It is at the very least bizarre that anyone in the media business is surprised by the latest Imus outburst – he has if anything displayed an eager recidivism when it comes to being offensive, but it’s just plain weird that CBS Radio feels it needs to continue to “monitor the situation” before it decides whether to make its two week suspension permanent. And wait for what, exactly? To figure out how much sponsor money it will lose if it doesn’t fire Imus, obviously. The issue for CBS Radio isn’t principle – it seems pretty clear now it has none – and it isn’t the difference between right and wrong – these distinctions don’t seem to concern it. It’s cash. Again, not a surprise, but it’s rare that we have these moments when the mainstream media declares its priorities so clearly and so free of pretense. Last point – how is it that noted blogger Harry Shearer is the lone voice asking whether Imus’s suspension is even unpaid?
{ 4 comments }
It’s time to leave the man alone. This has turned into a cause for the NAACP and other blank leaders to justify their existence.
These fine young women should forget this crap and move on to a wonderful life. By continung this circus we only deepen the hurt.
Let the market place take care of Imus as it seems to be doing. Advertisers are being swayed by polictical blackmail not by logic. Supply and demand will take its course and should not be swayed by black leaders with a personal agenda.
I for one will not watch or listen to Mr. Imus however if this continues to fester I will watch and listen just to make my point.
Give it up already
Note, On air personalities had better back off before they start to lose viewers.
Please keep Don Imus on the Air. If you don’t then we will have a Black & White Problem.Black’s are useing this to get more Black people on the Air & TV. Use Don for the good turn this around you have the power to do this. Please Please do not take him off the Air. We all need his voice use him for the good of all of us.
There are two men on Don’s show that are much worse then Don and I feel the start most of Don’s unkind words. Yes Don should not have said that. But if you watch the tapes he has said hurtful this about white people. Look what he has said about Sid. His old sports guy. This is who Don is, we have the right to turn him off. Don has done more good then bad. Yes he dose need to clean his act up but I feel getting rid of Benard will clean up the show . His mouth is the hurtful one. Look at the tapes on him he atacks God ,Woman, Children,and men. I don’t know how he stays married himself.
Ruthann Jewell, [Address and phone number deleted]
If the common experience of black women – particularly black women in sports – was something like an experience of so many black Katherine Hepburns, the last thing anyone would have called the women at issue would have been “nappy headded hos.” The stereotype of the French army is that of an organization specially trained in the arts of defeat and surrender: if not for WWI, WWII and Vietnam, this stereotype would not exist; but, existing, it does because there is a certain grain of truth to it. The stereotype for lawyers is that of ethical prostitutes — because of the truth that, for a fee, they will argue any side of an issue, right or wrong, with all their ability. If blacks don’t like the stereotypes attached to them, the cure is to change the common experience to which those stereotypes refer, not to shoot the messenger.
Well, I don’t really know what to say. First, I’ll say that I’m shutting down comments on this post. It’s just too unpleasant to read, variously: (i) Black people are using the Imus issue to get more Black people on the air, (ii) we ought to feel sorry for the racist, and the NAACAP has to ‘justify’ its existence (because racism itself doesn’t justify it, I suppose), and if Black political leaders respond they have a ‘personal agenda’, and (iii) the victims of racism are responsible for the racist caricatures being thrown at them by the racists.
This is just depressing, and I think I’ll just tune out for a while.
A follow-on comment came in by email:
“My only comment on the whole thing, and it applies to the Duke Lacrosse scandal
as well…..
Please, oh please, Americans quit doing things which result in the waking of
The Rev’s Jesse (Jackson) and Al (Sharpton)… One is an idiot and the other
can’t speak English…. I can’t remember for the life of me which is which.
Everytime you wake these two morons up my head spins.”