I'm sure by now you know about the Tennessee State Senate staffer who e-mailed this "historical keepsake photo" of the 44 U.S. presidents, depicting Barack Obama as a "spook." (She says she sent it to the wrong list ... and the right list would have been, what ... David Duke, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and you mama???)
Well, should Sheri Goforth, the staffer in question, be fired? Welll... the Nashville Scene says she's just a symptom of a greater, nastier cause:
Think about the people she works for as a secretary. Since January alone, they've accused Barack Obama of being a foreign national. They've accused the federal government of turning socialist. They've tried to assert their sovereignty from the United States, playing the part of ingrate welfare client. (Last I heard, Tennessee gets $1.23 back for every dollar it kicks to the feds in taxes.)
They profess love for Jesus, but won't listen to what he has to say. They've tried to kill prenatal care, women's health clinics, and pre-kindergarten funding. They've even attempted to reject federal stimulus money for the unemployed. But they have tried to put a gun in every bar, park and playground. Jesus would have liked that.
These are the people Goforth works for. Is it any wonder she believes what she does? But to fire her only picks off a middle-aged lady. It does nothing to heal the greater wound, which is composed by the creeps, racists, half-wits and professional victims who make up the Tennessee legislature.
Trapped in Dixie: SC GOP activist compares first lady to gorilla
Dissuade any remaining southern blacks from even thinking about the Republican Party? Check. Disparage the first lady by comparing her to a gorilla? Check, and double check:
Irony alert: Fellow white supremacist on Von Brunn
Via ThinkP, a friend of James Von Brunn worries that the white supremacist movement might have a bit of an image problem...
An acquaintance of von Brunn’s, John de Nugent, “who describes himself as a white separatist,” told the Post that von Brunn had been paranoid recently that “someone in Washington” cut his Social Security after “looking at his Web site.” De Nugent also tried to distance von Brunn from what he deemed “the responsible white separatist community”:
De Nugent called von Brunn a genius but described the shooting as the act of “a loner and a hothead.”
“The responsible white separatist community condemns this,” he said. “It makes us look bad.”
And apparently, Nugent is too radical even for some white supremacy websites. Wow.
Remainders: Tom Tancredo's bad company, and the increasingly crazy right
Apparently Tom Tancredo, who Migra Matters accuses of having been too mentally unstable to serve during Vietnam (ouch!) and who apparently lives in fear of a "Latino KKK," gets flagged by of all people, Little Green Footballs, for continuing to employ (jointly with our good friend Pat Buchanan) a racist nut who attacked a black woman on the streets of D.C. (Apparently, the LGF crowd doesn't much like "paleocons," especially Buchanan -- they think they're fascists.) The LGF crew even helpfully linked to the assailant, Marcus Epstein's rap sheet. So who is Epstein? He's a Vdare contributor (and why not?) and apparently, is vying for Michelle Malkin to become the "world's darkest white supremacist." According to LGF, he "uses his Jewish-Korean background" as a cover for white supremacist activity. ... and he's a drinker... Way to go, Tancredo!
Meanwhile, how long before John Cornyn has to apologize to Rush for saying he disagrees with his attacks on Sotomayor? And can elected Republicans walk back the lunacy before it's too late?
Al-Qaida's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, broadcasts his outfit's colossal insecurities by trying to insult Barack Obama. First, the insult:
Ayman al-Zawahri said in the message, which appeared on militant Web sites, that Obama is "the direct opposite of honorable black Americans" like Malcolm X, the 1960s African-American rights leader.
In al-Qaida's first response to Obama's victory, al-Zawahri also called the president-elect _ along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice _ "house Negroes."
Speaking in Arabic, al-Zawahri uses the term "abeed al-beit," which literally translates as "house slaves." But al-Qaida supplied English subtitles of his speech that included the translation as "house Negroes."
The message also includes old footage of speeches by Malcolm X in which he explains the term, saying black slaves who worked in their white masters' house were more servile than those who worked in the fields. Malcolm X used the term to criticize black leaders he accused of not standing up to whites.
Two racist twits in a cave: Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri
Except that Malcom X ultimately became a regular old Sunni Muslim who even when he was in the Nation would have been disgusted by al-Qaida, for reasons that will be explained later in the post. First, some analysis, from the National Security Network:
Experts agree that the release of a new tape by Al Qaeda’s second in command Ayman al-Zawahri indicates that Al Qaeda feels threatened and is on its heels after Obama’s resounding victory. President-elect Obama’s diverse background, along with his pledge to reverse many of the policies and approaches of the Bush administration on issues such as detentions at Guantanamo, torture and the war in Iraq has served to dramatically improve America’s image, especially in the Muslim world. Counter-terrorism expert Richard Clarke explained, “Most of all, by returning to American values the world admires, Obama sets al Qaeda back enormously in the battle of ideas, the ideological struggle which determines whether al Qaeda will continue to have significant support in the Islamic world.” Having thrived on the decline in America’s world image, the impact of Obama’s victory provides a direct challenge to Al Qaeda’s negative depiction of the United States. Additionally, Obama’s emphasis on shifting US attention from Iraq to Afghanistan represents a direct physical threat to Al Qaeda’s leadership. America’s improved global image and the new administration’s focus on Afghanistan threatens Al Qaeda and has led to what experts see as a confused, racist, and off-kilter response reflective of an organization on the defensive.
Now to the main reason Malcolm X would have despised al-Qaida (in addition to the fact that Malcolm was an American,) and more importantly, the reasons these booboos are doing themselves more harm than good in the parts of the world they hope to build in: turns out al-Qaida and its leaders, including Osama bin Laden, have a history of racial bigotry, specifically directed at black people...
... by indulging in divisive labels such as "House Slave" or "House Negro", Dr. al-Zawahiri has strayed from being merely disrespectful into being entirely disreputable and dishonorable. By playing the race card so quickly and so brazenly, al-Zawahiri may end up causing backlash against Al-Qaida in the very constituencies he is seeking to woo. It also invites the question, how is this a legitimate criticism coming from the senior leadership of Al-Qaida, which is dominated almost solely by Arab Egyptians and Saudis? Moreover, what would Malcolm X have thought of an organization, Al-Qaida, that at one time offered a higher salary to its Arab membership than its Black African adherents? One might imagine that the financial guru responsible for overseeing this inequitable arrangement -- Egyptian national Mustafa Abu al-Yazid -- would have been punished for his bigoted actions. In fact, al-Yazid has since been promoted to the number 3 position in Al-Qaida, right behind Dr. al-Zawahiri. This is hardly the type of image that Al-Qaida would like to see proliferate in critical regions adjacent to jihadi conflict zones in Somalia, Algeria, Morocco, and Mauritania.
Maybe someone should get Adam Gadahn, the American yahoo who hangs out with the Qaida and apparently thinks he can channel Malcolm X for them (and who I'm praying is a double agent for his sake, otherwise he's a complete horse's ass...) an unabridged history of al-Qaida. And then there are Osama bin Laden's own attitudes on race (plus Whitney Houston and "color mixing,") as related by his former Sudanese mistress:
Kola Boof, 37, the Sudanese poet and novelist who claims to have once been bin Laden's sex slave, writes in her autobiography, "Diary of a Lost Girl," which is excerpted in the September Harper's: "He told me Whitney Houston was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen."
...Boof says bin Laden couldn't stop talking about his favorite singer and had lofty plans for her. "He said he wanted to give [her] a mansion that he owned in a suburb of Khartoum. He explained to me that to possess Whitney, he would be willing to break his color rule and make her one of his wives."
... But as much as bin Laden adored Houston, he was also dismissive of black women. "African women are only good for a man's lower pleasures," bin Laden supposedly said. "What need do you have for a womb?"
And Boof writes that the 9/11 terror mastermind detested her hairstyle. "Why do you wear your hair braided?" he fumed, telling her that "only monkeys" did that.
If you don't believe that there is racism in the world, read this article
Or rather, scroll down to the comments. Trust me, you will be aghast... The article is about Radio One sibling TV One's decision to cover this year's Democratic convention, but not the GOP's. There are commenters in the thread who are literally erupting with rage, with some accusing black Americans of being racist, and then calling all blacks "niggers" in the same paragraph... unbefreakinglievable. Here's a small sampling:
Racist bastards - There will never be racial harmony because of th black attitude. I have had 200 black men work for me and they all say they would never work for a black man because they are mostly crooks.
who cares what this crappy channel covers? i guess i'll have to look elswhere for old epidodes of 227 and sanford and son. the black community has decided to segreagate itself and i have no issue with simply ignoring their concerns. from rev. wright to al sharpton and other angry negros, it's easy to pass them by. other minorities are racing past the black community in so many areas of american life, black americans are once again relegated to front porch minstrels and performers. where's daddy? school? just hanging back waiting for a government repairations check has become a way of life. bye bye black america. soon, nobody will care what you do.
Posted by: JD |
WELL FIRST OF ALL NOT ALL BLACKS ARE DEM. AS STATED MANY TIMES BELOW....JUST THE ONES THAT WANT THE GOVERMENT TO SUPPORT THEM. ALSO THIS IS NOT A BLACK NET WORK ITS A NIGGER ONE...YEA I SAID IT AND I AM NOT GOING TO KISS JESSIE JACKSONS ASS FOR IT EITHER.
F- SEAN COMBS AND F- MR. WEST YOU WANT PEOPLE TO QUIT BEING RACIST WELL STOP DOING STUFF LIKE THE BLACK NATIONAL ANTHUM....BLACK NATION MONTH...BET...BALCK NATIONAL COLEDGE FUND YALL ARE JUST AS RACIST AS THE PEOPLE THAT YOU POINT AT.
RACISTS!!!!!!!!!!!! I am a honkey if I do not vote for barack because he is black I am a racist! If 95% of the blacks vote for barack only because he is black they are racist! If we knew the problems the blacks would have caused we should have picked our own damn cotton!
It strikes me tonight that most Americans don't know one another very well. If you live in the suburbs, or in certain very "blue state" environments, it's easy to forget just how much abject, naked racism still exists in this country. I suppose sometimes it's good to be reminded. My kids and I had breakfast in a bagel diner in a very white area north of Fort Lauderdale this morning, and though my kids were thankfully oblivious to it, I was very much aware of how "uncomfortable" many of the people in that diner were with our presence. Even the waitress was stiff as a board, until we spoke up, and proved to be quite pleasant and well spoken ... you know ... "not those kind ..." By the end, she was very relievedly complimenting me on my children's impeccable manners. And so it goes. I guess it's a good thing they didn't pull an O'Reilly and scream "m-en-effer, I wan't some m-en-effin' iced tea!" These little junkets, not all that far from home, are always an interesting experience, and one that most white people cannot understand, just as black people (myself included), fail to appreciate the rage many whites feel at what they consider to be blacks' special place in America. (We don't think it's so special, by the way...)
By the way, permit me to testify that TV On'e decision has nothing to do with "reverse racism" or some special love for Barack Obama. The folks who own and run Radio One/TV One are Republicans (I know this first-hand ... I used to work for them) and those at the very top ... if you know what I mean ... have no love for the Senator from Illinois.
This is about ratings, and about business. The foundering former media giant sold off its talk radio assets literally a couple of months before the Obama phenomenon took off, including both stations and national (as well as local) talent. They don't even have Joe Madison anymore. Meanwhile, they've got this cable TV network with very little programming on offer, and BAM! Along comes an easy ratings opportunity. Ask yourself: what would you do if you were the CEO, catering to an audience that is 93% black in a year that features the first black man to become the nominee of a major political party? Conversely, what would covering the GOP convention merit TV One, besides a few nights of abysmal ratings (more abysmal than usual...)
Let's try it another way.... Would Bravo, which is also an entertainment network, cover either political convention? Nope. But if Charlie Crist were to become the vice presidential nominee, Bravo might think twice... You see? It's called "narrowcasting."
...that it took a white folk rock artist to pen the protest song that captures the indignity and shame of the Jena 6 situation. With proper big ups to Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Life Jennings, Bun B and other true hip-hop artists who definitely made some noise, and Ice Cube, who showed up at the protests in Setember, here is the first real protest song about Jena, Louisiana, by John Mellencamp:
Meanwhile, the mayor of Jena takes offense:
"The town of Jena has for months been mischaracterized in the media and portrayed as the epicenter of hatred, racism and a place where justice is denied," Jena Mayor Murphy R. McMillin wrote in a statement on town letterhead faxed on Friday to The Associated Press.
He said he had previously stayed quiet, hoping that the town's courtesy to people who have visited over the past year would speak for itself. "However, the Mellencamp video is so inflammatory, so defamatory, that a line has been crossed and enough is enough."
No, Mr. Mayor, it's not quite enough. Your town, deservedly, will enter the history books alongside Money, Mississippi and Birmingham, Alabama, not for actual lynchings and violence, but for the same scandalous racism and segregationist attitudes that made those prior horrors possible. One can easily imagine the white townsfolk of Jena standing around a tree at an old fashioned "picnic," watching the strange fruit swinging from the tree. Hyperbole? Maybe. But recall that it was ordinary people -- presumably "good, churchgoing" people, who perpetrated the horrors of America's past. They didn't think they were particularly remarkable, or the nooses particularly offensive.
The big difference is, they would have lynched the Jena 6 outright, rather than charging them with murder. And the white students who hung nooses, broke bottles over the heads of a young Black man and pulled a gun on him, wouldn't have been hidden from public view, they would have been celebrated in Jena.
Hopefully sometime soon, we'll have some hip-hop and R&B protest music to immortalize you further.
The widely villified district attorney for LaSalle Parish, Louisiana pens an op-ed in the New York Times, explaining why he didn't charge the students who hung three nooses from a tree in Jena, Louisiana with a crime, and why he felt that the attack on white student Justin Barker, who he claims had nothing to do with the noose incident, was a case of attempted murder. Walters writes that the hanging of nooses broke no law under the Louisiana criminal code. And he quotes the African-American U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana in stating that it did not qualify as a hate crime, and that furthermore, no stand-alone hate crim law exists under Louisiana law. Fair enough. He then adds this:
Last week, a reporter asked me whether, if I had it to do over, I would do anything differently. I didn’t think of it at the time, but the answer is yes. I would have done a better job of explaining that the offenses of Dec. 4, 2006, did not stem from a “schoolyard fight” as it has been commonly described in the news media and by critics.
Conjure the image of schoolboys fighting: they exchange words, clench fists, throw punches, wrestle in the dirt until classmates or teachers pull them apart. Of course that would not be aggravated second-degree battery, which is what the attackers are now charged with. (Five of the defendants were originally charged with attempted second-degree murder.) But that’s not what happened at Jena High School.
The victim in this crime, who has been all but forgotten amid the focus on the defendants, was a young man named Justin Barker, who was not involved in the nooses incident three months earlier. According to all the credible evidence I am aware of, after lunch, he walked to his next class. As he passed through the gymnasium door to the outside, he was blindsided and knocked unconscious by a vicious blow to the head thrown by Mychal Bell. While lying on the ground unaware of what was happening to him, he was brutally kicked by at least six people.
Imagine you were walking down a city street, and someone leapt from behind a tree and hit you so hard that you fell to the sidewalk unconscious. Would you later describe that as a fight?
Uh-huh ... Walters also takes the opportunity to play down the recent protests in Jena, undercutting even the low-balled Associated Press count by stating that "10,000 people" came to his "little town" of Jena on September 20th. And his column, while dripping with sympatico for Justin Barker, fails to answer some important questions:
What did Justin Barker say to Robert Bailey Jr. before he was attacked, initially by Mychael Bell according to prosecutors?) According to eyewitnesses, Barker mocked Bailey for having been beaten, and hit in the head with a bottle, by a white man named Justin Sloan the Friday before at a place called the Fair Barn. (Barker denies it). Sloan, by the way, was charged only with simple battery -- not attempted murder. In his op-ed, Walters didn't even mention the Fair Barn incident.
What about the incident which occured on Saturday, December 2nd, 2006, the day after the Fair Barn attack on Bailey, in which Bailey and several friends were encountered by a white student from their high school, who pulled a shotgun. In that incident, Bailey and his friends wrestled the gun away, and then THEY were charged with theft of a firearm, second degree robbery and distubing the peace, while the white student wasn't charged with anything -- nothing -- nada. Can Mr. Walters imagine going to a convenience store and having a gun pulled on him, wrestling that gun away and then being charged with stealing it? That's not disturbing the peace, it's just disturbing.
If Justin Barker was nearly killed, why was he never admitted to the hospital? Barker was treated and released after two hours in the emergency room. And while Barker testified at Bell's trial that his eye was swollen shut and he had pain and loss of vision, no medical evidence has ever been produced that verifies that he had anything other than the kinds of injuries you'd expect to see in a fight -- namely a swollen eye and injuries to his hands.
Why wasn't Coach Benjy Lewis, who was the only adult to witness the attack on Barker, called in Michael Bells' case? Lewis told police it wasn't Bell who initiated the attack -- and that Bell wasn't even on the scene. Instead, Lewis identified another student, Malcolm Shaw, as the initial attacker.
And last, but certainly not least, why did Walters feel it appropriate to go the Jena High School and announce to the African-American students who were still enraged about the noose incident and subsequent violence against them in Jena -- and before any charges had been filed -- that he could "end their lives with a stroke of a pen?" In hindsight, would he make that statement again?
Mr. Walters' op-ed was disengenuous and trite. He trivializes the attacks on Robert Bailey, and quite frankly, his failure to prosecute the people who attacked him will go down in history, along with his over-prosecution of the Jena 6, as a low point in American juris-prudence.
Update: Gov. Blanco has announced that Walters has agreed not to appeal the ruling overturning Mychal Bell's adult conviction. The case will now be tried in juvenile court.
Update 2: Mychal Bell is now free on bail. He was released today (Thursday afternoon). Here's video of him walking out of the courthouse into the arms of happy family members and supporters, along with Rev. Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III.
Watch video of Walters' press conference, in which he continues to stump for his case, here. And note the comment that "had it not been for law enforcement, and God, there would have been major trouble in Jena during last Thursday's march. And where would you get that idea from, Mr. Attorney General? Does that many Black people in one place scare you?
The following comment was posted in response to my post of yesterday:
Be assured -- I am neither underground nor in danger of arrest. One site is just changing servers, but we're still up in a dozen other places, like overthrow88.blogspot.com
This isn't the first time we've done this, and it won't be the laST.
We killed Lefkow, we kidnapped Wiesel, and we can take care of a few ghetto niggers as well. Bill White Homepage 09.23.07 - 4:54 pm #
I'll be forwarding the post to the FBI. If that really is Bill White, I'll wager he's pretty tough from the anonymity of his pajamas, but I'd like to see him come down here and run his mouth in Liberty City.
The aggravated battery charge against Jena 6 member Mychal Bell was vacated by a Louisiana appeals court on Friday:
Louisiana's 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, acting on an emergency defense appeal, reversed the aggravated second-degree battery conviction of Mychal Bell, 17, ruling that the youth had been tried improperly as an adult in a case that has raised allegations of unequal justice in the small, mostly white town.
Last week, the judge who presided over Bell's trial in June, LaSalle Parish District Judge J.P. Mauffray, vacated a conspiracy conviction against the youth for the same reason, but inexplicably let the more serious battery conviction stand. Now the local district attorney, Reed Walters, must decide whether to refile the entire case in juvenile court.
Walters, who himself should be under criminal investigation in this case, has indicated he will appeal the reversal to the Louisiana Supreme Court. Bell's trial was wrought with gems from a by-gone era:
Walters initially charged Bell and five other black teens, who have come to be called the "Jena 6," with attempted murder after the white student was beaten and knocked unconscious at Jena High School last December. The white student suffered cuts and bruises but was treated and released from a local hospital.
Walters later reduced the charges to aggravated second-degree battery, contending at Bell's trial -- the first case to go to court -- that the tennis shoes Bell was wearing constituted a dangerous weapon. ...
... the beating incident followed a series of white-on-black attacks in Jena in which the white assailants escaped serious charges. And it capped months of escalating racial tensions in the town set off after three white students hung nooses from a tree in the high school courtyard in what was perceived as a threat to blacks. School officials called the noose incident an "adolescent prank" and declined to expel the white students, outraging black students and their parents.
... Bell has remained in jail since December, unable to post a $90,000 bond. But his attorneys said they would go before Mauffray on Monday seeking to have Bell released. The judge declined previous defense requests to reduce Bell's bond, citing several juvenile assault convictions on the teen's record.
Bell's pro bono attorneys, brought into the case by civil rights leaders after his conviction, have argued that his trial, heard by an all-white jury, was filled with irregularities, including a court-appointed public defender who called no witnesses on his behalf and a prosecution witness who was one of the white youths who hung the nooses at the high school.
The march in Jena is still on, as of today, and buses are leaving from around the country, including here in South Florida. And did you catch the fact that Bell's bail is just $10,000 less than those sick, twisted animals in West Virginia, who are charged, not with getting into a fight, but with kidnapping, gang raping a torturing a woman? Nice touch...
Here's hoping the negative attention jolts the town of Jena into the 21st Century.
A caller on the morning show this morning said that she had information that the animals involved in abducting and torturing a 23-year-old Black woman in West Virginia are members of what are called the Irish Travellers (see the movie "Snatch" -- Brad Pitt's character). Interesting note.
Here's another.
Another caller made the point that West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd has yet to take to the floor of the United States Senate to denounce the barbarity of this horror in his home state the way he denounced Michael Vick's dog fighting. Email Senator Byrd here.
Meanwhile, the neighbors of the West Virginia goon squad are speaking out.
What's going on in America these days? First, we have the outrage of the Jena 6 case, which Rev. Sharpton has rightly said should be the subject of a federal, criminal investigation against the racist (my word, not Sharpton's) prosecutor... and now, here comes Maryland, where some idiot (or some idiots...) hung a noose from a tree near the Black student center at the University of Maryland.
I've been on that campus. It's a beautiful campus. But apparently, it, like so much of America, is infused with ugly elements.
Attention White People! This is a noose, this is what it means:
But frighteningly enough, some of you already know that.
And then there's this: a case that makes Dunbar Village look like a walk in the park:
A black West Virginia woman was sexually assaulted, stabbed, and tortured while being held captive by her white abductors, one of whom told her, "That's what we do to niggers around here." The 23-year-old victim was freed Saturday after cops responded to the home of Frankie Brewster for a "welfare check on a female that was reportedly being held against her will." When cops arrived, Brewster claimed she was the only one home, but then the victim limped to the door and said, "Help me." According to six harrowing criminal complaints, the woman, who apparently had been held for more than a week, had four stab wounds in her left leg, bruised eyes, and had been repeatedly sexually assaulted and humiliated. The woman told police that she was forced to lick Brewster's "toes, vagina, and anal cavity." Brewster's son Bobby forced the woman to eat dog and rat feces, according to one complaint filed in Logan County Magistrate Court. The victim, who is now hospitalized, was raped at knifepoint, choked with a cable cord, and had her hair pulled and cut during the ordeal.
Authorities are still looking for two people who drove the victim to the perps' home. This case is as sickening as it gets. If I believed in the death penalty, I'd want these devils to get the chair. Just look at them ... all Anglo Americans should get together and excommunicate them.
As John Aravosis points, out, a lot of White people are laboring under the delusion that racism is a relic of the past. It isn't. And it's up to White people to confront their own demons, and the demons among them.
By the way, a lot of people have been clamoring for Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineau Blanco to intervene in the case. Well here's what she's had to say on the case:
“I have received hundreds of calls, letters and emails from citizens concerned about the situation involving the case of the high school students in Jena, La. As Governor, as a citizen of the State of Louisiana, and as a mother, without rushing to judgment, I condemn racism in any form, and I fully expect that those involved in this case, including all parties, will act with fairness and in complete good faith. [Really??? Is that what you "fully expect," Kathleen...?]
“I must clear up a widespread misunderstanding of my authority in this case. Our State Constitution provides for three Branches of State Government - Legislative, Executive, and Judicial - and the Constitution prohibits anyone in one branch from exercising the powers of anyone in another branch. This issue is currently a matter in the Judicial System, and should those involved in this case suffer any defects, it is their right to address them in that system through the appeals court.
“Again, the oversight regarding how this case was handled, from arrest to prosecution, lies within the Justice System. Therefore, I have consulted Attorney General Charles Foti and Donald Washington, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, regarding these events in Jena. As a result, General Foti has been and is in consultation with U.S. Attorney Washington and other members of the Justice System. Regardless of the outcome of this case, the Jena community has much healing ahead of it, and I urge all those citizens to come together for the common good of their community and their state. Our children deserve nothing less.”
Well that's nice, Kathleen. In other words, you don't intend to do a damned thing about it, except for the hoping for healing thing.
To be fair, Blanco does not have the unilateral power to pardon anyone. She can, by law, only consider pardons brought to her by the Louisiana clemency board. That means its time to put pressure on that board, to take up the cases on Mychal Bell and the other four young men who are facing trial (Bell is facing sentencing next Thursday) as adults (the sixth member of the Jena Six was charged as a juvenile.)
Update on the powers of the Louisiana governor:
Pardon, Commutation, Reprieve, and Remission; Board of Pardons. (1) The governor may grant reprieves to persons convicted of offenses against the state and, upon favorable recommendation of the Board of Pardons, may commute sentences, pardon those convicted of offenses against the state, and remit fines and forfeitures imposed for such offenses. However, a first offender convicted of a non-violent crime, or convicted of aggravated battery, second degree battery, aggravated assault, mingling harmful substances, aggravated criminal damage to property, purse snatching, extortion, or illegal use of weapons or dangerous instrumentalities never previously convicted of a felony shall be pardoned automatically upon completion of his sentence, without a recommendation of the Board of Pardons and without action by the governor.
A group of Black bloggers calls on the major media to give serious coverage to one of the most disturbing, race-related cases in my lifetime: the case of the Jena 6. According to the Afrosphere Jena 6 Coalition:
There is growing concern surrounding the Jena Six case in Jena Louisiana. Yet, inexplicably, the national media, most particularly on television, has been abysmally silent on an occurrence of grave social, political and legal importance.
The 'common folk' media of the blogosphere, has stepped up to the plate in the absence of adequate traditional media coverage. Bloggers have taken to hanging banners to blog side-bars and placing them in blog entries at an increasing rate; displaying the words 'Free the Jena 6' accompanied by the evocative symbolism of a noose hanging from a tree. On these blogs strategies that can assist in bringing awareness to these young targets of racist psychological abuse are finding willing participants in discussion, and action; but they need the media’s help.
This issue, like Katrina, highlights how some people receive deference in treatment over others. “The Jim Crow style racism and government negligence, reflected in the Jena 6 case, are both quite worrisome. Unfortunately, the case is another incident that points to the entrenched racial and socio-economic disparities in the South, which this country has yet to fully confront,” says political scientist Dr. Sekou Franklin of Middle Tennessee State University. As the Congressional Black Caucus has noted “…we must speak out against injustice and inequality. This tale of two standards depicts a pattern of gross violations.”
The Afrosphere Jena 6 Coalition “ask that the mainstream traditional media step forward and discharge their duty to provide coverage of this vitally important event to their viewers and readers and act as “the fourth institution" of governmental "checks and balance” that constitutional framers intended the press to be.”
I missed their blogaction yesterday, but want to express my full support for their efforts. This case sounds like it could have taken place in 1957, let alone 2007, and it speaks to the lingering stench of racism in American society.
When I ran across a tale on the Internet about six African-American teens from Jena, La., who are facing decades of prison time for allegedly beating up a white classmate, I couldn't believe their ordeal started with a tree. A tree holds powerful symbolism for black people. While traveling in the South, legendary singer Billie Holiday saw a tree that inspired her to write "Strange Fruit," a song which contains references to lynching.
Still, it is difficult to comprehend that in 2007, black students at any high school in America felt compelled to go to a school official and ask if it would be OK to sit in the shade of a tree usually enjoyed by white students.
There's no dispute that is what happened on Aug. 31, 2006 in Jena, a town with a population that is about 85 percent white and 12 percent black.
A vice principal apparently told the students they could sit "wherever they pleased." And the next day, Sept. 1, 2006, three nooses were found hanging from said tree.
Just three years ago the nation celebrated the 50th Anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruling that declared racial separation was inherently unequal. Yet, Jena High School seems stuck in the pre-civil rights era.
Read the entire column. Well worth it. The piece ends with this couplet:
I asked the Rev. Jesse Jackson why he thinks the "Jena 6" case had not received a drum-beat of exposure from national media.
"We've adjusted to this kind of tyranny," Jackson said. "This is small-town tyranny."
And the sad thing is, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the white students aren't still sitting under the tree.
P.S.: There's a petition up, asking for the charges against these young men to be dropped.
Two people who should never, ever, ever, ever say another word about Imusgate: Snoop d-o-double-jizzle and Bob "BET" Jizzle. Read on, if you have a strong stomach...
Fresh from his plea of no contest to gun charges, Snoop Dogg has added his two cents to the Imus debate, stating that the broadcasting legend should indeed have his job yanked for calling the Rutgers University basketball team “nappy headed hoes.”
The rapper has referred to women as “b**ches” and “hoes” in his music since his first album, “Doggystyle,” in 1993. But the Long Beach MC says there’s a difference between the sexist terms used in hip hop and the way Imus said it last Wednesday during his broadcast.
"It's a completely different scenario. (Rappers) are not talking about no collegiate basketball girls who have made it to the next level in education and sports,” said Snoop, according to the Web site Female First. "We're talking about hoes that's in the 'hood that ain't doing s**t, that's trying to get a n**ga for his money. These are two separate things.”
"First of all, we ain't no old-ass white men that sit up on MSNBC going hard on black girls,” he continued. "We are rappers that have these songs coming from our minds and our souls that are relevant to what we feel. I will not let them muthaf**kas say we are in the same league as him. Kick him off the air forever."
Ugh ... wait, wait, there's more...
Meanwhile, BET has been accused of perpetuating the use of “ho” by airing rap videos that contain lyrics and images that are brutally misogynistic. The network’s founder, Robert Johnson, was a guest on MSNBC Thursday in the space that had been occupied by “Imus in the Morning” just 24 hours earlier - before the cable channel canceled the radio simulcast late Wednesday.
David Gregory asked Johnson via phone: “You are the founder of Black Entertainment Television, which over the years, has been a platform for hip hop artists and videos – particularly late at night, which are graphic, which feature this kind of language – the word ho, the b-word, the n-word – that sexualize women, black women, white women. You provided that platform. Do you think there’s something different about that in this case?
Johnson responded: “I absolutely do. As I said David, when you look at artistic expression, you look at creative freedom, it’s coming from artists who are expressing their particular content. …And for the record, I think if you call anybody in the record industry, they will tell you that as the founder of BET and the person responsible for putting on music videos, I absolutely encouraged every artist and every record label to tone down the sexuality, tone down the misogynistic lyrics, to provide content that was appealing to everybody. But as I said earlier, in this kind of debate, if it’s going to have any traction in all, we’ve got to recognize artistic freedom. We’ve got to recognize creative expression. …I make a clear distinction between a comedian saying something in a comedy platform, an artist saying something in an artistic platform, versus a political commentator talking to the power elite of this nation and feeling because he engages with the power elite, he can say things against a disadvantaged class with impunity.”
Here's a thought. Why don't the both of you go away, and never speak publicly about this subject again.
Meanwhile, Rev. Jesse Jackson has been high fiving all over the place about having ousted Imus. He and Reverend Al Sharpton have also been fielding death threats. Sharpton was supposed to be here in South Florida over the weekend to lead a march by groundskeepers and janitors at Nova Southeastern University, who have been the victims of what looks like a major league case of union busting. He was a no-show, and we heard that death threats may have played a part (although the official reason for the cancellation was scheduling conflicts.)
Gwen Ifill is taking a bit of the school marm route, appearing on the Sunday chat shows to tisk tisk her fellow reporters for not committing to never, ever speak to Don Imus on the air again. This story is thick with hypocrisy, and the moralizing and high horsedness on the part of some, by no means all, African-American pundits is starting to become grating.
And then there is the potential for Imusgate snowballing into the tit-for-tat silencing of voices that cause discomfort. From Frank Rich's recent NYT column:
What Imus said about the Rutgers team landed differently, not least because his slur was aimed at young women who had no standing in the world of celebrity, and who had done nothing in public except behave as exemplary student athletes. The spectacle of a media star verbally assaulting them, and with a creepy, dismissive laugh, as if the whole thing were merely a disposable joke, was ugly. You couldn’t watch it without feeling that some kind of crime had been committed. That was true even before the world met his victims. So while I still don’t know whether Imus is a bigot, there was an inhuman contempt in the moment that sounded like hate to me. You can see it and hear it in the video clip in a way that isn’t conveyed by his words alone.
Does that mean he should be silenced? The Rutgers team pointedly never asked for that, and I don’t think the punishment fits the crime. First, as a longtime Imus listener rather than someone who tuned in for the first time last week, I heard not only hate in his wisecrack but also honesty in his repeated vows to learn from it. Second, as a free-speech near-absolutist, I don’t believe that even Mel Gibson, to me an unambiguous anti-Semite, should be deprived of his right to say whatever the hell he wants to say. The answer to his free speech is more free speech - mine and yours. Let Bill O’Reilly talk about “wetbacks” or Rush Limbaugh accuse Michael J. Fox of exaggerating his Parkinson’s symptoms, and let the rest of us answer back.
Liberals are kidding themselves if they think the Imus firing won’t have a potentially chilling effect on comics who push the line. Let’s not forget that Bill Maher, an Imus defender last week, was dropped by FedEx, Sears, ABC affiliates and eventually ABC itself after he broke the P.C. code of 9/11. Conservatives are kidding themselves if they think the Imus execution won’t impede Ann Coulter’s nasty invective on the public airwaves. As Al Franken pointed out to Larry King on Wednesday night, CNN harbors Glenn Beck, who has insinuated that the first Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, is a terrorist (and who has also declared that “faggot” is nothing more than “a naughty name“). Will Time Warner and its advertisers be called to account? Already in the Imus aftermath, the born-again blogger Tom DeLay has called for the firing of Rosie O’Donnell because of her “hateful” views on Chinese-Americans, conservative Christians and President Bush.
If that happens, then Don Imus, who is already rich, near retirement age, and thus set for life, won't be the only loser.
Rich makes another great point about the "free speech" argument, the "let's talk about race" platitudes, and about the perennially identity challenged MSNBC:
corporations, whether television or radio networks or movie studios or commercial sponsors, are free to edit or cancel any content. No one has an inalienable right to be broadcast or published or given a movie or music contract. Whether MSNBC and CBS acted out of genuine principle or economic necessity is a debate already raging. Just as Imus’s show defied easy political definition - he has both kissed up to Dick Cheney as a guest and called him a war criminal - so does the chatter about what happened over the past week. MSNBC, forever unsure of its identity, seems to have found a new calling by turning that debate into a running series, and I say, go for it.
The biggest cliché of the debate so far is the constant reiteration that this will be a moment for a national “conversation” about race and sex and culture. Do people really want to have this conversation, or just talk about having it? If they really want to, it means we have to ask ourselves why this debacle has given permission to talking heads on television to repeat Imus’s offensive words so insistently that cable news could hardly take time out to note the shocking bombing in the Baghdad Green Zone. Some even upped the ante: Donna Brazile managed to drag “jigaboo” into Wolf Blitzer’s sedate “Situation Room” on CNN.
If we really want to have this conversation, it also means we have to have a nonposturing talk about hip-hop lyrics, “Borat,” “South Park” and maybe Larry David, too. As James Poniewozik pointed out in his smart cover article for Time last week, an important question emerged from an Imus on-air soliloquy as he tried to defend himself: “This phrase that I use, it originated in the black community. That didn’t give me a right to use it, but that’s where it originated. Who calls who that and why? We need to know that. I need to know that.”
My 22-year-old son, a humor writer who finds Imus an anachronistic and unfunny throwback to the racial-insult humor of the Frank Sinatra-Sammy Davis Jr. Rat Pack ilk, raises a complementary issue. He argues that when Sacha Baron Cohen makes fun of Jews and gays, he can do so because he’s not doing it as himself but as a fictional character. But try telling that to the Anti-Defamation League, which criticized Mr. Baron Cohen, an observant Jew, for making sport of a real country (Kazakhstan) and worried that the “Borat” audience “may not always be sophisticated enough to get the joke, and that some may even find it reinforcing their bigotry.”
So if we really want to have this national “conversation” about race and culture and all the rest of it that everyone keeps telling us that this incident has prompted, let’s get it on, no holds barred. And the fewer moralizing pundits and politicians, the better. ...
Great points.
At the end of the day, I remain a libertarian when it comes to speech. As Rich said, there's no constitutional right to have a radio show, and Imus suffered the vicissitudes of advertisers and shareholders, even if that meant that his considerable audience didn't have their views taken into account. But if there is a demand for what he does, he'll come back. And if not, some other peddler of vulgarity will take his place. And that's the way it's supposed to work. The last thing we need is some team of reverendly and media schoolmarms becoming the gate keepers of what can and connot be on the air. Because believe me, if the right has its way, it won't just be racially offensive speech that goes down the chute, it will be inconvenient political speech too. As Scott Long at the Juice Blog puts it:
Those that are joyous of [Imus'] downfall should be really careful about thinking that the next few targets will be as quick and easy, as the backlash will get stronger when they go after the next groups on their list.
Don Imus is a dinosaur, who apprently didn't see the ice age coming. But he has spawned a generation of foul talking smart mouths who are now the core of talk radio. The only difference with Imus is that he became politically important and he sold tons of books for people, sort of like a demonic version of Oprah.
I would love to see the hip-hop community, the comedy community, et. al. clean up their act and lay off the Black jokes. But I want to seem them do it because they get that the world has changed, rather than because they're being forced to do it.
I know that I personally don't carry the weight of black America on my shoulders, since every racist comment (vs. blacks) is not directed at me - similar to the way white citizens don't carry the burden of history on their shoulders and an insurmountable sense of guilt.
The Imus situation would be very different if he blatantly said "black women are nappy-headed hos who deserve to die" (sounds remotely Chappelle-esque), and in that instance of course Sharpton would be warranted in attacking Imus. The Rutgers incident is solely between the women of the Rutgers basketball team and Imus - he apologized and they accepted. Granted, he only apologized once the media firestorm began, but at least he apologized to whom he insulted.
In order to be successful in life, you have to be comfortable with yourself. I know that people's racist comments have only hurt me when clearly directed at me (far beyond stereotypes and generalizations), and the Imus situation seems like another case of an individual's commentary affecting more than his intended "target" thanks to the media exacerbating commentary that I never would have even heard in the first place.
The question of whether hip-hop culture, and its characterization of women, is as damaging -- if not more so -- than Don Imus' petty tirade against the Rutgers womens' basketball team, is now center stage. With Imus gone, the white folks whom Blacks would like to see finally "get it" on the subject of why racial insults are so hurtful, are in reality saying "are you freaking KIDDING me??? The guy gets fired for some stupid comment??? Give me a break!" Many are also crying hypocrisy, since the Black community that has declared itself so mortally wounded by a geriatric misanthrope with a microphone and a really poor imitation of "cool", routinely tolerates the debasement of African-American women in music, films, comedy, magazines, and on and on.
I am among a very small minority of Black folk who are not interested in doing a victory dance over Imus' ouster. I'm not exactly crying over his firing, either, mind you. People get fired in talk radio all the time for saying or doing stupid things that get their stations or networks in hot water. Imus must live by the same rules. I also think the National Association of Black Journalists, and its vocal membership, including people like Gwen Ifill and Al Roker, had every right to press their case with NBC and CBS News. If I were still working at NBC, I would have been in those meetings saying exactly the same thing -- namely, that as a journalist, I had no interest in working under the same roof with a non-journalist shock jock who feels free to spew that kind of vitriol against a bunch of college girls. I would have wanted MSNBC to do something, quickly! ... before we turn into Fox News! I in fact, am fully in support of the NBC cable network's cancellation of his simulcast. What was good for Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh, who were canned by, or resigned from, respectively, MSNBC and ESPN after going over the line of taste, is certainly good for Imus. Hell, I'm for pulling the equally race-baiting Glenn Beck off of CNN Headline News, after his slaps at Keith Ellison and others. But the yanking of Imus' show from CBS is, in my opinion, another matter. That was not about punishing him for crossing the line. That was about shutting him up entirely, or proving that "we" could "get him." Somehow, I'm just feeling kind of queasy about that.
I know I'm going to get slammed for saying this, but I think the vehemence of many in my community to "get Imus" lacked a certain, how shall I say, sense of the larger picture. Okay, so Imus is gone. Now what? Do we debate the cultural setting that made him feel comfortable aping what he clearly thought was hip, Black slang as a way of denegrating the looks of a bunch of girl athletes? Do we ask where a geriatric white man gets the term "nappy headed ho," if not from Black slang? Do we ask whether BET is broadcasting far worse denigrations of Black women every freaking day? While we're at it, should we seek the firing of Bob Johnson, for abusing our sensibilities with "butt naked" videos for 20 years? What about the other shock jocks? Do we fire them too? Do Asians get pumped up to fire Rosie O'Donnell for disparaging them on the public airwaves? Will there be anybody left to fire when we're through? Would Imus, thoroughly cowed, have been more useful on the air, forced to confront the issue of race seriously, rather than as a punchline? Like the question about the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop, the world will never know.
And I'm really growing weary of watching television personalities of the Caucasian persuasion doing the obligatory hang-dog look and "Imus' comments were racist and wrong" tagger before launching into whatever it is they really want to say. I just don't buy that most white people really "get" what it is Black folks are so riled up about. Some do, and are equally riled (Keith Olbermann comes to mind...) but most of them are uber-liberal and reacting to a very general sence of outrage over everything that smacks of an 'ism. More generally, I happen to believe that most white people are embarassed and disgusted by the idea of racism and don't want to be associatd with it, and thus, don't want Imus hanging around stinking up the joint. That said, I think that if you promised never to tell the P.C. police on them, most white people also think Imus was the victim of a bunch of high horse Christians who don't happen to quite believe in forgiveness, and the mob that followed them to church...
I think the more sincere white talking heads on the tubie are those like Craig Crawford, David Gregory and Joe Scarborough, who, after doing the obligatory "Imus' comments were racist and wrong" mantra, actually admit to being baffled as to why a chastened Imus could not have been allowed to remain in his job after serving his two week banishment and perhaps giving a healthy donation to a Title IX charity, and why there had to be a jihad against his very employment in this world. Or those like Bill Maher and Pat Buchanan who are calling the Imus flap "ridiculous" and overblown and an attack on free speech. Call me cynical, but I suspect that the Imus flap won't bring about better healing and racial understanding. It will touch off a cross current of wars against liberal talkers, conservative talkers, unacceptable white talkers, unacceptable black talkers, and possibly, a renewed sense of terror over the existence of Youtube. At least until some bubbly starlet strokes out in rehab, adopts a Malawian child or wins American Idol...
The "I'm sick of the Imus story rant" Part Two:
My sister and I just had a long telephone conversation about this, which is why I'm riled up enough to blather on about it. After talking with her for nearly an hour, (I feel the need to reveal that she's an actress, and wears her hair natural, which makes for a double dose of adventure in her life...) I finally hit on what's really bugging me about this whole exercise. I keep wondering if it's at all helpful to see those Rutgers girls paraded across the national consciousness as victims, so delicate in constitution that they were ready to crumble upon hearing, second hand, that some old geezer called them a name? (What ever happened to "your MAMAs a nappy headed ho!?" Okay, maybe that wouldn't have sounded as good in that one hour presser...) And then, to have those same, "pretend outraged-but not quite getting why they're supposed to be" white commentators, not to mention Mrs. Imus, declare breathlessly -- and daily -- that after all, the girls really, really ARE pretty, aren't they? Just look at their perms! Sorry, but somebody please pass the air sickness bag. These girls are powerful, tough athletic and academic stars. They don't need a weeping nation to approve of their fresh new perms, and white people to tell them they're really so very beautiful, do they? Have we gotten that soft? Is this the same community that survived slavery, lynching and Jim Crow? (Okay, sorry, I guess that was the savvy P.R. way to handle the situation, and I applaud Rutgers for their strategery ... oh, and Oprah was a nice touch -- beyond that, the girls have been hermetically sealed from media...) To illustrate my point, Condi Rice has said she's glad Imus was fired for his "disgusting" remarks. But then she said this:
Asked how she handled racist, sexist comments directed her way, Rice laughed and replied: "I'm a big girl. I can take care of myself. And I really don't care because, you know, I'm a mature woman."
Exactly, Condi. Shouldn't we be encouraging these girls to be as tough as you are?
If we're going to have a conversation about assaults on the femininity of Black women -- something which goes back, not to Don Imus, but to the very formation of this country -- let's have that conversation. Don Imus was taunting those girls because in his mind (just like his buddy Stu's reduction of the Williams sisters to "animals") tall, athletic, dark skinned women aren't really women, and definitely aren't feminine or attractive. You really need to look as much like a white woman as possible if you want to make it around here, dear... We could have had that conversation with Imus in his chair. I really woudn't have cared. But that conversation would have had to include a whole lot of Black men, too.
Meanwhile, the possibility that the jihad will turn next on the hip-hop nation has riled up the MTV generation. Russell Simmons released this statement today, after Snoop Dogg and other artists started getting calls from media on whether Don Imus was, in fact, pimping theirho's. Said Simmons (and his Hip Hop Summit Action Network partner Dr. Ben Chavis). I've put the glaring ironies in bold italics...:
"Hip-Hop is a worldwide cultural phenomena that transcends race and doesn't engage in racial slurs. Don Imus' racially-motivated diatribe toward the Rutgers' women's basketball team was in no way connected to hip-hop culture. As Chairman and President of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN), respectively, we are concerned by the false comparisons some in the media are making between Don Imus and hip-hop. We want to clarify what we feel very strongly is an obvious difference between the two.
"HSAN believes in freedom of artistic expression. We also believe, with that freedom, comes responsibility. 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. Like the artists throughout history, their messages are a mirror of what is right and wrong with society. Sometimes their observations or the way in which they choose to express their art may be uncomfortable for some to hear, but our job is not to silence or censor that expression. Our job is to be an inclusive voice for the hip-hop community and to help create an environment that encourages the positive growth of hip-hop. Language can be a powerful tool. That is why one's intention, when using the power of language, should be made clear. Comparing Don Imus' language with hip-hop artists' poetic expression is misguided and inaccurate and feeds into a mindset that can be a catalyst for unwarranted, rampant censorship."
Pardon? Are these artists seeing THAT many bitches, tricks and ho's around them?
Damn, the streets are tough! And how's this for poetic expression (editorial on: the pic above is of Snoop, and please don't post a comment pointing out that the lyrics below are not his... they're from Ludacris, and I know he has a song out about runaways, k? editorial off.):
Shake your money maker Like somebody's bout to pay ya Don't worry about them haters Keep your nose up in the air
You know I got it If you wanna come get it Stand next to this money Like - ey ey
[Verse 1] Shake, shake, shake your money maker Like you were shaking it for some paper It took your momma 9 months to make ya Might as well shake what your momma gave ya You, you lookin good in them jeans I bet you'd look even beter with me in between I keep my mind on my money - money on my mind But you's a hell of a distraction when you shake your behind I got *** on my right side pourin' some cups My whole hood is to my left and they ain't givin a fuck So feel free to get loose and get carried away So by tomorrow you forgot what you where saying today But don't forget about this feeling that I am making you get And all the calories you burn from me making you sweat The mile highpoints you earn when we taking my jet and How everywhere you turn I'll be making you wet
... [Verse 2] Switch, switch, switch it from right to left And switch it till you running right out of breath And take a break until you ready again And you can invite over as many friends as You want to but I really want you and just [ these lyrics found on http://www.completealbumlyrics.com ] Be thankfull that Pharrel gave you something to bump to Luda - I'm at the top of my game You want my hands from your bottom to the top of your frame And I - just wanna take a little right on your curves And get erotic giving your body just what it deserves and Let me give you some swimming lessons on the penis Backstroke, breaststroke, stroke of a genius Yepp call me the renissance man get up and I stay harder then a cinderblock man Hey I;m just a bedroom gangster And I've been meaning to tell that I really mus thank ya when you
[Chorus] Shake your money maker Like somebody's bout to pay ya I see you on my radar Don't you act like you're a faker
She...
[Luda] You know I got it If you wanna come get it Stand next to this money Like - ey ey
Yep. Pure poetry, bitches. And now that CBS has purged itself of Donald Imus, they can get back to squeezing big bucks out of their Viacom unit's hit VH1 spin-offs of "The Flavor of Love"...
Now, keeping it real, I blame myself along with everyone else. I happen to like the above song. Great track. And I love and listen to hip-hop -- have done for most of my life at this point. And I know that there are still great artists out there putting out music with real lyrics, and no bullshit. But there's also a pervasive culture of degradation, and we can't run away from it, just as the majority culture has to deal with its drunk and disorderly starlets, Girls Gone Wild sluttiness and promiscuity cults, and various other cultural ills we all share. But denying that there's any connection between the culture we create and the culture others absorb, when we share this county in increasingly close quarters, is just damned disengenuous.
Also related: The Hatemongers over at Wizbang ... no, that's really their name ... also are tired of the hang dog cable news white people ... and they remember the forgotten victims on the Tennessee women's basketball team (talk about having your 15 minutes stolen...)
The University of Tennessee Lady Volunteers ... the ones who actually won the tournament...
The Wall Street Journal gives all the gory details of the step by step disintegration of the Imus franchise.
Meanwhile, Pat Buchanan assails what he calls the hypocrites and charlatans who orchestrated the take-down.
Tom Delay (who has about zero credibility and really shouldn't be talking in public anymore) says they got Imus, now, let's get Rosie. Now, I can't stand Rosie, let's stipulate to that. If the righties are successful on this one. That said, the Imus take-down might be this year's impeachment, starting a never ending war of political tit for tat. Here we go!
The girls, by the way, have accepted the Imus apology, which came in person in a meeting just after he learned of his firing by CBS. What the statement that they're "working on forgiving him" means, is puzzling, and a little saccharine. I blame the university and their spokespeople for that one, not the girls.
Oh, and wanna buy a "nappy headed ho" T-shirt, teddy bear or infant bodysuit for your baby? No, seriously...
And next stop, hip-hop? The debate begins, Snoop plays the ass, and after demanding the head of Don Imus, Reverend Al will settle for dialogue with hip-hop MCs...
How many times can I be wrong on one story? CBS has fired Don Imus. Wow. You can look at this one of two ways: either its a victory for decency, or an example of extreme corporate quizzling. It could also be proof that the broadcast networks, both on television and radio, as well as their free cable incarnations, are far too timid to play the game the way a coarsening society has configured it. That could mean big bucks for paid media, which could mean XM will be to radio what HBO and Showtime are to television.
(Or it could mean far less: one old misanthropic bully (and goes down, heads back to ranch, curses the world...) I assume he'll be taking his even more racist executive producer with him...
At the end of the day, it's clear that a right to free speech is not an entitlement to a seven figure job on the radio. Imus can still exercise his rights, wherever he's able to find employment (I'm still betting on XM, but then again, I'm not a good predictor on this story...) but I do think that the result of his firing won't be a giant Kum-ba-ya over the American airwaves, with decency reigning over rancor. It will be a "they got Imus, now we'll get them" game of gotcha that could reignite the red-blue culture wars. From now on, I'm going to operate on the assumption that Radio One is being watched closely, with some angry I-man fans just waiting for somebody to slip up... That, and a couple of Black folk will get temporary pundit gigs on MSNBC. ... hey, that reminds me, I need to get my bio package updated...
One question does still hang out there: will there still be a meeting between Imus and the Rutgers girls? And will he take the road of conciliation, or revenge? We shall see...
Update: Question answered. Imus is reportedly meeting with the Rutgers girls at the governor's mansion in New Jersey. That according to NBC News. Classy move, Imus. And I don't think anyone disagrees that these young women have come out of this tragedy as role models of the first order. Great group of young women. We should all be proud of them.
Meanwhile, as we begin choosing winners and losers here, count Rutgers women's basketball, and the university itself, among the winners. They'll be getting a Hillary audience on Monday. Can a Barack visitation be far behind.
So his MSNBC simulcast is gone, his CBS show is hanging by a thread, but hey, Imus still has his charities. The annual telethon went on as planned today, sans TV. And from what Drudge is reporting (though his reporting is a bit dubious these days,) he's getting on with some attitude on the air, saying "the bastards" got him, but they "didn't catch him asleep," whatever that means... Imus is said to be very upset about the goings on, particularly the fact that NBC didn't give him a chance to have his meeting with the Rutgers girls. That's the market, Don. They lose money, you lose gig... Here's the transcript, according to Drudge:
Patrick Gavin with FISHBOWLDC reports on Imus's radio show this am...
Barely 12 hours after being fired from MSNBC...
6:12 AM: On Imus' radio program (no longer simulcast on MSNBC) this morning, Chris Carlin, who covers sports for the program, discussed yesterday's dismissal of charges against the Duke lacrosse players.
(rough transcript)
DON IMUS: When will Al Sharpton be apologizing to them?
(LAUGHTER)
CARLIN: I'm unaware of such a press conference.
IMUS: I'll be darned...
UPDATE 6:28 AM: After a station break, Imus came back to discuss MSNBC's decision. He said he was recently chatted with "another big time broadcasting executive" who was "complaining that [MSNBC] had cancelled the simulcast twelve hours before we were getting ready to conduct this radio-thon for these three charities."
Imus: "My position on all of this is not whining about the hideously hypocritical coverage from the newspapers -- from everybody -- or the lack of support, say, from people like Harold Ford, Jr. who I had my life threatened over supporting and all these kind of things. It all began, and it doesn't make any difference -- like [James] Carville said -- stop talking about the context, it doesn't make any difference. If I hadn't have said it I wouldn't be here. So let's stop whining about it...You gotta stop complaining. I said a stupid, idiotic thing that desperately hurt these kids. I'm going to apologize but we gotta move on."
UPDATE 7:37 am. IMUS: "The hypocrisy is absurd...Everybody knows what the deal is. And this is not over. This story does not end here."
Meanwhile, the Rutgers girls are Oprah bound today, and 37 percent of nearly 180,000 respondents to an MSNBC online poll say the I-man shouldn't have been fired -- he's a shock jock, after all.
In the public debate, I think that today, the question now officially turns from racial insensitivity to the policing of thought vs. free speech. Time asks the question this way: "who can say what?"
Drudge claims Sharpton puts it this way:
'It is our feeling that this is only the beginning. We must have a broad discussion on what is permitted and not permitted in terms of the airwaves'...
our culture has experienced an almost psychotic outburst of -isms in the past year. Michael Richards and "nigger." Isaiah Washington and "faggot." Senator George Allen and "macaca." Mel Gibson and "f__ing Jews."
But we also live in a culture in which racially and sexually edgy material is often—legitimately—considered brilliant comment, even art. Last year's most critically praised comedy, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, won Sacha Baron Cohen a Golden Globe for playing a Kazakh journalist who calls Alan Keyes a "genuine chocolate face" and asks a gun-shop owner to suggest a good piece for killing a Jew. Quentin Tarantino has made a career borrowing tropes from blaxploitation movies. In the critics-favorite sitcom The Sarah Silverman Program, the star sleeps with God, who is African American and who she assumes is "God's black friend." And the current season of South Park opened with an episode about a Michael Richards-esque controversy erupting when a character blurts the word niggers on Wheel of Fortune. (He answers a puzzle—N-GGERS—for which the clue is "People who annoy you"; the correct answer is "naggers.") ...
...Imus crossed a line, boorishly, creepily, paleolithically. But where is that line nowadays? In a way, the question is an outgrowth of something healthy in our society: the assumption that there is a diverse audience that is willing to talk about previously taboo social distinctions more openly, frankly and daringly than before. It used to be assumed that people were free to joke about their own kind (with some license for black comedians to talk about how white people dance). Crossing those lines was the province of the occasional "socially conscious artist," like Dick Gregory or Lenny Bruce, who was explicit about his goals: in Bruce's words, to repeat "'niggerniggernigger' until the word [didn't] mean anything anymore."
Now, however, we live in a mash-up world, where people—especially young people—feel free to borrow one another's cultural signifiers. In a now classic episode of Chappelle's Show, comic Dave Chappelle plays a blind, black white supremacist who inadvertently calls a carload of rap-listening white boys "niggers." The kids' reaction: "Did he just call us niggers? Awesome!" The country is, at least, more pop-culturally integrated—one nation under Jessica Alba, J. Lo and Harold & Kumar—and with that comes greater comfort in talking about differences.
But that's a harder attitude for older people—who grew up with more cultural and actual segregation—to accept or to mimic. Part of the problem with Imus' joke was that it was so tone-deaf. "That's some rough girls from Rutgers," he said. "Man, they got tattoos ... That's some nappy-headed hos there." The joke played badly in every community, raising memories of beauty bias (against darker skin and kinkier hair) that dates back to slavery. Tracy Riley, 37, of Des Moines, Iowa, who is of mixed race, said the incident was among her four kids' first exposures to overt racism. "Our kids don't see color the way we do," she said. "They don't see it as much. 'You're my friend or not, but it's not about race.'"
And then there's this idiot from Pennsylvania. How stupid do you have to be to get yourself fired from your radio show for mimicking Imus AFTER he got canned?
And should Imus lose his job at CBS, something I still doubt will happen -- I guess I'm just an iconoclast -- and he doesn't choose to take $100 million to go to satellite radio, I'm thinking his next gig might be prime minister of England...
The Don Imus horror show continues to escalate in drama, with MSNBC making the decision to drop the shock jock's simulcast today. Imus reportedly saw it coming. Having worked for an NBC affiliate, I can't say I'm surprised that the company whose execs throw around the phrase "six sigma" brought the hammer down hard. NBC doesn't play with its corporate image (remember the time they hired that psycho Michael Savage to host a show? No, you probably don't. It didn't last long ...)
It seems that the final straw for NBC management was when employees, Black and white (including Keith Olbermann) voiced loud objections to sharing the network, and their credibility, with the "I-man." But I would think the advertisers jumping ship had something to do with it, too.
NBC News President Steve Capus said he made the decision after reading thousands of e-mails and having countless discussions with NBC workers and the public, but he denied the potential loss of advertising dollars had anything to do with it.
Capus has been all over T.V. talking about the decision, and he looks more pained each time... After all that has gone on, I have to say that at this point I think MSNBC did the right thing. They couldn't force their news staff to share the stage with that program any longer. I haven't been on the "fire Imus" band wagon, but from NBC's perspective, his show probably wasn't worth the trouble. They're supposed to be a news outfit, after all.
Meanwhile, Imus has been shedding advertisers, and friends (I actually called in to the Sid Rosenberg show today, after listening to as much of it as I could stomach. He was distancing himself from the Imus comments, and I felt compelled to remind him that he was very much a part of the parade. He brushed off my reminder of his Venus and Serena "National Geographic" slurs, which he said forced his firing and "public humiliation" six years ago, before adding, "so what?") with even white commentators who you can tell really think this is overblown take pains to separate themselves from the remarks. Even Craig Crawford has capitulated, though Joe Scarborough is refusing to back down, along with resident iconoclast Bill Maher.
Meanwhile, righties are having a field day reprinting the lyrics of popular songs that use the n-word, and that liberally use the terms "bitches" and "hos" -- not to mention promoting violence.
It seems that Imus will continue to be roasted on a spit. But if you think this will somehow heal the country or the world, don't count on it. This will polarize us even more, as many whites foam at the very sight or mention of Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, who will be accused of hounding an old geezer out of his gainful employment, if it goes that far for Imus with CBS radio, and Blacks continue to seethe with rage over the comments, that apparently were simply the last straw from a show that had numerous violations in the past. One wonders whether anyone will take up my question (shared by Keith Olbermann) of when it will be Neil Boortz, Bill Bennett, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, John Gibson or Glenn Beck's turn on the spit. If they are given a free pass, what, then, has been the piont? Likewise with the hip hop nation, which can continue to fulminate about bitches and ho's with impunity, right?
If we're looking at the culture, shouldn't we actually look at the culture? Or are we just sating ourselves with Don Imus this week, only to move on to somethng else the next? I think we all agree that Don Imus is a bully and an ass.
Members of the Rutgers women's basketball team at a press conference Tuesday
Late breaking news on Imusgate: Keith Olbermann reported tonight on Countdown that Staples, Bigelow Tea, Procter and Gamble and several unnamed clients of major advertising carrier Carat USA have pulled out of the Imus in the Morning show broadcast on MSNBC...
The worm has turned... I'm ready to admit I was wrong about this thing going away. This guy is in trouble...
I rarely go into the personal on this blog, but I have to admit that I am truly torn on this issue. As I said in my now revised initial post on the issue, my first reaction to the Imus story was that it was another case of an old white geezer trying to be funny by tagging along on what he thought was "cool" Black slang and failing miserably. I have occasionally listened to Imus, and while I don't find him objectionable in the way I do Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or Michael Savage, I tend to turn the dial as soon as his executive producer, Bernard McGuirk, or his, in my opinion, viciously racist occasional sports guy Sid Rosenberg (who has his own show here in Miami on 790 The Ticket) gets going. Imus strikes me as a generally harmless old crank, and his comments were offensive, rude, and yeah, racist, but again, my initial reaction was, f^^ him. Why give him more power or influence than his words deserve? He was going after those girls because they are big female basketball players and not "attractive" in his opinion. He should apologize, take his suspension, aand get bent...
And in a way, I guess I'm frustrated that so often, African-Americans get all fired up about issues like this, but can't be brought to life on such weighy issues as the violence in many of our communities (particularly in Miami right now), the degradation of voting rights, not to mention our women, within our own comedy, movies and music, etc. Clearly, there are much bigger fish to fry in this country than one stupid old radio guy.
At the same time ...
Don Imus clearly played the bully here, going after a team full of outstanding young women who were not his typical political or public targets. These girls didn't deserve to be slimed that way, in a way that was clearly meant to be mean, based on their looks. And the basis for his and his co-host's negative assessment of their looks really was, at base, racist -- because they are big, dark skinned and their hair isn't blowing in the wind. Imus touched a racial third rail, and he deserves the opprobrium he's getting. I feel great sympathy for these girls and their families, and I think Imus' back tracking today, and his new sense of self riteousness, makes him look even more like a jerk.
What has really been extraordinary to watch is the vast difference between how white and black people have reacted to this story. Almost to a man, white commentators (with the exception of opportunist hacks like Limbaugh and the people at Fox News) have said that Imus is a "good guy" who made a mistake and we should all move on since he has apologized. That includes people I respect, like Bill Maher and Craig Crawford. And almost to a person, whites have responded to Imus' behavior by lashing out at Al Sharpton and -- surprise -- the Tawanna Brawley incident. Blacks meanwhile, including most of the callers to our radio show, are livid. The disparity says all you need to know about race in America. We live in very different words.
And right now, I am torn between actually feeling guilty about not being personally insulted by his remarks, and wondering if it's because I simply don't care what white people think, or whether I'm just frustrated that we are spending too much time on this issue, when there's a war on that's killing U.S. troops, the Bush administration is running roughshod over the constitution, poverty and violence continue to increase across this country, and only half of Black kids are graduating from high school, and no one seems to care enough to call for a march.
Does Imus deserve to be fired? I guess when you put it in the context of those ten young girls, and how much these comments humiliated them: sure. Especially since so many other radio and television personalities have lost jobs under similar circumstances. I definitely think his producer should be canned. But at the same time, I can only predict that if he were to be fired, Imus would simply wind up on another network or on XM in a blink. And very little would change. White people just don't approach the issue of race in the same way that Black people do. Whites will invariably call this issue overblown, and will continue to fire off these kind of remarks when 'we' are not around. Black people see this as nuclear, whites simply don't. We're so far apart on our conceptions of issues like this that it's almost impossible to have a single conversation with both groups simultaneously on this issue. Hell, it's almost impossible for me to have a conversation with myself about it at this stage...
So again, I'm torn. If I don't give a damn whether Imus stays or goes, does that make me an insensitive person? Or am I just not willing to elevate the guy to such a high status in my life, or the lives of Black people? Damned if I know...
Okay, that's enough emoting. Back to the news:
The presidential candidates are weighing in...
Not surprisingly, the racially divisive Rudy Giuliani says he'll still be a guest on Imus. BTW he also said that flying the confederate flag is a "states rights" issue... nice.
This is fascinating. Imus is generally considered not too friendly to Republicans, and now that he's tagged as a racist, the GOPers are rallying around him.
So far, Romney and Obama are non-commital about appearing again (Romney's people used the "he hasn't been invited back' line...) Hillary condems the remarks but hasn't said whether she'll be on the show again, and Edwards, Biden et.al were out of town on Easter holiday.
NBC's goofball weather man brings down the hammer on Don Imus for picking on those Rutgers girls.
I, for one, am really tired of the diatribes, the “humor” at others’ expense, the cruelty that passes for “funny”. Don Imus isn’t the only one doing this, but today he’s the one in the hot seat.
What he said was vile and disgusting. It denigrated an entire team and by extension, a community and its pride in a group that had excelled.
...The “I’m a good person who said a bad thing” apology doesn’t cut it. At least he didn’t try to weasel out of this by hiding behind alcohol or drug abuse. Still, he said it and a two-week suspension doesn’t cut it. It is, at best, a slap on the wrist. A vacation. Nothing.
The general manager of Cartoon Network resigned after a publicity stunt went wrong and caused a panic in Boston. He did the right thing. Don Imus should do the right thing and resign. Not talk about taking a two-week suspension with dignity. I don’t think Don Imus gets it.
Roker makes the very valid point that if Imus must go, so should the continually offensive Bernard McGuirk, his executive producer and sidekick, who egged Imus on and participated in the conversation. In fact, a transcript of the now infamous broadcast makes it clear that there were three -- not one -- people involved in insulting the Rutgers women (in my opinion, as a slap against their looks with clarly racial undertones):
IMUS: That's some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and --
McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos.
IMUS: That's some nappy-headed hos there. I'm gonna tell you that now, man, that's some -- woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like -- kinda like -- I don't know.
McGUIRK: A Spike Lee thing.
IMUS: Yeah.
McGUIRK: The Jigaboos vs. the Wannabes -- that movie that he had.
IMUS: Yeah, it was a tough --
McCORD: Do The Right Thing.
McGUIRK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
IMUS: I don't know if I'd have wanted to beat Rutgers or not, but they did, right?
ROSENBERG: It was a tough watch. The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the Toronto Raptors.
IMUS: Well, I guess, yeah.
RUFFINO: Only tougher.
McGUIRK:The [Memphis] Grizzlies would be more appropriate.
McGuirk was the instigator of the "hos" line, and Rosenberg, true to form, took it to new depths. So where are the calls for McGuirk's job, and for the head of the eternally racist Rosenberg (famous for calling the tennis phenom Williams sisters "animals," who would stand a better chance of posing on the cover of National Geographic than Playboy, and then joking about his past slurs when Serena was called a nigger at a recent match in Florida) to be thrown off his show on South Florida's 790 The Ticket?) Fair is fair. If Imus should be canned, so should they.
That said, let me go on record as saying that I agree with all of those who are calling Imus' comments stupid and offensive. This was a crochety old geezer and serial bully attempting, and failing, to be funny by picking on a bunch of young girls who are doing what we, as a society, have admonished them to do: go to school, get good grades, and pursue positive activites. It was also symptomatic of the out of control insult culture we have developed in the popular media. Not to mention the equally out of control vogue of degrading women and demeaning Blacks as so many niggers, hos and gangstas... (a vogue Black folk created ourselves...) We should take steps to change those things if we don't like them, but I seriously doubt Imus will get the axe. Getting driven onto XM? Perhaps. Marginalized by some mainstream pols? Very likely. But finished as a radio host? I doubt it.
What is clear is that Imus owes those young woman a serious apology. They should get it, and then we should move on. There are bigger battles to fight...
Meanwhile, the Rutgers team got their chance to speak out today, for about an hour long presser. They've also agreed to meet with Imus and consider accepting his apology, although some of them are preemptively raising doubts that such acceptance is at hand. And, probably to Imus' chagrin, the story has gone global.
It's been a swell year in news soundbites. So now, without further ado, here is the ReidReport list of the top 10 zingers, near misses and whoopsies of 2006.
#10. "I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense."-- President Bush explaining to the hard-headed press corps in April that Don Rumsfeld was doing a fabulous job as defense secretary, and that he hears voices ...
#9. "This is the moment to say that there are things in life worth fighting and dying for and one of 'em is making sure Nancy Pelosi doesn't become the speaker." -- Fox News' resident angry Bushophile Sean Hannity, bolstering the GOP faithful the August before the midterm elections, by explaining to them that it might take a suicidal jihad to keep the Democrats from controlling the House of Representatives. And why not! After all, it would be an AMERICAN suicidal jihad...!
#8. "You may end up with a different math, but you're entitled to your math. I'm entitled to 'the' math." -- Former electoral "genius" Karl Rove telling some snotty NPR host on October 24th that he sees tons more polls than stupid NPR does anyway, so he knows for sure that Republicans are going to hold the House and Senate ... not too long after the interview, the Republicans lost the House and Senate...
#7. "You know, education ... if you make the most of it, you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." -- Former presidential candidate John Kerry flubbing a joke, and with the cynical help of "friends" like John McCain and the media mob, throwing his presidential ambitions off what you might call, the permanent cliff...
#6. "I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies." -- Tortured radio and cable TV chat host Glenn Beck pleading with 100 percent American, U.S. Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota to reassure him that as an American Muslim, he's not secretly working with al-Qaida, as all Muslims tend to side with the terrorists, you know... deep down inside ... their little Muslim hearts...
#5. "Halfrican and, again, his father was -- his father was from Kenya, his mother's white. OK, now, I have nothing with mixed -- nothing against mixed-race people but, my point is, when this guy stands in front of a black audience, pretending like he was born and raised in the hood, and he can identify with their problems, he doesn't allow -- he is not, in my opinion -- 'cause my opinion is your average white guy -- he is not allowed to wear the African-American badge because his family are not the descendants of slaves, OK?" -- Obscure talk radio co-host Brian Sussman showing his ass to the man who could soon be the first African-American president of the United States, Barack Obama.
#4. "This fellow here with the yellow shirt ... Macaca or whatever his name is. ...so welcome, let's give a welcomoe to Macaca over here. Welcome to Virginia and the real world of America." -- Former Virginia Senator George Allen, putting a steak through the heart of his political career, and handing the Senate to the Democratic Party, just be being his lil' old racist self.
#3. "He's a nigger! He's a nigger!!!" -- Washed up comedic actor Michael Richards coming unglued at an L.A. nightclub, and jerking many Africna-Americans out of their closet Seinfeld fix, while simultaneously inspiring "Afro-American" comedians everywhere to give up the N-word. Way to make a difference, Kramer! And can I say, "Macaca!"
#2. "I went there for a massage" -- disgraced pastor Ted Haggard explaining why he was hanging out with a crystal meth-selling male gigolo in Denver, and giving cheating bastards everywhere the best excuse EVER for getting caught in flagrante! Put that one in your excuse baggies for later, Brangelina...!
#1. "Enough is enough!! I have had it... with these muthafuckin' snakes... on this muthafuckin' plane!!!" -- Big screen bad-ass Samuel L. Jackson, proving once again, why he, and he alone, is the soundbite king, this time as the star of the campy classic, "Snakes on a (muthafuckin') plane." Bitches!
And now, here's your bonus soundbite of the day. Enjoy!
"The irony is, what they really need to do is to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it's over " -- President Bush at the G8 summit this summer, chowing down on buttered rolls (like a holstein cow, or a prison inmate fresh out of solitary, you pick your visual...) discussing the vagueries of Middle East foreign policy with the U.K. prime minister, and introducing the Brit-deflating phrase, "yo, Blair!" into the universal lexicon. My, how Her Majesty's empire has fallen...
I've been on that campus. It's a beautiful campus. But apparently, it, like so much of America, is infused with ugly elements.
Damn, the streets are tough! And how's this for poetic expression (editorial on: the pic above is of Snoop, and please don't post a comment pointing out that the lyrics below are not his... they're from Ludacris, and I know he has a song out about runaways, k? editorial off.):
