The one and only time I got a chance to hear Imus was on the Larry King show about a year ago. I was deeply impressed with his charitable endeavors and his compensating acerbic verbal presentation. He clearly appeared to be uncomfortable with any suggestion that he was a good guy, and that rough tough style was a smoke screen.
Well fast forward to a couple of days ago. **Monstro ** let us know what an asshole he was. What??? Well my kneejerk reaction based on the “facts” presented at that time and particularly the use of the word “jigaboo” made me sympathetic to her.
Thankfully, I decided to do some research.
First off, the jigaboo/wannabee thing was a reference to a popular black inspired movie! I guess Imus gets no points for being attentive to black culture and recognizing a parrallel.
Secondly, I had a chance to look at the “cute” Tennessee" team which based on all the outrage I assumed was white. Guess what ? Except for maybe one of them, they are all black !!! How do you get racism when one group of black girls are “nappy headed hoes” with tattoos and another group of black girls are cute ?
And there is no question, the Tennessee girls look way better than the Rutger girls. So you might say that we white men are sexist, because we are talking about the attractiveness of these female athletes. Well let me tell you that it was an extremely popular black man who first made an issue of good looks in sport without anyone batting an eyelash…
If there is any fault here, go blame it on Spike Lee and Casius Clay. As for Sharpton calling for the termination of Imus, you might want to ask him, to roll up his sleave. I’m sure that Imus isn’t wasting his money on vanity when he could put his money to the good of others.
This wasn’t a one-time thing. He’s been doing it for decades, he even made a promise to be more racially sensitive years ago, but comments like this (and worse ones he’s made in the past) is merely SOP for him. He only apologized because people were finally tired of putting up with his behavior, and I have zero sympathy for him. MSNBC did the right thing.
As I’ve said before, I just can’t relate to people who let these kinds of comments get under their skin. The women in question spoke out today (or was it yesterday) and they all sounded like they had been emotionally scarred for the rest of their lives.
I too belong to a minority group and am sometimes the target of hate language much worse than being called a nappy headed hoe, and I just shake my head sadly and feel a little bit sorry for the commentator. If I’m really bothered, I might think to myself “man, what a jerk” and I get right on with my life.
But I refuse to let hate speech get under my skin where it can turn rotten and cause me to get pissed off and open pit threads so I can partake in a exercise of misery-loves-company.
Just so I have this right, lets summarize. Calling a bunch of 18-21 year old girls who just completed an incredible achievement a bunch of “nappy headed ho’s” is OK, and the real problem lies with Al Sharpton, Spike Lee, and “Cassius Clay”?
Why would you assume they were white? That’s really weird. And what does who was cuter have to do with basketball?
He was insulting a bunch of young college girls that play basketball. They aren’t public figures, they’re just your average college 18-20 year old college kid that he chose to ridicule about their looks? How would you feel? It was completely unnecessary and just mean spirited. I don’t see it as just racist but sexist as well. Why try to demean these young women and insult them?
Don’t forget Eddie Murphy, David Chappelle, Stevie Wonder, and the Sugarhill Gang. Armstrong Williams, too. Can’t forget him. Oh yeah and the black man who plays the trumpet in front of the L’Enfant Plaza metro station.
Mean-spirited, sure, but the case has been presented as largely a race issue, as ArchiveGuy noted:
Although the facts clearly show that it was not a racist statement, the usual suspects are trying to make it one, for their own publicity and political missions. Further, the public appearance by the team seemed to me to be a clear case of milking emotional support far past what is warranted by the facts. He’s a jerk, but he’s being set up as the Antichrist or something.
OK, so I’m no longer hip, if I ever was, but I can’t consider it acceptable when some dissipated asshole on the radio gets to call a bunch of college athletes “ho’s” without rebuke when they apparently are not, in point of fact, ho’s at all.
Dude, despite your apparent claim that Cassius Clay was the first attractive person in sports, which I must be misunderstanding because it comes off as a bizarre statement, what the fuck does cute have to do with playing college basketball? Also, where does this crap merchant, who, let’s face it, ain’t exactly an oil painting himself, get off hurling gratuitous insults based on the supposed appearance of a group of people who, near as I can tell, have done nothing to earn such insult?
And there we have it, folks. The real issue is the professional outragers, and the very large number of white folk who like little better than to bitch about how unfair all those POs are and how unreasonably guilty they try to make all us good white folk feel. Hey, they don’t do all that much for me either, but here’s an idea: if your conscience doesn’t trouble you, why do you assume they’re talking about you?
