:eek: Ever meet a stereotype you didn’t like?
MSNBC and CBS should be afraid of all those rioting angry white people, then. After all, whites have committed more riots than any other group in the US. And they riot even when they are happy.
Plus, whites have most of the guns.
The idea that blacks would riot over Imus’s comments is absolutely, positively ludicrous.
I’ve never met a stereotype. Have you?
If you are trying to call me a name please have the backbone to do so directly. This is the Pit. You can do that. I can take it.
Monstro, I agree that it is very far fetched. But the concept that an executive might entertain a ludicrous idea and be influenced by it … that is not so ludicrous. Unlikely maybe, but not ludicrous.
Well, we do live in a racist society, so maybe you’re right.
Maybe white executives think boycott + black people = rioting in the streets. But just because they might have this opinion doesn’t mean it’s valid or is one that merits sympathy. It deserves to be mocked, not treated seriously.
I’m sorry if it seemed like I was asking you to back down. I merely pointed out that jazz, while whitewashed, still retains it’s hardcore fans. I took your meaning to be that only after it was whitewashed would a black genre become popular.
What does catching grief in the media over drug use have to do with it? I thought you were talking about actual changes in the genre itself, rather than how people reacted to the musicians. Did I misunderstand you?
Sonny Rollins is still alive. Ornette Coleman is still alive. I really don’t see it as validation just because some jazz greats are dead and buried. Even if that were the case, that is not what you said.
Thanks for calling me an intellectual. 
I don’t think anyone here would seriously argue with the fact that society fell apart when we started letting negroes ride at the front of the bus.
Incidentally, Mozilla’s spell-checker doesn’t have the word “negro”, but interestingly it does have the word “nigger”.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. The Montgomery Bus Boycott ended in December, 1956, but society did not begin to fall apart until two thirds of the New York City major league baseball teams moved to California in 1958.
To clear that up, I’m unabashedly left-leaning.
Heh. I think what I meant to say is that once all the radical, threatening, in-your-face artists (and the money) leave the genre, then it can indeed become accepted and appreciated. I think it has a lot to do with young Black men having money and power, and how that freaks White America out. Because of course the number of hip hop artists who can be reduced to simply foul words and misogyny is quite small. But somehow it seems they’re everywhere, corrupting the minds of White kids.
If hip hop recedes in popularity, nobody’s going to care what people are rapping about. When there are acceptable, middle-class White faces that represent the genre, it becomes a lot safer. There haven’t been any. Not to mention the lack of commercially successful female artists. Hip hop to date has been commercially urban, young Black men. Even the exceptions (Ice Cube, for example) have had to play up their street credentials. Run-DMC, middle-class Black kids from Queens, even tried to stage a comeback as “hard” street-smart MCs.
Rollins and Coleman are up in years. I don’t know much about their politics, I must admit.
Since you seem to have knowledge, can you walk a guy through the term hip hop vs. rap. Are they the same? Is there overlap?
I feel like a jackass asking, because I’m not so old that I probably shouldn’t know.
Hey monstro: constantly trying to confuse actions with speech and ideas is, in the context the argument I’m making, flat out dishonest of you.
So, I’m gonna hold off on responding to you until you simply stop lying about what I’m saying, ok? There’s just no point in wasting time composing out a post only to get, as a response, a bunch of incoherent digressions.
You clearly don’t get it. I think I’ve explained myself pretty clearly, but it’s not getting through, and I really do think it’s because at base you aren’t a liberal in any meaningful sense: you’re just defending your tribe (made all the more obvious by the reference to “conservative and libertarian” types, which is pretty silly considering my politics). And honestly? That sort of makes me sad.
No it means that no one is interested in what you have to say.
As I recall NYC was more pissed at Mayor Dinkins for not acting sooner to stop the riots than Sharpton for stirring the pot.
[RIGHT]Bold=CMC[/RIGHT]Unless someone can cite that the Rev started stirring said pot in the minutes following Cato’s death, it’s kinda hard to blame him for what happened in the hours following that death.
Moreover where’s the proof that Lemrick Nelson, or the mob he joined, had heard Sharpton before he stabbed Rosenbaum?
Can you blame Sharpton for a riot that started before he showed up?
CMC fnord!
If your schtick is pissing people off, you should expect to get fired. Frequently. All the great professional assholes had to bounce from one job to another, and work venues that they thought were beneath them.
Translation: Your questions make me think, and I don’t know what to say that doesn’t concede the lameness of my position. Thus, I’m going to accuse you of presenting lies and distortion, trusting that the reader won’t wade back through the thread to find the truth.
I’ve asked you questions in an attempt to get you to clarify your more ridiculous statements, but in your responses you only dig yourself deeper and deeper while dodging my arguments. How is it my fault that you can’t seem to post something that is reasonable and non-contradictory? Don’t blame me because you are a weak debater.
Boycotting is at the heart of liberalism, fella. You may not consider yourself conservative, but you sure aren’t talking like a real liberal. I have little respect for an American who doesn’t appreciate the usefulness of the boycott and then has the audacity to proclaim the sacredness of free speech. You’re full of contradictions which for some reason you’re unable to see.
If what you’re saying isn’t getting to me, first consider that you are an ineffective communicator. I’ve noticed when people are flailing in an argument, they resort to this defense. Sometimes it applies, but not here. The topic at hand is not that complicated, and your posts aren’t that profound.
So only interesting free speech should get airtime? Weren’t you the one who said that sponsors should support all kinds of free speech, even if they don’t like it? Doesn’t that mean sponsors should support the uninteresting stuff too?
crickets
Oops, I’m sorry. I forgot you’re not taking any more questions from me.
Well the posts on this subject have lead me to lose respect for some Monstro and sadly so.
It seems that those who endorse the rightousness of calling for Imus’s firing and of threatening boycotts to accomplish that goal have taken the position that anyone who disagrees must be racist or at least not a “real” liberal.
While Caridwen isn’t straight-up enough to say it out and out, (s)he is certainly happy to imply that I must be a racist because I’m not signing onto the apparent correct party line.
You are wanting to dismiss any of of us who feel that boycotts to impose a point a view and used to limit the sorts of speech in the marketplace of ideas as not be “real liberals.”
I endorsed your position in your first thread. And I still understand your position now even though I strongly disagree. But if being a “real liberal” in your book means giving up my ability to think that bullying others into silence is wrong, then I am happy to have you think what you will and I will be forced to think of you with somewhat less respect as well. And yes, IMHO, bullying is what this is all about. Imus’s words bullied the Rutger athletes (although I still cannot believe that they are so delicate of flowers as to be completely devastated by one has-been’s throw-away insult. Hell, at that age I was called “a Jew-boy Kike” and I didn’t wilt, they gotta be tougher than I was, ‘cause I wasn’t so tough), in turn Imus was bullied into silence by the media circus, and in these threads we see attempts to bully those who disagree with the party line with insulting implications about them. Posters who usually are very good at understanding others’ points of view, even if they disagree, are misrrepresenting what is said and assuming ugly intent.
The stridency being evinced in these threads, the willingness, even eagerness, to lump all of those who disagree with the tactics used and the huge outrage expressed in one bucket of ugliness, the immediate overstatement of what others are saying (reading “sometimes” or “maybe” and “perhaps” as “always” and “equals” and “stereotypes”) is very disappointing. And very sad.
I’m sorry? I don’t know where exactly we disagree, especially since I haven’t wavered in my position since the beginning of this thread.
Anyone who takes the stand that a boycott is bad, without qualification, is not a liberal in my eyes. Boycotting free speech is not the same thing as silencing free speech, which is what Apos would have us believe.
We live in a strange bizarro world indeed where it’s perfectly fine for a person to say “BLACKS ARE NAPPY-HEADED JIBAGOOS” while the really bad guys are the ones who say “ANYONE WHO ENDORSES THIS JERK IS NO FRIEND OF MINE.” Apos doesn’t seem to understand that this statement is all a boycott is based on. It doesn’t involve cutting of mic cords or tongues.
I have low tolerance for exaggerations and hyperbole in a somewhat serious debate.
Apos thinks there is a difference between boycotting a business based on its actions and boycotting a business based on the speech it endorses. How is it different? Does not speech reflect one’s values, which are then reflected in actions? If I choose to boycott a company that uses slave labor, how is this different than choosing to boycott a company that sponsors informercials selling slaves?
I asked Apos a hypothetical question about a talcum powder company sponsoring a KKK rally. Would he judge a group of people harshly for boycotting this company? He never gave me an answer. Why is that? Why is it that when I ask a question that goes to the heart of his argument, he backs down? Is it because it’s easier to pretend that I’m distorting his arguments than it is to really think about the points I’m making?
So if my questions and arguments make you lose respect for me, so be it. I’m not posting here to get respect from strangers.
It occurred to me last night that all this talk about Sharpton doing something is a strawman anyway. I watched Dateline yesterday, and the show laid out the timeline of the post-Imus fall-out at NBC headquarters. Sharpton was mentioned for about twenty seconds, and only in the context of Imus’s apology. No mention was made of a boycott threat from his or Jesse’s end.
You know who influenced NBC’s ultimate decision? Its own employees, particularly its black staffers. It’s clear to me that while NBC received external pressure from its own viewing audience, its hand was actually moved from within. As it should be in a conscientious organization.
But the whiny crybabies continue to talk about “special interest groups” and Sharpton, because that’s the only script they know.
I have a job interview today. Let’s hope that when I talk about where I went to school, the interviewer doesn’t think about all this hoopla.
Monstro I can’t say about this thread, but you certainly have changed your tune since you opened up your first thread.
No one here, including Apos to the best of my ability to review this, has said that “a boycott is bad, without qualification.” That is the sort of exaggeration that doesn’t belong in a serious debate.
Some of us do see a difference between using a boycott to stop actions that we think should be illegal but are not (like slave labor), and to stop people from saying things that we do not like (short of actual hate speech), especially when no one is forcing the rest of us to listen.
The question of the day is why? It’s not just about saying things “we do not like”. It’s about a specific type of behavior. It seems you’re treating Imus’ language as some type of protected, unimpeachable thing just because it counts as speech. I choose to see as a behavior. A behavior that has consequences just like any other behavior.
In the GD thread, I explained to you why your use of the word censorship has no place in this discussion. This is not about squelching unpopular opinions. Imus lost his job because he showed an inability to speak in a manner befitting of a radio personality that works for a reputable news network. His pissed too many people off, and that’s obviously not what MSNBC is in business for.
My restaurant analogy in the GD thread was apropos. A waiter who calls customers nasty ethnic slurs may serve a niche crowd who enjoys that type of service. That doesn’t mean its unethical for the other customers in the restaurant to complain to the management and annouce that they are unwilling to continue their patronage as long as that waiter is employed. It’s actually a polite way of giving the management a heads-up before actually voting with their dollars and possibly sending that restaurant into the toilet. The management can now make an informed choice: keep a waiter who attracts a handful of customers who enjoys that offensive behavior and risk losing a whole lot more customers, or fire that waiter and retain most of their customers, while possibly losing the handful of others.
Do you think, in this restaurant analogy, it is ethically wrong for customers to complain about this hypothetical waiter, even if those customers have the option of either not patronizing that restaurant or requesting another server? Let’s say the customers choose to not patronize the restaurant–because they are bothered that the restaurant apparently sees nothing wrong with employing an overtly racist server–and the restaurant goes bankrupt because of that. Does that mean the customers are at fault, or is it the restaurant’s responsibility?
Let’s say a lot of customers inform the management “Hey, look, I enjoy the food here and I like this place, but FYI, I’m not going to continue to pay money to an establishment that caters to racism”, and the restaurant therefore chooses to fire the water. Is this wrong?
I guess what I’m asking is, at what point does the customers’ actions go from okay to contemptible in your book. In the Imus situation, MSNBC and CBC, who are analogous to the restaurant management, received a lot of complaints from viewers. They then decided that Imus was not worth the trouble of keeping on board, especially when some heavy tippers (i.e. corporate sponsors) also decided Imus was a bad waiter. So Imus got fired.
Dealing with just this illustration, and speaking in real-world terms, please explain what is so ethically egregious about this outcome. I’m sincerely trying to understand your view, honestly, but a disconnect keeps happening somewhere in between “it’s okay to be offended” and “its unethical to censor Imus”.
(Didn’t want to quote your whole thread)
Anyway, thanks for your even handed post there, and I think it deserves an equally level headed response. You have some interesting questions in there that I’d like to answer, but probably shouldn’t from work. I will answer your questions when I can because I feel like we’ve been talking past each other and aren’t actually that far off, though I’m certain that we will ultimately disagree.
There you go again, assuming any reaction by a Black person is one of violence, when all I was asking for was clarification from a poster about his own statements and all I was doing was refuting said statements, using recorded cites that do not support his assertions.
It’s obvious you’re a man responding from a position of assumed privilege, with an opinion formed in a another time and place. It is also obvious that have no realistic clue as to historical events that might have made Blacks angry enough to violently riot; if that, indeed, has been the case in the last 40 years.
Oh, by the way. Responding in threads to only one post, without being informed as to what was said before you got here, can lead to others believing you’re posting from a place of ignorance. Just saying is all.