pure awesome!

Indeed.

I think Whitlock means well, but he's really missing the point about the Imus issue and that article is pretty poorly written...

speaking as a white guy...

^ Pray tell, what is the real point on the Imus issue ?

Whitlock essentially dismisses the issue because bigger ones exist. The Imus controversy is an opportunity to educate and address multiple problem issues, which Whitlock is both embracing and demonizing at the same time. He should stop bitching about Imus' coverage and just get straight to the other issues.

Michael Richards' tirade was an actual affront to race-relations. Imus made the mistake of using popular vernacular while being an old white man, sort of a reverse 'driving while black' issue. I think what Don did was more of an assault on women in general, as he was comparing the teams based on looks. It's pretty sad when an over the hill radio hack can generate such touchy touchy, non existent race issue.

ya know, i dont think i had ever heard of this imus guy until this.
color me unconcerned.

I don't know if 'popular vernacular' is a good way to describe his comments. I lived a large portion of my life in Brooklyn and I'd never heard the phrase 'nappy-headed ho' on the street. Where is this phrase popular? There are 193,000 hits on Google for 'nappy-headed ho' and less than 970 if you take out -imus -rutgers -2007, and even then the top hits are referencing this current issue.

The assault was both against women and persons of color. The issue does exist.

This 'over the hill radio hack' goes back and forth between making disparaging comments like these, and then questioning prominent Senators about current political events the next day.

One of his biggest mistakes in this issue was when he was asked *days* later, what he thought an appropriate penance might be, apart from apologizing, and his response was along the lines 'I'm not sure, I haven't really thought about it'. He could've done something more proactive and positive, but his lack of response led to others choosing his penance.

Don't worry, there's another 'Imus' salivating to take his place...

'Nappy-headed ho's' may not be that popular yet, give us a little bit of time!

Another sensitive ponytail man

*yawns

Meshuggah.

Over the years, I'd heard how Imus was a dry witted radio genius, a 'revolutionary'. Well, maybe he was in the 70's, I couldn't really say. However, I did get to hear his show in the late 90's a few times and he seemed nothing more than a bitter, churlish, and whiney old guy.

^ But that is enough to send white guys who grew up munching bagels in Brooklyn into a tizzy.

Remember when it was okay to l♥v small children and furry things without the thought police breathing down your neck?

Bagels? You've got the wrong part of Brooklyn, Mr Ponytail Man.

now I know where you got this to post on MS, ghostie!

this story is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard.

I refuse to care about this just because the media is telling me to..

The appropriate punishment for Imus is to call him a 'smooth haired cracker'.

I doubt that the perpetually indignant would find that sufficient though.

Why is it that there is nary a white guy that gets all worked up at being called 'cracker'?

Why would I just laugh out loud if Al Sharpton called me 'the white devil'?

I think the reason is that the fundemental presumptions that those racist terms were grounded upon are just no longer true, and racist remarks are painless in so far as they are false; in so far as the truths of them have been accepted, and change for the better has been honestly embraced.

Al Sharpton's problem is that he knows that real racism is so rare that it is nearly extinct. This is a problem for him because without racism (real or perceived) he has to get a real job.

btw, when does do the good Reverends Sharpton and Jackson plan on apologizing to those Duke Lacrosse players?

You got it in one, freakbass.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media_and_public_opinion

Racism isn't that rare, but other than NYC cab drivers, it isn't very blatant these days.

Imus is an idiot, but ultimately I know exactly what he was thinking: 'Old White Guy talking like young black guy = funny!' He was wrong, apparently. Sucks for him -- he shouldn't have been fired, but Sharpton wanted to hold a press conference, so that's that...

Whitlock is right though -- why do we go around dropping the n-bomb on this site all the time? Why do we think it's funny? We do it because we're mimicking that 'hip hop culture' or whatever we're calling it these days. That same culture is basically telling black kids to be fuck-ups -- that going to jail and spreading herpes around the neighborhood are exactly what they should be doing. When a black man is successful, he doesn't go back to the old neighborhood and act like a role model for others, he abandons the community he came from...

Then again, I'm white, so nobody cares what I think... Keep on Pimpin' botha...

The bullshit gets deeper!

Don Imus is not a hip-hop artist or a poet. Hip-hop artists rap about what they see, hear and feel around them, their experience of the world.

:COUGHbullshitCOUGH:

What came first, The bling-bling or the egg?

'Al Sharpton's problem is that he knows that real racism is so rare that it is nearly extinct. '

Yeah fucking right. Go fucking walk around Durham and tell me racism isn't real. Or just look at any public health data and show me why blacks lag behind in every measurable category of individual welfare from malnutrition and infant mortality up to job quality, pay, etc. The institutional racism of the US, by institutional meaning NOT overt, is easy to see, its obvious and is further proven by the fucked up lines of argument and apology that get brought up whenever someone 'slips up' and says something offensive.

All that data would prolly look a lot different if you could only get those fukers to start saying 'ask' instead of 'axe'.

my point exactly

Racism is not as institutionalized in the US, as dumb is culturally institutionalized in those communities where folks 'lag behind in every measurable category of individual welfare from malnutrition and infant mortality up to job quality, pay, etc.'

liquor store... gun store... liquor store... gun store...

Again, my point exactly.

^ Yes. My point as well.