Imus is gone

[Jazzmoose]

so you guys ought to get down on your knees and thank the corporations for their willingness to take a stand against racsim and sexism.

You put a smiley there, but you have a valid point. Larry Elder (among others) argues that a corporation that's racist, sexist, or otherwise bigoted in its operations is "bad for business." If you refuse to hire (for example) blacks, you're closing yourself off to potentially valuable employees; if you alienate and fail to service minorities, you're limiting your customer base. If you have even the appearance of being bigoted, you'll drive away potential costumers who will no longer give you money. The actions by CBS and NBC prove this in the Imus case. If advertisers no longer want to be associated with a known (or even just perceived) racist/sexist, then the network will lose money. And if it's bad for the networks to be associated with someone like Imus... then off he goes.

I agree. And I must say, if I referred to anyone as "nappy headed hoes" at work, I guarantee I'd be out of a job a hell of a lot faster than Imus was. Free speech has consequences.

[Cali]

Sorry Larry, but when I heard the team captain - the team captain - say that all that the team had accomplishes on & off the court had been "taken away" (I believe that was the exact phrase she used) by Imus' comments, I nearly went ballistic. Taken away from whom? By whom? This is supposed to be a strong individual?

I think some perspective is in order.

1.) These are college kids and are not as sophisticated or experienced as some of us. A lot of us in that position, at that age would have wilted in the glare of the media, seeing and hearing yourself discussed on the radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, the internet, 24 hours a day.

I know I wouldn't have been prepared for that when I was in college, perhaps not even now.

2.) They are female athletes. College athletes are sheltered or isolated from a lot of these types of upheavals. I think female athletes are less prepared for this than male athletes because sports are male dominated and there isn't as much exposure for them to begin with.

3.) Most athletes that I've heard interviewed on societal concerns or world events . . . . . well, let's just say they haven't been that impressive. And that applies to professional athletes, also.

So, I say cut them some slack. Try to imagine what it would feel like to be made the subject of national, even world wide, negativity at such a young age. Let's not come down so hard of the victims.

Edited April 14, 2007 by Cali

[catesta]

So, I say cut them some slack. Try to imagine what it would feel like to be made the subject of national, even world wide, negativity at such a young age. Let's not come down so hard of the victims.

They didn't deserve it, no doubt, and I'm all for cutting some slack.

But this is not a country turned against a women's college basketball team.

The negativity came from one irrelevent white senior citizen male radio show host, that they more than likely had never even heard of before.

If these young women were in a club or at the mall and a total stranger came up and made those comments, I'd have to believe their reaction would not have been tears.

[Jazzmoose]

If these young women were in a club or at the mall and a total stranger came up and made those comments, I'd have to believe their reaction would not have been tears.

No, but beating the flaming dog shit out of Imus probably wasn't possible at the time...

[Brownian Motion]

Free speech will be affected because of what the aftermath from this mess will be.

Watching CNN tonight I can already see it.

There are people out there that believe Imus should have been put in jail and others (including at least one board member here) believe he should be sued.

The shit is hitting the fan, my friend. How much shit? We'll have to wait and see.

I get tired of seeing this framed as a "free speech" issue. If I had a radio platform with an audience base in the millions, and I one day singled you out on my program as a pretend-gourmet and a weekend child molester, would you airily dismiss this slander as a case of me exercising my right of free speech? I doubt it. You'd look for an attorney. You'd see what recourse you had in the law. You'd try to hurt me, free speech be damned.

[JSngry]

Sorry Larry, but when I heard the team captain - the team captain - say that all that the team had accomplishes on & off the court had been "taken away" (I believe that was the exact phrase she used) by Imus' comments, I nearly went ballistic. Taken away from whom? By whom? This is supposed to be a strong individual?

I think some perspective is in order.

1.) These are college kids and are not as sophisticated or experienced as some of us. A lot of us in that position, at that age would have wilted in the glare of the media, seeing and hearing yourself discussed on the radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, the internet, 24 hours a day.

I know I wouldn't have been prepared for that when I was in college, perhaps not even now.

2.) They are female athletes. College athletes are sheltered or isolated from a lot of these types of upheavals. I think female athletes are less prepared for this than male athletes because sports are male dominated and there isn't as much exposure for them to begin with.

3.) Most athletes that I've heard interviewed on societal concerns or world events . . . . . well, let's just say they haven't been that impressive. And that applies to professional athletes, also.

So, I say cut them some slack. Try to imagine what it would feel like to be made the subject of national, even world wide, negativity at such a young age. Let's not come down so hard of the victims.

No problem with any of that, and for the reasons you state.

Which goes to the advice/counselling/whatever that these young women have been receiving. As I said earlier, I don't think that it is all that it should have been,

Rightly or wrongly, coaches take on the role of a "parental" figure. I know that I have tried to instil in my kids that their self-esteem is theirs alone to have or not have. My daughter in particular has been the object of some taunting, because she's got a very extroverted personality, non-traditional interests in music and other entertainment, and she refuses to "play dumb" to get boys interested in her. So of course, she's had an adoloscence full of unpleasant taunts from her peers. She's come home from school many a time wanting to report every last incident of verbal harassment, and we've encouraged her not to, telling here to instead hold her head even higher and be even more who she is even more defiantly.

It's worked. The taunts have gone down dramatically, and the respect she gets has gone up in equal measure. We've seen what has happened with other kids her age who report similar occurances - the offenders get called in, "dealt with", and pretty soon, everything goes back where it was in the beginning. Sometimes it even gets worse. That's because when you let somebody else handle your respect for you, it becomes their responsibility, not yours. And they just don't/won't/can't handle it like it needs to be handled.

The writer who compared Imus to a schoolyard brat was right on. This whole incident is nothing more than a playground insult on a grander scale. The recipient went to the principal, the principal called the brat into the office and administered "by the book" disciplinary action. And now what? Will Imus never again taunt? I doubt it. Do the women have the satisfaction of knowing that they're strong enough on their own to withstand the interference of assholes that is an ongoing part of the life of everybody who continuously sees to rise above the masses? I don't know, but this was a chance to prove that, and it wasn't proven.

Leadership. Where was the leadership? Where were the voices to tell these women that Imus is a nobody compared to what they are on the way to becoming? Where was the guidance to let these women know that they are of the future & that Imus is of the past, a tired past that is struggling in vain to stay alive and that if you feed into, it just gets that much more of a lease on life? Where was the new militancy, the one that is going to keep on moving ahead no matter what, the one that is not going to waste time dealing with impotent irrelevanicies such as Imus, the one that realizes that the biggest blow of all to people like this is to remain blazingly indifferent to them?

Where was that leadership? Not at Rutgers. I don't blame the women, but I do blame their adult leaders who supposedly have their best interests at heart. They're as blind as Imus is ignunt, and that's a freakin' shame.

[Rooster_Ties]

Any way you look at it, Imus fucked with -- and at least somewhat fucked UP -- the team's well-deserved moment of glory. So I can't blame them that much for a slightly less than 100% politically effective response.

And the ultimate positive impact of this event (in the long run) is not marred one bit by the grandstanding of Sharpton and Jackson -- both of whom absolutely had good points, but WAY overplayed their hands (as usual), and appeared (and very arguably were) entirely too self-serving in the process.

I'd score this one as 3 or maybe even 4 steps forward, and only 1 step back -- at worst. ("4 steps" - only if others in the media are held to similar standards, at least more often than they are today.)

[Larry Kart]

The writer who compared Imus to a schoolyard brat was right on. This whole incident is nothing more than a playground insult on a grander scale. The recipient went to the principal, the principal called the brat into the office and administered "by the book" disciplinary action. And now what? Will Imus never again taunt? I doubt it. Do the women have the satisfaction of knowing that they're strong enough on their own to withstand the interference of assholes that is an ongoing part of the life of everybody who continuously sees to rise above the masses? I don't know, but this was a chance to prove that, and it wasn't proven.

Leadership. Where was the leadership? Where were the voices to tell these women that Imus is a nobody compared to what they are on the way to becoming? Where was the guidance to let these women know that they are of the future & that Imus is of the past, a tired past that is struggling in vain to stay alive and that if you feed into, it just gets that much more of a lease on life? Where was the new militancy, the one that is going to keep on moving ahead no matter what, the one that is not going to waste time dealing with impotent irrelevanicies such as Imus, the one that realizes that the biggest blow of all to people like this is to remain blazingly indifferent to them?

What I wanted to -- and may still, if I can get my act together -- offer some close-up perspective about is why Imus is/was not "a nobody compared to what [the Rutgers players] are on the way to becoming" and why the schoolyard taunts analogy, very good up to a point, doesn't work very well IMO beyond that point. For one thing, "blazingly indifferent" is a nice phrase with fine intentions behind it (and sound practical meaning too, in the setting you describe), but it also ignores the factor of time or timing, at least in a case like the Imus one. That is, when a blow like Imus's has been struck (and by that I mean in particular a blow struck by a figure who speaks to millions of anonymous listeners), that blow by its very nature tends to place the parties who have been struck on a brand-new stage for them -- the "schoolyard-school" frame suddenly no longer fits that well (though it doesn't disappear entirely). And when you're in that new frame, placed on that new stage, while indifference (blazing or otherwise) can be maintained within one's own soul (at a certain price that you can't quite calculate until you've paid it), the act of communicating that state to any being or entity outside oneself is a very tricky proposition. In particular (if I can use that phrase twice in one post), you don't know what's at stake here unless you've actually been on the receiving end of a shaft from a clever radio demagogue. I have been (though the matter involved was not a terribly grave one), and I can tell you that as savvy as I thought I was about such things (being a member of the media myself at the time), I realized almost instaneously that beforehand I had had virtually no idea what I was up against now, and further that I had almost no room to manuever, other than to just sit there and eat some shit (which is what I did). The demagogue has virtually all the leverage, until and unless he or she is somehow displaced from his or vantage point or you just get dumb lucky. (I had one of those dumb-lucky experiences with a media demagogue too, and it helped me to grasp more quickly that this other experience, the second one, was in fact utterly different.)

[catesta]

Free speech will be affected because of what the aftermath from this mess will be.

Watching CNN tonight I can already see it.

There are people out there that believe Imus should have been put in jail and others (including at least one board member here) believe he should be sued.

The shit is hitting the fan, my friend. How much shit? We'll have to wait and see.

I get tired of seeing this framed as a "free speech" issue. If I had a radio platform with an audience base in the millions, and I one day singled you out on my program as a pretend-gourmet and a weekend child molester, would you airily dismiss this slander as a case of me exercising my right of free speech? I doubt it. You'd look for an attorney. You'd see what recourse you had in the law. You'd try to hurt me, free speech be damned.

The "child molester" vs. "nappy headed hos" is a bit of a stretch, no? One is speaking of a serious disgusting crime. The other is an unsult.

Calling me a "pretend-gourmet" would be spot on unless I was Bobby Flay or Mario Batali. Then I would consider it nothing more than criticism. No different than if Imus said these girls didn't know how to play the game.

Your argument about slander is complete bullshit. It's not like he said "I see these bitches on the street soliciting prostitution every night, they're a real a real bunch of whores, I tell you". That would have been a different story.

How the fruck could that basketball team prove he meant they were prostitutes or slept around?

Didn't he say the Tennessee team was a cute? Should they sue him for sexual harassment.

He had the right to say it whether is was a joke, opinion or whatever. They had the right to fire him, end of story.

Law suit? No fucking way.

Edited April 14, 2007 by catesta

[catesta]

Any way you look at it, Imus fucked with -- and at least somewhat fucked UP -- the team's well-deserved moment of glory. So I can't blame them that much for a slightly less than 100% politically effective response.

What moment of glory?

How about Kentucky's? They won the fucking game.

[paul secor]

Any way you look at it, Imus fucked with -- and at least somewhat fucked UP -- the team's well-deserved moment of glory. So I can't blame them that much for a slightly less than 100% politically effective response.

What moment of glory?

How about Kentucky's? They won the fucking game.

Geograpically close - Tennessee won the game.

[catesta]

Any way you look at it, Imus fucked with -- and at least somewhat fucked UP -- the team's well-deserved moment of glory. So I can't blame them that much for a slightly less than 100% politically effective response.

What moment of glory?

How about Kentucky's? They won the fucking game.

Geograpically close - Tennessee won the game.

Yes, my bad it was Tennessee. See how much we pay attention to women's college basketball.

[catesta]

jesus fuck-- maybe Catesta can back me up here-- Imus has been an UNFUNNY (key word) douche for at least 30 + years. asswipe got what he deserved a long time ago, tho' perhapd for less-than-wholly-right reasons.

THAT SAID-- guy dug own grave w/his appearance on Al Sharpton's show. first, he didn't question some of Al's own dubious past acts (but Al is a complex guy, not all one thing or other, & I generally like him) AND then, he tried "blackin' it up--

axein' if Al-- Al!!-- knew about sickle cell anemia, using the word "jive"-- which hey, we can ALL do but... once it's in inane public arena...

Tejas es correcte-- Rutgers shit is nonsense, a quick fuck you, cracka'! would suffice, spare us all that glory hogging, "Coach."

verdict: STOP!!!!!! please this inane discussion & listen to

Prodigy Return of the Mac instead-- P. actually has sickle-cell & in form is the master of negative charisma that Miles wanted to be.

this record also samples--

JB "Down and Out in New York City"

and

OV Wright "A Nickle and a Nail"

but not, that i can hear anyway, Funkadelic's "Nappy Dugout."

next fake controversy*, please.

edc

* or someone kick prince in the ass hard enough out into the streets he makes another record as hot as

Word.

Imus never was funny, and yeah he did bury himself. He should have apologized and then should have shut the fuck up. Talk of the ranch and sickle cell was just complete stupidity.

End result may have been the same, but he probably wouldn't have to spend the rest of his life in a hole.

Watch closely as his old lady prepares to file divorce papers. No way she sticks it out with the crypt keeper, it's time to cash out.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

did anyone hear the racist comments Manfred Eicher made one the radio last night?

[Rooster_Ties]

Any way you look at it, Imus fucked with -- and at least somewhat fucked UP -- the team's well-deserved moment of glory. So I can't blame them that much for a slightly less than 100% politically effective response.

What moment of glory?

How about Kentucky's? They won the fucking game.

I don't follow sports, so what the fuck do I know?? (Not much, it would seem. )

But my point is still pretty much the same, no mater who won the game.

Edited April 14, 2007 by Rooster_Ties

[Chuck Nessa]

did anyone hear the racist comments Manfred Eicher made one the radio last night?

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Larry's right. This is the sort of thing that happens to all of us, in real life, without any hassle or intention to put down, but in ordinary conversation. How many times have you thought of the exactly perfect riposte - half an hour too late? Or, even worse, ten seconds too late. And ten seconds, when you're dealing with someone like Inus, or a politician, is WAY too late.

Like Larry, I've sometimes come up with the perfect riposte on cue. And it felt effin' great to be able to put down a Secretary of State. But it doesn't happen often to a non-professional.

And this is something that no amount of guidance can help you with. As you said, Jim, in the context of the contracts to play at the Blue Note, you do it by doing it.

MG

[7/4]

did anyone hear the racist comments Manfred Eicher made one the radio last night?

[RDK]

Just thought of one: Imus has the perfect face for radio...

[chris olivarez]

I'm not sure how much the firing of Imus will really solve. As for Mrs. Imus filing for divorce she might want to think twice because I'm willing to bet his ranch that there will be a large cash settlement involved.It's laughable to think that Leslie Moonves suddenly developed a conscience-this was a cold blooded buisness decision. My feeling is that Imus will work again if he wants to. Like it or not the man has a shitload of contacts and they're not all going to bail on him like the weasels at CBS. I'm not a real big fan of talk radio and TV-a pox on all of their households.

Edited April 15, 2007 by chris olivarez

[jmjk]

if only a priori.

That word, a priori. I do not think it means what you think it means.

um, yes it does. Wikipedia is your friend, but you're taking its philosophical definition out of context from how it's used in other applications.

a priori definition

adj.

1. Proceeding from a known or assumed cause to a necessarily related effect; deductive.

As in: yeah, okay, nobody is going to legally prohibit me from saying something, but if I say it I'm going to get in so much trouble that I'd better not say it after all. The result is the same: one is prevented from saying something out of fear of repercusion and reprisal.

Except that there's nothing that can be deduced as a "necessarily related" effect in this case. "Necessarily" means that B must logically follow as a result of A, but there's nothing nearly so deducible in this case. For example, I think there's a loose consensus that Howard Stern could probably get away with saying the exact same words and not get fired (because it's much more clear that it's part of his shtick, and not the "real" Howard Stern talking), so there's no good reason to deduce that Don Imus's firing can only produce the outcome of a chilling effect on everyone else's speech.

I still think "de facto" would have been a much better choice. (Sorry, the misuse of a priori along with people who screw up "e.g." and "i.e." is a pet peeve.)

I bet the members of the Rutgers women's basketball team misuse a priori and screw up e.g. and i.e. all the time! Oh, the horrors! But you can't "peeve-out" on them now, can you?

Edited April 15, 2007 by jmjk

[catesta]

I'm not sure how much the firing of Imus will really solve. As for Mrs. Imus filing for divorce she might want to think twice because I'm willing to bet his ranch that there will be a large cash settlement involved.It's laughable to think that Leslie Moonves suddenly developed a conscience-this was a cold blooded buisness decision. My feeling is that Imus will work again if he wants to. Like it or not the man has a shitload of contacts and they're not all going to bail on him like the weasels at CBS. I'm not a real big fan of talk radio and TV-a pox on all of their households.

If he works again it will be in a small market like New Mexico and he won't be syndicated.

[Eric]

Another take from Jason Whitlock (a hometown sportswriter):

Imus ‘fight’ is over money, fame

JASON WHITLOCK - The Kansas City Star

When I criticized his and Jesse Jackson’s irresponsible and divisive methods of seeking social justice Friday morning, Al Sharpton dismissed the attack by questioning my credibility to lodge a complaint.

“There are always guys that are not in the ring who want to call the fight,” Sharpton said. “You know that going in the ring; you’re going to have critics … You can’t satisfy people who are not in the ring.”

It’s a clever response. It ignores the obvious.

Jesse and Al don’t want anyone else in the ring. They’ve turned the fight for racial equality into a money and fame pit, a place to wrestle for camera time, “consulting” jobs and handshake deals that would make NCAA investigators blush in astonishment.

If people with a modicum of integrity were allowed in the ring and, more importantly, allowed to choose the opponents and the length of the battle, the money would run dry and Jesse and Al would be forced to look for real work.

Fighting bums is easy. Just look at what Jesse and Al James did to Don Imus, a washed-up, recovering drug addict. They knocked out Imus in a couple of rounds.

But at what cost, and what was the real purpose?

The young women on the Rutgers basketball team are now targets, the recipients of death threats and harassment, according to East Coast media reports.

I have no problem with young people engaging in battle and suffering severe consequences for a righteous cause. We need more of that. The people who really provided the energy for the civil rights movement were in college.

But getting in harm’s way over the ignorant utterances of a shock jock? Getting in harm’s way so a coach could have her moment to tell the world about the troubles she’s known? Getting in harm’s way so Al and Jesse James can flex their muscle by beating up another tomato can?

No way. It was irresponsible, self-indulgent and typical of the kind of domestic terrorism Sharpton and Jackson have come to specialize in.

Again, I am not defending Don Imus. I shed no tears over his comeuppance.

I simply question the motives of the people who pushed the hardest and shouted the loudest for Imus’ demise. Those people are now covering themselves with the fig leaf that they have a genuine interest in stopping the anti-black, women-objectifying language in rap music.

According to Sharpton, he’s been working on this issue for a number of years.

He’s clever. Fortunately, we’re not stupid. We just watched Jesse and Al sink their teeth in Imus’ rear end and not remove them until MSNBC and CBS put knives in Imus.

That tenacity and enthusiasm have been completely missing from their fight to clean up hip hop. Whether we like him or not, Minister Louis Farrakhan is the only leader with a consistent position on that issue. What we get from Jesse and Al are half-hearted public relations ploys, fights that end well before any blood is drawn. It’s a game, a game Jesse and Al have mastered.

You can create the appearance of putting up a fight, and that ensures no one else will enter the ring.

As an example, talk with black race-car drivers about their feelings about NASCAR’s dealings with Jesse Jackson. I have. Their belief is, if you sponsor the right and enough Rainbow Coalition events, you can avoid Jesse ever bringing his circus and negative spotlight to your organization.

You follow me?

The ring Jesse and Al are boxing in is just as corrupt as the one where Mike Tyson sparred.

In a one-year time span, under the guise of fighting for our equality, Jesse and Al contributed to putting Duke lacrosse players and Rutgers basketball players in harm’s way.

For what? Was Don Imus hiding weapons of mass destruction? Were the lacrosse players an international threat to escorts? Or maybe the truth just doesn’t matter to Jesse and Al when it comes to furthering their agenda.

Whatever integrity Jesse and Al say our president lacks, you have to wonder if they don’t have the exact same deficiency.

If there’s a fight to push Jesse and Al out of the ring, you can sign me up. They’re an embarrassment. They disgrace the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., a great man whose efforts caused division so that we could one day come together.

Jesse and Al cause division for profit, and demand from others the very things they’re unwilling to do — judge people on the content of their character and follow the truth wherever it leads, regardless of color.

Truth is on the side of the righteous. Jesse and Al operate as though they don’t believe in our righteousness. They are far more dangerous than Don Imus.

[Larry Kart]

I still think "de facto" would have been a much better choice. (Sorry, the misuse of a priori along with people who screw up "e.g." and "i.e." is a pet peeve.)

I bet the members of the Rutgers women's basketball team misuse a priori and screw up e.g. and i.e. all the time! Oh, the horrors! But you can't "peeve-out" on them now, can you?

I still think that it's a good idea to know the difference between correct and incorrect usage (and/or the evolution of usage) -- in this case or in any other. At least that allows you to make a choice or even to try to argue that the "correct" choice is not, or no longer is, correct. But what's the point of not caring that there is a longstanding, legitimate distinction when that knowledge is made available to you? And what, aside from the fact that this is an Imus thread, does the Rutgers women's basketball team have to do with it?

Edited April 15, 2007 by Larry Kart

[7/4]

Corzine dies and the blood is on Al's hands. Again.