I never understood the point of driving him off the air. I certainly understood why "Nappy-Headed Hoes" was offensive. I also thought his "I wasn't the first one to say it!" defense was lame. And I did like Gwen Ifill calling out the wierdness of elite Washington embracing him. But all in all, I don't really know what was accomplished. Oh yeah. It gave us Morning Joe.
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I think the point was to try to draw a line around what public speech the culture finds acceptable. It's the same point when we tell someone that 'fag' and 'retarded' are perhaps not the most acceptable insults: not because of any one interaction, but because we're trying to move toward a culture in which 'fag' and 'retarded' are not seen as intrinsically insulting.
We are trying to move to a culture where the statement "you are sufficiently unintelligent that it has become a disability for you" is not an insult? I'm not sure that's right...
You know, there was a period during which I though Morning Joe was actually watchable. Not that it was good, but that it could be what was on while I made my lunch and got ready in the morning. Without question that period has passed for me.
On Imus, I also thought the whole situation was just a little bit weird. He just felt like the guy who could most easily be gotten. Obviously 'nappy-headed hoes' was offensive, but the whole ordeal seemed sort of like an impotent attempt to strike fear into the hearts of the radio stars that are far too big to take down.
On Morning Joe, I'll never forget a couple weeks ago when they prefaced the conversation by saying that there is still racism in America, but that no opposition to Obama could be due to race, it was principle. If the man runs for president, I worry about this country.
Yeah, I think you're right about Imus too. Again, not to say that nappy headed ho's wasn't offensive, but I'm a little more disturbed by the guy who thinks that black people are planning some sort of race war. And that's the guy who the GOP apologizes to and for.
"If the man runs for president, I worry about this country."
I can't stand Scarborough for a whole bunch of reasons I won't bother to list, but I have to say that if Scarborough was nominated by the GOP in 2012, I'd worry about the country a whole lot less than if an aggressively empty suit like Romney, a moron like Palin or a genial crank like Huckabee were running. I'm afraid that Scarborough - lame as he happens to be - is the best they've got. But I doubt - despite his tirelessly peddling economic fundamentalism - that he's acceptable because he's not bowing and scraping to the crazies enough.
He might be better than a lot of the GOP, and I know that he was in the House for a while, but on principle, someone with a tv show should not be the best person they can find. There has to be someone.
. . . the whole ordeal seemed sort of like an impotent attempt to strike fear into the hearts of the radio stars that are far too big to take down.
Indeed. Someone else compared the Imus takedown to a hunting trophy, but it was really more like natural selection. Imus was the slowest & feeblest of the pack of radio jackanapes and consequently he got picked off first.
But all in all, I don't really know what was accomplished.
Seems like a bunch of people just looking for hunting trophies, and it is very much a bipartisan sport (Van Jones being one of the latest). Large chunks of talk radio, cable shows and the blogosphere are powered by manufactured outrage. Much of what they are peddling is just about as shallow as the crap in the mainstream media that they spend so much time bashing.
What he said was worse than stupid; he should have apologized without being prompted, but this is America--shock jock schlock trash talk is recession proof, the fast info comfort food through which our everyday cares can be sublimated. They're all a bunch of arrogant asses who earn their pay mostly braying out their own lack of center of gravity. Scarborough is just a more sub-urbane version.
It didn't let us know what the acceptable bounds of discourse are (he and his compatriots said much worse before that comment); it let people know what level of ratings are acceptable before somebody is called on the carpet by their corporate masters.
Since Rupert Murdoch is Fox News' corporate master, naturally, such rules don't apply as he runs it like his own little vanity project. The only unacceptable hate speech they would find actionable would have been suggesting that President Bush was not the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being somebody had ever known in their lives.
Don Imus had and has the right to say pretty much whatever he wants. But no one has the right to get paid. My daughter, who is Black, was about the same age as the basketball players and yes, we were both outraged by Imus' comments. And yes, I don't think so-called "musicians" have the right to get paid for their own brand of hateful misogyny.
BTW, this was not a one-off by Imus. When Gwen Ifill was named a White correspondent, Imus noted, on the air, that now they were letting cleaning women cover the news from the WH press office. That is why, dispite requests from the program and senior WH staff, you never saw or heard Condi Rice on "The Don Imus Show."
People waste time and resources on pointless causes like canning Imus because hopping onto the bandwagon is easy and yields immediate, tangible results.
Real, significant social/political action often takes decades of committted work, and is too complex to boil down to getting 1 or 2 villified, high profile targets fired.
I still like Imus. He's a no-holds-barred interviewer--not intimidated by anyone. Since he went off MSNBC, I've watched Morning Joe, and while Joe is much less revolting than when he had an evening show, I find the morning show tedious. So, I've been looking forward to Imus's return.
Except -- this morning I discovered that Comcast does not include Fox Business Channel in its digital basic plan. That's right -- if you want to watch the lowest rated business channel, you have to pay extra. Sigh. So I turned back to Banjo Boy (Imus's nickname for Joe). For the time being.
Don Imus stopped being something I listened to a long time ago (just like NPR got boring after ten years too) but try to keep in mind that he's the same guy who solemnly played the I have a dream speech in full and uninterrupted every year and played portions of Malcolm X's speeches every few days as far back as I can remember.
He savaged almost everyone and said worse things than that which he got fired for almost everyday. The person he and his crew savaged the most was of course himself. He and his crew mocked him and ridiculed him endlessly.
It isn't funny that he finally got in trouble for it, its funny that it took a hundred thousands hypocrites so long to finally take offense. He and his politics are at times mercurial but the best bet is that he radically to the left and plays off his past and persona to puncture the pompous disposition of so many.
He got caught in his own peculiar trap but not as badly as all of the people shouting for his head.
He is of the era where humorists being able to say anything was politically important (and his case profitable). He'd been fired repeatedly earlier in his career and its pretty funny that it happened again in the bush era. He is more like mark Twain than like Lenny Bruce, and more like Richard Pryor and John Stewart than like anyone else who comes to mind. Its still funny that he got fired and its still funny that he didn't get fired every day because on any slow news day he could've.
Its stupid to make comedians say sorry because they are doing thier job- puncturing our vain images of ourselves.
If someone is supposed to lose their job because they say a corny joke on air, shouldn't all TV personalities be fired? :)
If you put what Imus said in the mouth of some black person on a sitcom, no one would have blinked. Some old white guy says it and they want to shut down all news channels. To me, the whole issue was just as ridiculous as the Janet Jackson "tittygate."
People are under the assumption that jokes are supposed to be all-inclusive. Really, they're supposed to shine a light on society, and that includes good and bad speech.
It's worth remembering a couple of things about the Imus-Rutgers incident.
First, the team and the university never called for him to be fired or to resign. They merely asked for (and got) a meeting with him so that they could hear him explain to them why he said what he said. After the meeting the team agreed to accept his apology, proving - at least to me - that they were bigger people (figuratively - at least a couple of them were actually bigger, too) than him.
Second, some people are characterizing what he said as a joke. Here's a transcript:
IMUS: So, I watched the basketball game last night between -- a little bit of Rutgers and Tennessee, the women's final.
ROSENBERG: Yeah, Tennessee won last night -- seventh championship for [Tennessee coach] Pat Summitt, I-Man. They beat Rutgers by 13 points.
IMUS: That's some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and --
McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos.
IMUS: That's some nappy-headed hos there. I'm gonna tell you that now, man, that's some -- woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like -- kinda like -- I don't know.
McGUIRK: A Spike Lee thing.
IMUS: Yeah.
McGUIRK: The Jigaboos vs. the Wannabes -- that movie that he had.
IMUS: Yeah, it was a tough --
McCORD: Do The Right Thing.
McGUIRK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
IMUS: I don't know if I'd have wanted to beat Rutgers or not, but they did, right?
ROSENBERG: It was a tough watch. The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the Toronto Raptors.
IMUS: Well, I guess, yeah.
RUFFINO: Only tougher.
McGUIRK: The [Memphis] Grizzlies would be more appropriate.
So, in the span of about 100 words, he and his producer referred to the Rutgers women's team (all but two of them black) as "nappy-headed hos," "hard core hos," "rough girls" and impliedly, by comparison to the Toronto Raptors, as mannish and unfeminine. I think that covers the racist, sexist and homophobic trifecta pretty neatly.
Yeah, because reading text is EXACTLY the same as hearing people talk. You get the exact same sense of where someone's coming from if you read what they said. I heard the actual audio and they were making fun of the Rutgers female basketball players.
Oh, BTW, you think that these bunch of white guys are the only people to ever say that female basketball players look mannish? Of course it's not flattering or politically correct, but I don't think this type of talk stops with the Imuses of the world.
I've seen the video, and yeah, they were laughing. It really doesn't change much about what they said or what it was intended to convey. Put more bluntly, they weren't really kidding. As you say, they were making fun of the Rutgers female basketball players. They thought it was funny because they thought it was true. They didn't care how cruel they were being or that the team had done nothing at all to deserve it.
For what it's worth, I thought the way the basketball team handled it was letter perfect. I saw the press conference live, and the grace with which the team responded was remarkable. And so long as they were willing to accept his apology I wasn't going to say he should be forced off the air.
Lest we forget, in practice the two things that forced MSNBC to fire him were that advertisers were dropping like flies and that the company faced a near-revolt from its employees, many of whom were utterly mortified by this incident. It wasn't pressure from Rutgers or Al Sharpton (who the university kept away from the team) or Jesse Jackson.
He was removed from the air because he was talking about women’s college athletes. You are allowed to call Condi Rice, Oprah Winfrey, or Star Jones a Nappy Headed Ho. You do that and your just a humorist going for tasteless laugh..But you start singling out 5 specific black college coeds for ridicule and you’re a guy with issues.
There is a basic social contract that the most of the media (including shock jock comedians) work under. With increased fame/celebrity comes decreased rights to privacy and increased “tasteless” ridicule. The opposite is also true…your anonymous civilian has more rights to privacy and shouldn’t be subject to same type of jokes as celebrity. When shock jock violates those rules he looses his job.
DJ Star can joke about giving (fellow media figure) Dj Envy a golden shower, it’s just a shock jock being tasteless. When Dj Star says he fantasizes about peeing on Dj Envy’s (civilian) daughter it’s completely off limits and Dj Star looses his job.
That’s the way the system works. Traditionally men’s college and high school sports have been on the fine line between celebrity and civilian status. But as a rule it’s outside of what’s allowed. Rush Limbaugh talks college football. But I can’t imagine Limbaugh ever using his Kingfish voice for Auburn RB Ben Tate. If Tate makes it to the NFL, Limbaugh can then use an Amos and Andy voice for Tate, Donovan Mcnab, Cornel West, Congressman John Lewis or whoever. It’s just a shock jock making a tasteless joke, no one complains. And if they do complain, he can accuse them of being humorless. But college sports walks a line as the stars are closer to civilian status and this is doubly true when it comes to women’s amateur athletics.
You are allowed to talk mess about ANYONE! There's no rule that says if you speak ill of "regular people" then you get fired! My BIGGEST problem with that whole debacle is that the public had no say in this. Imus' network was threatened with boycotts from some special interest group.
AGAIN, the Star & Bucwild show got fired because of their bosses' decision, not anything else. It was up to them to keep him or dump him, no matter how foul he was. These people get fired because of the heat the companied feel they are getting, not out of some moral contract.
Speaking to randy_khan let's go back to Rutgers. What the players said in response to Imus was nothing. They had to say something, because it was about them. You think they gave a damn about this guy on MSNBC? Grace? Um, they could twiddle their thumbs and come out looking better in that situation than Imus! They didn't even have to make a statement and they would come off more gracefully than Imus.
The way this should have gone is that listeners should have called in, gave Imus a piece of their mind, then stopped listening.
So you are happy to let some group deem what shows are worthy for air and what aren't? Corporations piss their pants whenever special interest groups even hint at hitting their advertisers. Part of the blame lies in these corporations to bowing to pressure, but I HATE the power these special interest groups have. You counteract the bullies by bullying and threatening them?
Where was the conversation? If you think that the best solution to a problem is burying it, I can't stand with you. I think that people who were "offended" missed an opportunity to jack Imus' air time and have a live discussion on race, a discussion I think America needs to have more often. Instead, it's more foolishness, like a burying of the n-word.
There is no legal rule, but there is a basic social contract.
Not sure how having a guy who violated that contract removed from the air is burial of issue.
I think the Valley club in Philladelphia also suggested that a “conversation” would be better than “burying” the issue by having a state panel investigate a discrimination charge.
What does the "social contract" say about entertainers? Imus may have been on sports radio and he may have had political guests, but Imus' show was (and now is) a comedy show. To me, if you take someone like Imus off the air for what he said, anyone who says comments like that, even if it's in bad taste, offensive, whatever, shouldn't even be able to make a living off entertainment to begin with, right?
You think comedians don't pick on the "regular folk" in clubs every damn day? My whole side in this is that we want everyone to step too lightly as to not hurt feelings, but if we duct tape everyone's mouth when they say something we don't like, will there be anyone left to speak in the end?
Here's a piece no one cared about. Meh, whatever, probably the most enjoyable article I did during my stint at TIME. Premiered a month before I got laid-off. The nail in the coffin? Ya think?
Here's me going after Al. I didn't so much have a problem with him, as I had a problem with media acting like this dude was the go-to guy for everything black.
This was my first real story at time. I was writing for the Business section, a real change of direction for me. At any rate, it's about Wal-Mart's attempts to colonize the inner-city. As much as I enjoyed this piece, I mostly enjoyed going out to Chicago, which is a beautiful, beautiful city.
This a piece I did about the cops just outside our nation capitol, in Prince George's County, a few years back. I wanted to offer a counter to the dumb, conventional wisdom that if you paint your police force black, you could eradicate police brutality. In fact, Prince George's--one of the richest, blackest counties in the country--also had one of the most brutal police force's in the country.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I think the point was to try to draw a line around what public speech the culture finds acceptable. It's the same point when we tell someone that 'fag' and 'retarded' are perhaps not the most acceptable insults: not because of any one interaction, but because we're trying to move toward a culture in which 'fag' and 'retarded' are not seen as intrinsically insulting.
We are trying to move to a culture where the statement "you are sufficiently unintelligent that it has become a disability for you" is not an insult? I'm not sure that's right...
I'm not sure that's right, either, but it's not what I said.
You know, there was a period during which I though Morning Joe was actually watchable. Not that it was good, but that it could be what was on while I made my lunch and got ready in the morning. Without question that period has passed for me.
On Imus, I also thought the whole situation was just a little bit weird. He just felt like the guy who could most easily be gotten. Obviously 'nappy-headed hoes' was offensive, but the whole ordeal seemed sort of like an impotent attempt to strike fear into the hearts of the radio stars that are far too big to take down.
On Morning Joe, I'll never forget a couple weeks ago when they prefaced the conversation by saying that there is still racism in America, but that no opposition to Obama could be due to race, it was principle. If the man runs for president, I worry about this country.
Yeah, I think you're right about Imus too. Again, not to say that nappy headed ho's wasn't offensive, but I'm a little more disturbed by the guy who thinks that black people are planning some sort of race war. And that's the guy who the GOP apologizes to and for.
"If the man runs for president, I worry about this country."
I can't stand Scarborough for a whole bunch of reasons I won't bother to list, but I have to say that if Scarborough was nominated by the GOP in 2012, I'd worry about the country a whole lot less than if an aggressively empty suit like Romney, a moron like Palin or a genial crank like Huckabee were running. I'm afraid that Scarborough - lame as he happens to be - is the best they've got. But I doubt - despite his tirelessly peddling economic fundamentalism - that he's acceptable because he's not bowing and scraping to the crazies enough.
He might be better than a lot of the GOP, and I know that he was in the House for a while, but on principle, someone with a tv show should not be the best person they can find. There has to be someone.
. . . the whole ordeal seemed sort of like an impotent attempt to strike fear into the hearts of the radio stars that are far too big to take down.
Indeed. Someone else compared the Imus takedown to a hunting trophy, but it was really more like natural selection. Imus was the slowest & feeblest of the pack of radio jackanapes and consequently he got picked off first.
Still, that crazy fur Imus wears on his head would one hell of a wall-mount. And it would never get naps in it.
But all in all, I don't really know what was accomplished.
Seems like a bunch of people just looking for hunting trophies, and it is very much a bipartisan sport (Van Jones being one of the latest). Large chunks of talk radio, cable shows and the blogosphere are powered by manufactured outrage. Much of what they are peddling is just about as shallow as the crap in the mainstream media that they spend so much time bashing.
What he said was worse than stupid; he should have apologized without being prompted, but this is America--shock jock schlock trash talk is recession proof, the fast info comfort food through which our everyday cares can be sublimated. They're all a bunch of arrogant asses who earn their pay mostly braying out their own lack of center of gravity. Scarborough is just a more sub-urbane version.
Exactly!
What was most offensive to me about Imus' trash talk was calling these accomplished women whores. Not so concerned about the hairdos.
It didn't let us know what the acceptable bounds of discourse are (he and his compatriots said much worse before that comment); it let people know what level of ratings are acceptable before somebody is called on the carpet by their corporate masters.
Since Rupert Murdoch is Fox News' corporate master, naturally, such rules don't apply as he runs it like his own little vanity project. The only unacceptable hate speech they would find actionable would have been suggesting that President Bush was not the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being somebody had ever known in their lives.
Sorry, when Snoop calls you out for disrespecting black women you've pretty much forfeited your rights to be heard in public.
Don Imus had and has the right to say pretty much whatever he wants. But no one has the right to get paid. My daughter, who is Black, was about the same age as the basketball players and yes, we were both outraged by Imus' comments. And yes, I don't think so-called "musicians" have the right to get paid for their own brand of hateful misogyny.
BTW, this was not a one-off by Imus. When Gwen Ifill was named a White correspondent, Imus noted, on the air, that now they were letting cleaning women cover the news from the WH press office. That is why, dispite requests from the program and senior WH staff, you never saw or heard Condi Rice on "The Don Imus Show."
People waste time and resources on pointless causes like canning Imus because hopping onto the bandwagon is easy and yields immediate, tangible results.
Real, significant social/political action often takes decades of committted work, and is too complex to boil down to getting 1 or 2 villified, high profile targets fired.
I still like Imus. He's a no-holds-barred interviewer--not intimidated by anyone. Since he went off MSNBC, I've watched Morning Joe, and while Joe is much less revolting than when he had an evening show, I find the morning show tedious. So, I've been looking forward to Imus's return.
Except -- this morning I discovered that Comcast does not include Fox Business Channel in its digital basic plan. That's right -- if you want to watch the lowest rated business channel, you have to pay extra. Sigh. So I turned back to Banjo Boy (Imus's nickname for Joe). For the time being.
Don Imus stopped being something I listened to a long time ago (just like NPR got boring after ten years too) but try to keep in mind that he's the same guy who solemnly played the I have a dream speech in full and uninterrupted every year and played portions of Malcolm X's speeches every few days as far back as I can remember.
He savaged almost everyone and said worse things than that which he got fired for almost everyday. The person he and his crew savaged the most was of course himself. He and his crew mocked him and ridiculed him endlessly.
It isn't funny that he finally got in trouble for it, its funny that it took a hundred thousands hypocrites so long to finally take offense. He and his politics are at times mercurial but the best bet is that he radically to the left and plays off his past and persona to puncture the pompous disposition of so many.
He got caught in his own peculiar trap but not as badly as all of the people shouting for his head.
He is of the era where humorists being able to say anything was politically important (and his case profitable). He'd been fired repeatedly earlier in his career and its pretty funny that it happened again in the bush era. He is more like mark Twain than like Lenny Bruce, and more like Richard Pryor and John Stewart than like anyone else who comes to mind. Its still funny that he got fired and its still funny that he didn't get fired every day because on any slow news day he could've.
Its stupid to make comedians say sorry because they are doing thier job- puncturing our vain images of ourselves.
TNC, I agree on all your points.
If someone is supposed to lose their job because they say a corny joke on air, shouldn't all TV personalities be fired? :)
If you put what Imus said in the mouth of some black person on a sitcom, no one would have blinked. Some old white guy says it and they want to shut down all news channels. To me, the whole issue was just as ridiculous as the Janet Jackson "tittygate."
People are under the assumption that jokes are supposed to be all-inclusive. Really, they're supposed to shine a light on society, and that includes good and bad speech.
It's worth remembering a couple of things about the Imus-Rutgers incident.
First, the team and the university never called for him to be fired or to resign. They merely asked for (and got) a meeting with him so that they could hear him explain to them why he said what he said. After the meeting the team agreed to accept his apology, proving - at least to me - that they were bigger people (figuratively - at least a couple of them were actually bigger, too) than him.
Second, some people are characterizing what he said as a joke. Here's a transcript:
IMUS: So, I watched the basketball game last night between -- a little bit of Rutgers and Tennessee, the women's final.
ROSENBERG: Yeah, Tennessee won last night -- seventh championship for [Tennessee coach] Pat Summitt, I-Man. They beat Rutgers by 13 points.
IMUS: That's some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and --
McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos.
IMUS: That's some nappy-headed hos there. I'm gonna tell you that now, man, that's some -- woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like -- kinda like -- I don't know.
McGUIRK: A Spike Lee thing.
IMUS: Yeah.
McGUIRK: The Jigaboos vs. the Wannabes -- that movie that he had.
IMUS: Yeah, it was a tough --
McCORD: Do The Right Thing.
McGUIRK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
IMUS: I don't know if I'd have wanted to beat Rutgers or not, but they did, right?
ROSENBERG: It was a tough watch. The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the Toronto Raptors.
IMUS: Well, I guess, yeah.
RUFFINO: Only tougher.
McGUIRK: The [Memphis] Grizzlies would be more appropriate.
So, in the span of about 100 words, he and his producer referred to the Rutgers women's team (all but two of them black) as "nappy-headed hos," "hard core hos," "rough girls" and impliedly, by comparison to the Toronto Raptors, as mannish and unfeminine. I think that covers the racist, sexist and homophobic trifecta pretty neatly.
Yeah, because reading text is EXACTLY the same as hearing people talk. You get the exact same sense of where someone's coming from if you read what they said. I heard the actual audio and they were making fun of the Rutgers female basketball players.
Oh, BTW, you think that these bunch of white guys are the only people to ever say that female basketball players look mannish? Of course it's not flattering or politically correct, but I don't think this type of talk stops with the Imuses of the world.
I've seen the video, and yeah, they were laughing. It really doesn't change much about what they said or what it was intended to convey. Put more bluntly, they weren't really kidding. As you say, they were making fun of the Rutgers female basketball players. They thought it was funny because they thought it was true. They didn't care how cruel they were being or that the team had done nothing at all to deserve it.
For what it's worth, I thought the way the basketball team handled it was letter perfect. I saw the press conference live, and the grace with which the team responded was remarkable. And so long as they were willing to accept his apology I wasn't going to say he should be forced off the air.
Lest we forget, in practice the two things that forced MSNBC to fire him were that advertisers were dropping like flies and that the company faced a near-revolt from its employees, many of whom were utterly mortified by this incident. It wasn't pressure from Rutgers or Al Sharpton (who the university kept away from the team) or Jesse Jackson.
He was removed from the air because he was talking about women’s college athletes. You are allowed to call Condi Rice, Oprah Winfrey, or Star Jones a Nappy Headed Ho. You do that and your just a humorist going for tasteless laugh..But you start singling out 5 specific black college coeds for ridicule and you’re a guy with issues.
There is a basic social contract that the most of the media (including shock jock comedians) work under. With increased fame/celebrity comes decreased rights to privacy and increased “tasteless” ridicule. The opposite is also true…your anonymous civilian has more rights to privacy and shouldn’t be subject to same type of jokes as celebrity. When shock jock violates those rules he looses his job.
DJ Star can joke about giving (fellow media figure) Dj Envy a golden shower, it’s just a shock jock being tasteless. When Dj Star says he fantasizes about peeing on Dj Envy’s (civilian) daughter it’s completely off limits and Dj Star looses his job.
That’s the way the system works. Traditionally men’s college and high school sports have been on the fine line between celebrity and civilian status. But as a rule it’s outside of what’s allowed. Rush Limbaugh talks college football. But I can’t imagine Limbaugh ever using his Kingfish voice for Auburn RB Ben Tate. If Tate makes it to the NFL, Limbaugh can then use an Amos and Andy voice for Tate, Donovan Mcnab, Cornel West, Congressman John Lewis or whoever. It’s just a shock jock making a tasteless joke, no one complains. And if they do complain, he can accuse them of being humorless. But college sports walks a line as the stars are closer to civilian status and this is doubly true when it comes to women’s amateur athletics.
You are allowed to talk mess about ANYONE! There's no rule that says if you speak ill of "regular people" then you get fired! My BIGGEST problem with that whole debacle is that the public had no say in this. Imus' network was threatened with boycotts from some special interest group.
AGAIN, the Star & Bucwild show got fired because of their bosses' decision, not anything else. It was up to them to keep him or dump him, no matter how foul he was. These people get fired because of the heat the companied feel they are getting, not out of some moral contract.
Speaking to randy_khan let's go back to Rutgers. What the players said in response to Imus was nothing. They had to say something, because it was about them. You think they gave a damn about this guy on MSNBC? Grace? Um, they could twiddle their thumbs and come out looking better in that situation than Imus! They didn't even have to make a statement and they would come off more gracefully than Imus.
The way this should have gone is that listeners should have called in, gave Imus a piece of their mind, then stopped listening.
So you are happy to let some group deem what shows are worthy for air and what aren't? Corporations piss their pants whenever special interest groups even hint at hitting their advertisers. Part of the blame lies in these corporations to bowing to pressure, but I HATE the power these special interest groups have. You counteract the bullies by bullying and threatening them?
Where was the conversation? If you think that the best solution to a problem is burying it, I can't stand with you. I think that people who were "offended" missed an opportunity to jack Imus' air time and have a live discussion on race, a discussion I think America needs to have more often. Instead, it's more foolishness, like a burying of the n-word.
There is no legal rule, but there is a basic social contract.
Not sure how having a guy who violated that contract removed from the air is burial of issue.
I think the Valley club in Philladelphia also suggested that a “conversation” would be better than “burying” the issue by having a state panel investigate a discrimination charge.
What does the "social contract" say about entertainers? Imus may have been on sports radio and he may have had political guests, but Imus' show was (and now is) a comedy show. To me, if you take someone like Imus off the air for what he said, anyone who says comments like that, even if it's in bad taste, offensive, whatever, shouldn't even be able to make a living off entertainment to begin with, right?
You think comedians don't pick on the "regular folk" in clubs every damn day? My whole side in this is that we want everyone to step too lightly as to not hurt feelings, but if we duct tape everyone's mouth when they say something we don't like, will there be anyone left to speak in the end?