Two emails at Neal Boortz's place perfectly illustrates the hypocrisy of race in this country. When did the Reverend Jessie "Hymie Town" Jackson, and the Reverend Al "Tawana Brawley / Freddie's Fashion Mart" Sharpton become the arbiters of Race Relations in the country? Why not Bill Cosby who gets it right on every level?
Message:
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.
Message:
I am not condoning what Imus said, but where is the outrage regarding hip hop music and how black women are defamed? Ninety percent of gangster rap make Imus' comments seem like an NAACP address. Sharpton and Jackson need to look at the "big picture" when black women are denigrated everyday on FM hip hop stations throughout America.
For the record, EL thinks what Imus said was reprehensible, and Imus SHOULD be punished for it. He should probably even lose his job over it. All that aside, who are the "Reverend's" Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson to refuse to forgive a man who sincerely apologizes; who does in fact put lots of money into the organizations that benefit the very people he disparaged on air? (though that hardly excuses his remarks) Especially while their own communities engage in the same and worse daily, to the point that they condone the sale of such to the youth of not just their own communities but everyone elses as well.
Hate is hate, be it speech, music, film, or the written word. And it should have no place on the lips of our young people-- let alone in their ears and eyes, minds, and hearts; the last of which is prone by nature to such.
I suggest Sharpton and Jackson seek out the first emailer's reference to beams and splinters and apply them to their own lives and conduct. If they can't hold themselves accountable for their racist remarks they have no right to hold the rest of us accountable to ours...
...beams, splinters, and all that.
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ER shines up his R, puzzles, upsets some regular lib readers.
And, seeing that he pulled less than a 1 share in the most recent ratings books (according to the other Radio people), I doubt that anyone else cares very much either. He is a rebel without an audience.
But, I will say that I did not find what he said to be particularly hateful. I don't believe that he said it out of hatred for Black People, nor do I think that he believed that it would be controversial when he said it.
I do not believe that Don Imus hates Black People, but if you were to set out to MAKE him hate them, then this would be a fine way to accomplish that.
The man has Freedom of Speech (or is supposed to have it, anyway).
If he says something that you don't like, then turn the channel.
If you are REALLY offended about what he said, and you are in the position that the Rutgers Women's Basketball Team is in with interviews and cameras around so that your statements can be heard ( by probably more people than heard Imus' remarks) then call him a "cadaverous old no-talent hack" and then get on with your life.
There is no need to give Don Imus any more power than he really has here.
Imus does not engage in speech; he produces a commercial product, which superficially resembles speech as we do it on, inter alia, this blog.
If it makes money for his employer and does not cause a greater financial loss elsewhere and does not transgress the laws of the land, his employer (assuming a corporation, where the bosses ought to be mere tools for the stockholders, the owners,) have a fiduciary not to lose that revenue stream.
If not - pfffft - he's a liability, a failed employee. Like the busboy who break all the dishes.
fini
http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/04/11/imus.rutgers/index.html