It wasn’t censorship, any more than what happened to, say, the Dixie Chicks was censorship. People who disagree with what happened *claim * it’s censorship, same as when people who didn’t like what happened to the Dixie Chicks *claimed * it was censorship. Doesn’t make it so.
They are doing something wrong. Their place smells. It bothers me.
Perfect parallel to what I’m saying.
That was wrong too, and I couldn’t name a Dixie Chicks song, though I think they won a grammy or something for their song about being vindicated in that whole debacle, no?
Again, I’m not claiming that what happened to the Dixie Chicks was illegal. Just immoral.
Imus is an asshole, but the uproar over this is insane. So an asshole said an asshole statement, get over it!!
This isn’t a matter of bad PR, it’s a matter of better PR. This Imus scandal is huge right now. Everyone’s talking about it. Any ad guy worth his salt is going to want to figure out a way to tap into that. He’s going to want to somehow attach his company to the discussion. How’s he going to do that? He can have GM come out in favor of Imus’s comments, which makes the company look racist and sexist and so forth. Or they can come out against Imus’s statements, so everyone thinks, “Hey, GM doesn’t hate black women’s basketball players. Good for them.” Taking a public stand against Imus increases consumer goodwill towards the company. Keeping the status quo neither increases nor decreases goodwill. It’s pretty easy to see which is the smart move for GM.
It wasn’t immoral, it was stupid. No one is required to listen to the Dixie Chicks. No one is required to broadcast Dixie Chicks’ music. Burning their CDs because they insulted George Bush was fucking retarded, but it wasn’t immoral, and it wasn’t censorship.
I see your point, but I think you’d have a hard time convincing me that GM (was it GM?) pulls out for anything other than economic reasons.
I’m fine with calling it “stupid”.
Sure, it’s economic, but it’s not because they’re thinking, “If we do X, we’ll lose money,” it’s because they’re thinking, “If we do Y, we’ll get even more money!” They not responding to a boycott (which, so far as I’m aware, doesn’t even exist at this point) they’re jumping on a bandwagon.
I don’t see what makes it extortion. Extortion is saying “If you don’t give me $10000, then I’m going to set your house on fire.” Extortion is not saying “If you don’t stop hanging around this jackass, I’m not going to be your friend anymore.”
Sharpton did not take away MSNBC’s rights. He didn’t coerce them or threaten them with lawsuits. He only made the argument that despite their CYA statement about Imus’s views not representive of the company, their continued support of Imus would be viewed by many as tacit approval of Imus’s opinions. Just like a friend of a bully can be viewed as a tacit supporter of the bully’s activities. Was Sharpton so evil for stating the obvious?
Even if Sharpton had tried to lead a boycott against CBS, NBC, and the multitude of advertisers involved, it would have fallen flat. Everyone knows this. I’m pretty sure fear of a boycott didn’t drive anyone’s decision. It was PR. Corporations have always kowtowed to PR, and that’s never going to change as long as captalism is the name of the game.
I guess I’m not seeing how you are divorcing PR from losing money. As far as I’m concerned corporation X doesn’t give two shits about PR if it doesn’t affect them economically.
But you said that maybe you were just making it all up:
If the restaurant really is doing something wrong, then you have every right to complain about it, to the Board of Health or to anybody else you can get to listen to you.
If you’re making shit up about them because you just don’t personally like Indian food, then you’re being a giant asshole.
In my book, publicly broadcasting racist and sexist slurs as deliberate gratuitous insults to the physical appearance of inoffensive college sports players counts as doing something wrong. I have no problem with people publicly complaining about it, or feeling that the perpetrator ought to be fired. (Although, as I said, I don’t think Sharpton’s complaints in particular are motivated by anything more than self-aggrandizing opportunism.) Publicly expressing outrage about something you genuinely consider outrageously unethical does not make you a giant asshole.
And that goes for people who consider it outrageously unethical for country music singers to say unkind things about the President, too. I personally have more sympathy with one form of outrage than the other, but I still wouldn’t call Dixie Chicks-bashers “giant assholes” for publicly expressing outrage about something that sincerely outrages them. (I might privately think they were ordinary-size assholes for getting outraged about such a thing in the first place, but that would not affect my opinion as to whether they were entitled to express their outrage publicly.)
Exactly. I can complain to the Board of Health. Sharpton can complain to the FCC, wherein he will be promptly told that there were no violations of FCC regulations.
I might be making things up and I might not be. Doesn’t matter. No one can prove whether my personal taste for Indian food is good or bad. I can stand on the corner and rail about the evil things their food does to my colon to my heart’s content whether I’m making it up or not. I’m an asshole either way because I’m putting my personal tastes ahead of anyone else’s in the world.
Wow, you guys like to jump all over people and misinterpret posts big time. If any of you all would fucking read my post instead of assuming what I am saying after scanning it you would notice that, talk about being seriously lazy or clueless.
I don’t know Imus, never heard of him until he was on the news. I SPECIFICALLY stated that I had issues with his racism, and I wasn’t responding to a post that was taking umbrage with his racism (and yes, he is obviously a racist pig), I was pointing out, very clearly mind you, that firing somebody for being an asshole isn’t cool, calling people he doesn’t know whores shouldn’t be a fire-able offense, I said that racism should be though.
Now what the fuck are you smoking? Do you like putting words in my mouth? Does it make you feel special to twist my words and get on your soapbox and fight those straw men?
Are you a racist and sexist? I’m not, and I don’t listen to comedians or talk show hosts that are. There are plenty of acerbic comedians that are “assholes” or make fun of people that don’t participate in the filth that bigotry is. Like Lewis Black, Dennis Miller, Dennis Leary, etc.
Some of the other posts might be defending his racism, but if you notice, I didn’t reference them, quote them, or make any sort of statements that could tie me into any of them. If you three or four idiots would take time out of your knee jerking to actually comprehend a post and read it, you would have noticed that.
Go fuck yourselves.
Like this fucking idiot.
In my opinion, the reaction to this Imus thing is way beyond what is justified, and is much more bothersome than Imus’ comment itself. Let me try to explain why I feel this way.
The most fundamental reason that I feel for Imus is that the exchange in question is the kind of thing that could plausibly be said by me and my friends if we happened to be critiquing the looks of these girls. We’re all quite liberal and enlightened, and the comments would be wrapped in so many layers of irony and meta-irony that even we wouldn’t know why it’s funny. It wouldn’t be a racist or sexist thing; rather, it might just be a funny way to rag on someone. The world is more interesting with extreme words in it, even if they’re said only in jest.
Of course, we wouldn’t talk like this among strangers (and we certainly wouldn’t put it out on the radio), so there’s no doubt that Imus screwed up. But it doesn’t seem like there was any racist or malicious intent behind his words. It really seems like he was just goofing around on the air and went a bit too far with a joke. He makes a living saying rude things, but this rude thing happened to involve race and sex in a particular way.
I don’t think I’m doing a very good job of explaining this, but it irks me that so many people are working up so much outrage because Don Imus made a joke that resembles something a hateful person might say (particularly when that resemblance is part of the joke). I want to be able to make risqué jokes, and I want to be able to hear them, too. The crusade against Imus is a crusade to make the world a little more polite, but also a little more boring and stifling, and in this particular case I think we all lose in that trade-off. (That this crusade is headed up by the likes of Al Sharpton makes it doubly odious.)
As an aside, I hate the way the Rutgers team is handling this. They would have earned a million Fonzi Points by acting like reacting to Don Imus was completely beneath them – i.e., by implying (or saying outright) that he’s an irrelevant fossil, and that they don’t care to waste their time addressing the babblings of this particular stegosaurus.
The fact that they are, instead, indulging in press conferences and talk shows (apparently without any monetary compensation) strikes me as a kind of attention-whoring.
If he hadn’t been fired Rev Al would have gone after the sponsors- picketing GM, calling for a boycott of their cars, etc. Whether any of that would have any affect on their sales is debatable, but the sponsors surely knew this was coming. Its not like they can’t now sponsor some other show, even a show with better ratings. GM is not going to lose out by not having the Imus to run their ads. But they could not predict the result of a backlash against them, which is why I think they bolted-nothing to gain, something to lose.
Eat shit, you weeping cocksore.
Well said.
I think anyone who goes to a comedy club regularly knows what you’re saying. I’ve been to predominantly black clubs and seen the patrons roar at black jokes when told by people of any race. Same at whiter clubs. But, I think when you have an audience that includes people who can’t find such humor funny (and those who pretend not to…), you’re going to lose the ability to do that.
(Preemptively: I’m NOT talking about Michael Richards! That was NOT comedy. That was what real vitriol looks like.)
There was a black comic on one of the news shows yesterday who cracked me up yesterday. He was saying that he wanted Imus to stay on the air so that he could continue to make fun of white people with impunity.