mores make a living?
Well… Ya see… some people watch ‘em on Tv, some corporations listen to spot public opinion polls and tax deductible checks are dispatched, some based on their issuers like/dislike of what these honorable Guardians are doing or causing in society. Further, checks are being written for good and bad reasons …. Because, sometimes, people write checks just to stir the pot… Can you believe some people would actually do that?
Evidently, there is a direct correlation between how many times the honorable gentlepeople appear on Tv and how many checks -Surprise- are received at their corporate offices – After all, we all have to make a living, even those among those of us who assess themselves honorable. It’s amazing how many of these honorable people hide behind religious cloth, bandying about their shaky credentials of “Reverend”…
By the way – Anyone heard about that camp for children dying of cancer that Don Imus funds with his own money? Yeah – Duh – apparently that SAP Imus uses his own money from his radio/television show to offer terminally ill children an experience they will never forget. Wow – What a moron! You know what… this idiot allows children of ANY color this opportunity. My God – Can you believe anyone would be this stupid?
I mean, ‘How’ could anyone who funds something as wonderful as the above camp call those Rutgers basketball players, “…nappy haired ho’s”… and truly believe it?
Gee… I don’t know? Do you?
Now that Don Imus has no job or income to continue his SAPPY attempt to enrich the lives of these terminally ill children… might the good Christian Reverend (“Let He Who Is Without Sin, Throw The First Stone”), Al Sharpton fund this camp out of the goodness of his honorable heart…?
Don’t hold your breath — The tent’ll be rolled up and the honorable Right Reverend Al Sharpton will have left town and crawled into his woodwork… awaiting the next gathering of Tv cameras… those one-eyed monsters whose job has become one of attracting Rainmakers, Dreamweavers, Sorcerers clothed in the collars of a religious icon but without any belief in the underlying philosophy of Christianity’s “Forgiveness…”
Copyrightã: April 12, 2007; lucien harlan hubbard
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