Getting back to the revised OP, do we hold MSNBC responsible for ignoring the repeated racist, sexist, homophobic comments that have been made almost daily on his show for the last five years? It seems to me they’re very conveniently trying to play The Responsible Good Guy because the Rutgers team members got more press and potentially cost them money versus taking a stand against Imus’s repeated use of terms that are considered offensive by nearly everyone. Did they hire him and just forget to tune in for all those years?
I agree, but Imus has him there specifically to feed him straight lines so that McGuirck can be the one actually saying the most offensive stuff, and not I-man. If McGuirk were just another personality hired by the station and working with Imus, it would be one thing, but he is supposedly hand picked by Imus to deliver racist comments.
I also agree if he had called them ugly bitches or some such, with no specific reference to color, he would have only aroused the ire of feminists and would probably not been fired.
Not to hijack this thread too much, but:
I can’t stand this - and this is not a direct indictment of you, FriarTed, this applies to everyone who has thought/said this. I know I’ve seen this sentiment echoed in many threads on this subject, and in the national media, and I think it’s total bullshit.
“Oh, well, worse things will probably happen to you, so stop making such a big deal out of this one thing!”
Look, you might lose your job. You might get hooked on drugs. Your relatives might die a fiery death in a freak motorcycle accident. You might get cancer. You might lose a limb or an eye. You might develop a mental disorder and forget who you are.
But just because some of that shit might happen to you, that doesn’t mean that you can’t slap a guy who grabs your ass on the subway, because if that “is the worst thing that ever happens to [you], [you] should thank God for such a blessed life.”
Stop blaming the victims - even if what happened to them wasn’t all that bad in the great scheme of things. These girls played like almost-Champions, and all that anyone is going to remember is that they were a bunch of “nappy-headed hos.”* When you consider the fact that this is probably the shining achievement of their 18 year old lives, I consider what Imus did to be pretty damn despicable and shameworthy.
- also, while I’m hijacking - I saw an interesting article the other day about how the major news networks/papers were struggling with how to pluralize “ho.” Is it hos? Is it hoes? Should we put in an extraneous apostrophe just to appease the masses?!
I was not aware that that was his primary role. He is the producer, after all, and spends a lot of time lining up guests and doing other programming duties. I know nothing about any other aspect of his life; does he have pet causes he works for? Does he do anything except make people feel they need to scrape him off their shoes? He’s a hideous person, though admittedly I only know of this side of his personality. And that’s quite enough for me.
Was it?!? Damn, the perils of memory! In that case, my deepest apologies to Jessie Jackson, because for like fifteen years now, I’ve been kinda put-off about that!
However, I’m a little taken aback by all the people saying it was funny…if it’s done in a comedic fashion, racism is funny? Isn’t that was Imus’s defense is?!? Wasn’t that Micheal Richards’s defense, too? I didn’t buy it in either case, and I don’t know why it’s funny for Eddie Murphy to sing a song about Hymietown, either.
What Gregory asked about Jesse Jackson wasn’t really fair. The incident was over twenty years ago, was indeed isolated, and didn’t really hurt anyone.
Far better to address Sharpton’s record in this regard, since his attitude toward “interlopers” and “diamond merchants” have led to riots that have left people dead. And yet he sees fit to jump into the middle of this controversy.
That makes no sense. You just said he gets a pass on public figures. Sport stars are public figures. These girls are written about in sports columns in their hometowns all the time. And other trade sport papers i’m sure. They are seen by hundreds, if not thousands, during a game. I would say they are public figures.
But ignoring that for a minute… If these girls played in the WNBA and he called them “nappy headed ho’s” that would be fine?
When someone points out the ridiculousness of racism, as was apparent in the Garrett Morris/Julian Bond bit, it’s funny and effective. If Eddie Murphy highlighted Jesse Jackson’s misstep to make him look bad in a funny way, I think that’s funny, too. The problem I have with Imus is that he wants to be taken seriously with all his High Places guests, but still wants to make deliberately degrading comments about so many groups. He’s either a news show or a comedy show; he can’t be both and be taken seriously at either. Seeing as he has the most influential guests of anyone, including Larry King, I fail to see how he can expect anyone to classify his show as comedy. Nor can I understand why all those big-shots would want to appear on a show that is so mean-spirited and unfunny.
Sports stars? Ok, quick - name 5 women’s college basketball players. Shit, you can use the names of the kids from Rutgers if you want. How’d you do?
It’s pretty silly to say that they are public figures, when the main reason they play basketball is NOT to put themselves in the public, but to pay for their education. If they are public figures at all, they are VERY limited public figures. Britney Spears, by way of a counter-example, has a publicist, and actually uses her celebrity to draw crowds. That’s a public figure.
So how would you then classify something like the “Daily Show”? Jon Stewart has had some heavyweights stop by for interviews. Can he not be funny any more? I’m sure from a right-wingers standpoint he is mean-spirited.
who draws that line?
Ah, the difference is that Murphy actually WAS trying to be funny. In his case it was satire, which not everybody finds funny. In the Imus and Richards cases, the claims of humor came after the fact, as part of their backpedaling. In their cases the humor claims were lies.
I’m having a hard time figuring out why people can’t discuss whether the remarks were sexist/racist based on what Imus said. period. Forget Sharpton, Jesse and everyone else.
My son used to pull this crap when he was 6 and got in trouble and said “Johnny did it too.” It didn’t fly then and I can’t believe people are allowing themselves to get caught up in the blame game. From where I’m sitting if you call a young college basketball player a nappy headed ho, it’s racist.
Actually I have never heard the show, I just read the follwing excerpt:
As reported by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert,[8] in the course of a 1998 interview with Mike Wallace on the CBS News 60 Minutes program, Imus allegedly told a producer off-camera that McGuirk was hired to perform racial humor:
"In a ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Don Imus broadcast in July 1998, Mike Wallace said of the ‘Imus in the Morning’ program, ‘It’s dirty and sometimes racist.’
"Mr. Imus then said: ‘Give me an example. Give me one example of one racist incident.’ To which Mr. Wallace replied, ‘You told Tom Anderson, the producer, in your car, coming home, that Bernard McGuirk is there to do nigger jokes.’
"Mr. Imus said, ‘Well, I’ve nev — I never use that word.’
"Mr. Wallace then turned to Mr. Anderson, his producer. ‘Tom,’ he said.
"‘I’m right here,’ said Mr. Anderson.
"Mr. Imus then said to Mr. Anderson, ‘Did I use that word?’
"Mr. Anderson said, ‘I recall you using that word.’
"‘Oh, O.K.,’ said Mr. Imus. ‘Well, then I used that word. But I mean — of course, that was an off-the-record conversation. But ——’
“‘The hell it was,’ said Mr. Wallace.”
And womens basketball players in a major conference are absolutely positively public figures. The games are on TV, they are on sports websites, etc. I can’t name any male or female college basketball players, but I can’t name very many pro players either. And I would hardly call them victims either. Rape victim, stabbing victim…insult victim?
I understand that some people would be upset, and others not, what I don’t get is the vigor with which this incident is being pursued. After all, mean and insulting things are said on local and national broadcasts all the time, either in songs or in commentary and I don’t see equal outrage. Does this have to with Imus himself? Is he some sort of lighting rod for critics?
You are right of course. Let’s look at some more people that can be racially and sexually insulted on national radio: the winner of the Intel Science Fair, participants in the Special Olympics, competitors in the National Cheerleading competition, and the winner of the National Spelling Bee (boy did you see the ass on that 12 year old, she’ll get some good money peddling that in the street. Spell “half and half” for me baby).
Wow. That’s news to me. I stand corrected. The thing is (and I did watch regularly for a couple years), when Imus is talking about guest line-ups, etc., he will ask Bernard on camera if so-and-so is coming, and McGuirck will tell him who is running late, who cancelled, who is filling in, etc. He’s definitely got more of a role than simply making racist jokes (though the jokes are what stand out in my mind).
I don’t get the distinction between insulting a public figure and someone who plays sports on tv. I have seen plenty of mean things said in tv about people whose only crime is maybe be fat or uneducated, as an example, and no outrage followed. From what I see it seems that Imus has a lot of enemies, well earned it seems, who have used this latest incident to push for his downfall. To clarify it doesn’t seem like the incident itself is the main cause of the outrage, it seems like it’s about Imus.
Well, I’m tired of people like Imus saying hate-filled things while pretending they are funny. I have a healthy sense of humor and can tell the difference between a joke and a vicious statement. Don Imus has gotten away with it for decades and now the chickens have FINALLY begun to come home to roost.
I’m not the one who placed Sharpton right in the middle of this whole mess. If I was dragging his name into a conversation where he had no role at all, you’d have a point, Caridwen.
What Imus said was objectively wrong. But with Sharpton in the conversation as well, it is necessary to discuss his own objective wrongs, which he has never answered for in any substantial way.
Not racial, but what about the Star Wars Kid who was a non-public figure but subjected to mass ridicule over a private event? Keith Olbermann played that just last week, years later. In this case people really were causing massive embarrassment and problems for a teen who took a lot of shit before that probably. Is that OK, since it was about him being a stupid clumsy fatass and not racist or sexist?