The Don Imus Affair
Has there ever been a bigger non-story?
Fortunately I was listening to Imus in the morning when the exchange occurred. I can remember shaking my head and grinning because this kind of thing is and always has been pretty standard fare on the Imus show. He makes fun of everybody and everything. And as far as I know or at least as long as I have been watching and listening he always has. And I hope he always does.
Boortz pretty much sums up my feelings about the whole thing right here.
I especially liked this email from a listener:
As an African American man I stand by the spiritual principle of removing the beam from one’s own eye before complaining about the splinter in another’s. When we as African Americans treat with equal disdain, the multi-billion dollar hip hop garbage we allow our children to create, purchase, and listen to, perhaps we will have real credibility on issues such as Don Imus. I find it incredulous that we are planning boycotts and marches and such wailing and gnashing of teeth over a solitary old fart who is hardly emulating echoes of the past but that which you can hear on any given day thumping from any young person’s car even while watching TV in the furthest room from the road. Imus is a white man who satirizes darkness of every shade. He is a mirror of our own shortcomings. Reflect on that before you go after his head. Because outside of the outrageous and oft stupid things he says on his show, the man does put his money in some of the same places he satirizes. This is the racial opportunism that has diluted true civil rights issues for the past several decades. It’s all about the money. If it wasn’t, those same preachers could have used the same energy to shut down the poisonous music evolution that started this cross cultural laissez-faire blackness that has now come home to roost.
Preach it brother.
The idea that these basketball players had their fragile sensitivities bruised is at best laughable. What they themselves have said to others and what they have had others say to them would probably embarrass Chris Rock.
I hope all of this has been staged by CBS and MSNBC to increase ratings. That is the only way it makes any sense.
I agree. It is all about the money. Maybe it always has been.
And though I posted that Imus should be fired and though I still stick to that premise, we should question when we became so blase that these words can tumble out of everyone’s mouths except when called on it.
It’s why I have a hard time with this whole idea of reclaiming epithets. What was offensive is still offensive to these ears, no matter who says it.