While this was already absurd, the Imus Affair has now reached epic silliness. In the past 24 hours:
– Imus was dropped from MSNBC for being offensive, but not offensive enough that CNN and FOX are running clips of his show from this morning.
– One of the Rutgers players has stated she was “scarred for life.” Really? Some jackass said something boorish to you, and you are scarred for life?
– Al Sharpton and his gang of nitwits are protesting CBS, and apparently protesting in the rain is tough work, as CNN just reported that Sharpton has asked CBS to host the protest indoors in the CBS lobby. Let’s all just hope there are no Jewish run small businesses in the area.
– Imus, who supported such radical right-wingers as John Kerry in 2004, Harold Ford in 2006, and who has spent the past four years calling Cheny and Rove fat pantsloads and gouhboys and stating they should be lined up against a wall and shot is now being fashioned as a conservative by Media Matters.
It looks like everyone is going to profit from the Imus gravy train before this is over.
*** Update ***
According to the Reverend Al, Imus calling those girls nappy-headed ho’s may have ended their careers.
ThymeZone
You are exactly right, John. The thing has now descended into the theater of the absurd, and an ocean of phony bathos.
The media are fueling this descent because it gives them cover for all the crude crap they peddle out the side door at great profit to themselves, all the time, while nobody complains. Sharpton has an early Christmas present.
Now it’s a circus.
Dreggas
It truly is stupid at this point. I was watching Scarborough last night and to see fake outrage by the woman from the NY Times was beyond dumb. Scarborough actually had it right. Imus is getting shit while every big named rap star is making bank peddling the same kind of crap in music daily.
Don’t get me wrong, what Imus did was wrong but the bottom line on this is that the same shit is peddled daily and you don’t see the Oh so pious “reverend” Al out there calling for boycotts of the record companies selling the same crap.
This is just another case of an old white dude making a stupid comment and suddenly the whole world will end and civil rights are forever imperilled.
grumpy realist
Yup, just sit back, pop the popcorn, and watch the show.
This has reached the point where the chum in the water is dense enough that it makes no sense NOT to have a shark-feeding frenzy.
Too many players, too much hype, too many grandstanding loudmouths with large egos on all sides of the equation.
I predict “exit Imus”, who must be wondering at this point what the heck happened, and how his magic-super-duper shield of mumbled excuses (which has always worked before) has now suddenly failed.
Oops.
CaseyL
I really do n’t give a damn about the black rappers: they don’t have talk shows that millions listen to; they’re not sponsored by major corporations; they don’t get politicians and pundits sucking up to them.
It’s the latter that frosts me more than anything else. Imus has spent years spouting racial and sexual smears, and it never stopped the powerful and connected from appearing on his show. That means making a career out of racial and sexual smears is good business, good politics, and good journalism.
Imus getting canned is one small step towards changing that attidtude.
Cromagnon
Pretty much sums up my thoughts on the whole sorry affair…
Meanwhile, American soldiers are being killed at the rate of 4.42 a day so far this month, with 47 KIA in the first 12 days of this month.
Cromagnon
The 4.42 a day also includes 6 British soldiers KIA
The Other Steve
I always find it really funny to hear people try to defend bad behavior by pointing out bad behavior in others.
It’s rather petty and childish, frankly.
Again, the problem with Imus is he’s not funny, and he’s out of touch with most of America. He’s part of the beltway elitists who think they are capable of telling us what to think. Fuck him I say.
The Other Steve
What CaseyL said.
Ekim
So a fag basher and racist is a liberal because he doesn’t like Bush and his buddies?
The Other Steve is right on.
Dreggas
No they just sell millions of records to impressionable kids each year, are played on MTV, played on the radio and hyped as having some glamorous lifestyle daily by the media. Like I said Imus shot himself in the foot on this one, however I just find it utterly stupid the way it’s being handled and it is hypocrisy to hold one person to one standard but not the others.
reid
I read on some blog recently that Al Sharpton actually HAS called for a boycott of rap music labels. Here’s a link I dug up that explains it:
http://www.rjgeib.com/biography/ventura/geib-great-art-challenge/rap-jazz.htm
I’m not a big fan of early Sharpton (I also grew up in Upstate NY and heard a lot about Tawana), but it looks like you can’t really call him a hypocrite in this case.
Edmund Dantes
Ummm… slight problem with this sentence… google “Al Sharpton” “boycott” “universal music group” and get back to us on this particular talking point. Thanks.
Dreggas
I just shake my head at the hypocrisy and double standard on this one. There’s no defense for what Imus did I just wonder where the same outrage has been over it. Hell NYC even got it right, they passed an ordinance (non-binding non-enforcable etc) saying that irregardless of race etc. no one should use “The N Word” period.
It’s not a case of defending Imus, believe me I never cared for him that much anyway, it is a case of being sick and tired of the double standard hypocrisy that is the media in this country. It’s just plain stupid.
jj
One of the Rutgers players has stated she was “scarred for life.” Really? Some jackass said something boorish to you, and you are scarred for life?
A jackass with millions of listeners and viewers. It one thing to make a personal bigoted comment to someone’s face, its another to say it on the air.
This is just the straw that broke the camel’s back. Imus has been spouting off bigotry for years.
Edmund Dantes
Of course none of that changes the fact that this has gone beyond absurd at this point, and the fact that Al and Jesse tend to grandstand alot.
The Other Steve
On further reflection.
GO FUCK YOURSELF
The date on that article is April 2nd, 2 days before Imus stuck his foot in his mouth.
The Other Steve
Google is your friend. It’s not that hard to go search for something before making a claim.
Now you look like an ignorant fucktard. You would have appeared more honest if you’d simply defended Imus, instead of trying this tactic of distraction.
The Other Steve
More google
even more google
God, don’t you just look like a fucktard, Dreggas?
The Other Steve
Oh, I see you already found that. This is what happens when you write posts as people are posting. :-)
reid
Dreggas, please tell us you concede this point so we can call off The Other Steve.
Richard Bottoms
I remember the first time I was called nigger.
It is frozen in my mind like it happened yesterday. It’s all that I remember about the school I went to that year. The first time I realized I was different.
My parent scrimped and saved to move us out of the crumbling inner city to the suburbs. It was a subdivision populated by striving blacks and jews. We were so proud to be in our clean new home, next door was a little strip of woods where we’d play fort or just explore.
It’s a cold winter morning and I am in the bathroom at Grandview elementary school. That’s when thatother boy came in. I was probaly taller than him, but white folks hadn’t fled yet so me and my sister were one of maybe 5 black kids in the whole school. I felt outnumbered and a little afraid.
“Calling all niggers. Calling all nigers.”
He laughed and walked out.
I’ve spent my entire life trying not to let that moment taint my view of white people. usually it doesn’t, often it does making me hate that little bastard so much my teeth hurt. The rage at always feeling outnumbered.
The rational thought that it can’t be all of them, I couldn’t bear it if it was all of them in their secret places who felt that way.
But some times it hurts too much.
Evorgleb
I still have mixed feelings over the whole Imus ordeal. Part of me believes he’s getting what he deserves and the other part of me thinks its really that big of a deal. If you haven’t seen it already, you should check out this story over at Highbrid Nation. The guy who wrote it worked at WFAN with Imus and gives some interesting insight into whether the man is really a racist or not. You all should check it out if you get a chance.
ThymeZone
Well, Dreggas is mostly right here.
There is a double standard. Mean, ugly, sexually explicit, racist and downright dangerous crap is peddled night and day in this country seemingly from every doorway, window, mail slot and electronic port in the Big Media empires, and we pretty much look the other way.
To me this isn’t really about Imus and Sharpton as much as it is about the general degrading of the infotainment streams and pandering to the lowest common denomiators in society, all for one reason: Money.
I don’t hold Sharpton any more responsible for this hypocrisy than I hold Imus responsible for latent racism in society. Both bad things are there aplenty and these two are just game pieces on a particular board right now.
My own sense is that what Imus did is more akin to what Coulter does …. namely, trashing something to sell something else at his or her own profit ….. at the expense of the rest of us. It’s not really about racism, or Sharptonism, or Imusism, or any of those isms, at all. It’s about making values and people disposable in favor of profit.
Eh?
Dreggas
Sharpton has called for boycotts but how vocal has he been? How many TV appearances has he made to speak about his boycott? There is no talking point here, Sharpton is grandstanding as usual, if he were as serious as he is about the Imus flap he’d be all over it just as he has been all over Imus.
Sorry it still doesn’t fly. He’s been calling for Imus’ head but he is not being nearly as vocal or active as he was about Imus. So while I concede that he has called for boycotts I still don’t see where he has been on every major network calling for the execs to be fired for publishing it. Again I still see it as hypocrisy and I am not defending Imus nor spouting some stupid talking point.
Of course it is funny to see that I am getting the same insults flung at me that are reserved for Darrell when I am the farthest thing from being another Darrell.
When I start seeing rap stars being dropped from record labels, and I’ll go even further, when I see rush limbaugh off the air and coulter gone for good all of which spearheaded with the same amount of “outrage” that is being shown towards Imus then perhaps I’ll change my mind on this one, but I still see it as having become a circus of fools saying and for that matter acting against one thing while only paying lip service to the myriad others.
Zifnab
Not just their careers, but the careers of all women in the professional WMBA! Imus destroyed women’s basketball!
:-p Please. When they all get drafted as first round picks to the teams of their choice, I’m sure they’ll still be living down the horror.
Ultimately, this has morphed into a million different varieties of stupidity, and I still say half this scandal was cooked up because Imus’s show was rather lame and half-assed to begin with.
VidaLoca
Dreggas,
Wait a minute — this situation went down the way it did because Imus shot himself in the foot. So thoroughly that he blew off most of his leg in fact. Take that out of the equation and he goes on behind his super-duper shield of mumbled half-excuses and nothing changes.
But that’s not what happened. And what came next was handled, lets face it, brilliantly. Textbook case of a political hit against a target of opportunity. Sharpton has invested nothing more than a week of work in this and look at the results.
Does Sharpton benefit from this? Oh yeah. He gains in juice, he builds his base. He also provides a roadmap for anyone else interested in a similar takedown and proof more broadly that such a takedown is possible. Which, assuming that we’re agreed that spreading the word that racism, misogyny, and intolerance-as-humor have to end, is a Good Thing.
You (and John and grumpy) seem to expect that somehow a campaign against intolerance has to proceed simultaneously on all fronts at once — or else no success on any front is legitimate. Or else it’s hypocrisy. It is not — it’s called picking a fight you can win, and figuring out how to win it.
It’s not, however, “fair” in the sense that Imus is by no means the biggest, worst, or richest of the offenders. He’s not — he’s no devil by any means, and Sharpton is no saint; he’s in many ways an opportunist. So are a lot of others in this game. That doesn’t change the basic fact that this shit will not end until people (even people who are acting out of less than completely pure motives) say it will end and then go forward in specific cases to end it.
Pug
I really do n’t give a damn about the black rappers: they don’t have talk shows that millions listen to; they’re not sponsored by major corporations; they don’t get politicians and pundits sucking up to them.
Wrong on two of three counts. Rappers are listened to by millions daily and they are sponsored by major corporations (they’re called record companies, including CBS). No, they don’t get politicians and pundits sucking up to them, but they influence more people than Don Imus does.
Imus deserves whatever he gets. After years on the radio he should know how explosive racial slurs can be. If not, he should have checked with Rush Limbaugh, Fuzzy Zoeller, Al Campanis or Jimmy the Greek (yeah, I know some of them are dead). Not only are they explosive, they’re wrong so to hell with Imus.
But selective outrage and buffoons like Al Sharpton do get pretty tiresome. OK, we got the old white guy for trashing black women; now let’s go listen to Ludakris on the I-Pod. Makes sense to me.
And I’m still waiting for Al Sharpton’s apology about the Tawana Brawley hoax. You know, the one where he accused the white DA and police officers of raping an underaged black girl and smearing her with dog feces. The one where he eventually lost a defamation suit when they proved in court he is a liar.
Dreggas
I expect nothing more than the record execs receiving the same treatment. In the case of Rap music it’s been around for how many years and only moderate lip service has been paid to ending its mysoginy etc? (minus the congressional investigations into music in general). Then we have the limbaughs and Coulters who have been around nearly as long spouting off their shit.
I’ll agree, Imus is low hanging fruit on this tree and easy to go after especially given the circumstances regarding what he did. However this shit is spread across the board and it’s not just racially or gender oriented, it’s against gays, it’s against anyone having any semblance of an alternative lifestyle that is not “normal” etc. Hell I have faced it myself. I don’t expect things to change overnight, however it would be nice to see the same energy put into going after the rest as has been put in going after Imus. That’s where my beef is. As I have pretty much said fuck Imus, what he did was indefensible and I am not defending him, fire his ass and be done with it since there is far more important shit to be on the news. However let’s see them go after the rest, and for that matter they should have been going after the rest, a long time ago.
ThymeZone
Well, let’s not get carried away. The man has millions, a beautiful ranch in New Mexico, and a hot wife.
He could be excused for saying, hey, this is a blessing in disguise. I’m 67, and I’m movin’ on. Just like Cole originally suggested.
I mean, what’s his alternative …. trying to protect his “legacy?” The
guys won’t be calling him? WTF?
Rome Again
Money IS the root of all evil! Imagine that.
F
John,
Thank you, for pulling me back to reality. For a while there you had me fooled; from your posts the last few years you sounded almost sane, but your not.
So you’ll understand, I’ll write slowly and use little words.
This is not about Sharpton, Jackson, or any “Gansta Rapper”, this about a BIGOT finally being called to term. Imus and his staff are BIGOTS, and while you may not like the fact that Sharpton and others can claim credit for his possibly losing his job, you should just accept it.
This is just a small example of some of Imus’s rants:
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2007/04/don-imus-show-calls-posts-howie-kurtz.html
You are truly a little man if you have to blame everyone but Imus for him losing his job.
F
jg
I grew up listening to rap. No rappers are calling black women who go to college and play ball, ho’s. So you can’t say, ‘rappers do it too’, as though that was an argument anyway.
So you can’t be a conservative and hate Bush and Cheney?
ThymeZone
This quote will surely go down in the Hall of Fame.
John, you almost made it, all those years of work, so close and yet so far …… sad.
F, dude, ya gotta learn how to do this. You can have a raving flame war one day over a disagreement, and be in total agreement the next. Our respective sanities don’t hang on whether we agree with each other, do they?
This is the whole trouble with a story like this … people have so much invested in the issues that they can’t manage even a modicum of objectivity. It’s all-or-nothing time.
It’s not a black and white issue, either literally, or figuratively. It’s filled with contradictions and shades of grey. Welcome to the real world, get used to it.
Rome Again
Yeah, all things are like that, even The Bible!
ThymeZone
Good point. I don’t really Hate Jesus, but I do harbor a lot of resentment.
F
Once again so everyone understands.
This is not about flaming John or questioning his sanity per se; Its about almost 40 back and forward posts on a BIGOT losing his job. I don’t care how he lost it, why he lost it or whose responsible for it, I’m just glad he is gone.
F
Zombie Santa Claus
Someone made what I thought was an interesting point the other day in conversation about this. They pointed out that the racism of the comments was bad enough, but the other thing was that he’s calling the Rutgers team ugly. They said something to the effect of,
“If you want to argue racism, we should also fire Limbaugh, Mike Savage, etc. But the racism reflects more on the speaker being an asshole than anything else. On the other hand, he called these women ugly in front of tens of millions of people. How would you like it if someone said your wife/daughter/grand-daughter was ugly to 75 million people? A lot of people would take even more offense to something like that than they would to the racism of Imus’s comments.”
This is what the person said to me, anyway. I hadn’t thought of this Imusgate thing that way, before. I think it’s an interesting point. Racist, yeah. But also sexist, in a very, very nasty way.
Not sure if someone here’s already pointed that out or not. I hadn’t read it if they had. Apologies if I’m being redundant, here. I’m a zombie, after all, and many things slip by me.
Rome Again
He didn’t rake the leaves, or you got weeds coming up, or what?
ThymeZone
ROTFL.
Good one. Actually I think he used a broadleaf supressant on my dichondra.
FUCK!
Rome Again
Heavens to Betsy, say it isn’t so! ;)
ThymeZone
{ thud }
Dave
I’ve heard worse from Coulter, Savage, Beck, etc. CBS will can him and he’ll end up with his buddy Stern on satellite.
jh
Vida Loca nailed it.
Good going man.
The Kid
You’re missing the point, John.
Imus is being canned because he’s insulted Rove and Cheney and has denounced the madness of Bush’s war in Iraq. If he had towed the line and never insulted beloved leader or the GOP, he could’ve continued pissing on as many African-Americans, Hispanics, Jews, women, etc. as he liked. The corprate masters would not have cared, so long as the bottom line was healthy. But Imus, by their lights, isn’t worth defending any more, so out he goes.
tBone
I’m beyond sick of hearing about Imus and this story, but just wanted to chime in and say I’m really glad Richard Bottoms has been posting on these threads. That’s the second post in as many days from you that’s knocked me back on my heels and made me rethink things. Thanks for the perspective.
Tulkinghorn
I love watching Imus eat shit. I can just imagine how Deirdre is going to let him have it tonight – ouch! Some marriages really are the best revenge.
I listen(ed) to Imus fairly often – a lot of BS on that show, but some really good interviews, too. On a slow news day it could be dreadful. Much of the racist shtick represented a lack of decent material than real animus, IMO.
No tears for Imus, guys. He will be out of the wilderness, with a new show on ABC, the same club of sycophants and log-rollers, and a freshly ghostwritten volume of his own climbing the NYTimes bestseller list.
Bruce Moomaw
I had sworn that I would never make any more comments on this cretinous tempest in a teapot — except to note how the media are covering it 24/7, while ignoring trivia like Iraq and the continuing US Attorneys scandal — but this latest quote from Imus (courtesy of “Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire”) is a bit much:
“Harold Ford, Jr. has been disgraceful in his lack of support. I endured death threats to endorse him…It’s unfortunate that he has no courage.”
As for Imus, what the hell difference does it make what his (supposed) political beliefs are? He’s simply your totally trashy standard-issue shock jock, like Howard Stern, and of no more importance than that — the shocking thing, as Drum and Yglesias have noted, is that he was somehow able to acquire such clout in the first place. (Gardner Dozois was right: “Have you noticed that your morning newspaper headlines look more and more as though they’re out of ‘The Marching Morons’?”)
ThymeZone
Yes, “Remember the Maine!” and “Pee Wee Herman Arrested!” were much more Pultizer-worthy than anything going on now.
“What ever happened to journalism?” Nothing, it has always been pretty much a myth.
Sam Hutcheson
Imus, who supported such radical right-wingers as John Kerry in 2004, Harold Ford in 2006, and who has spent the past four years calling Cheny and Rove fat pantsloads and gouhboys and stating they should be lined up against a wall and shot is now being fashioned as a conservative by Media Matters.
Is Andrew Sullivan still a conservative? Are you? If so, why isn’t Don Imus?
The Other Steve
Are you like 5 years old or something?
grumpy realist
One last comment–there’s a very good post by LowerManhattanite (LM as he is known) over at TheNewsBlog dissecting Imus’ present-day “humor” and why it doesn’t work any more, if it ever did. (LM’s a professional scriptwriter and awfully good himself.)
mrmobi
I’d like to second that. Thanks Richard.
mrmobi
You come from very smart undead stock, ZSC. Well said.
Rome Again
You’ll have to third it, I already seconded it in my mind, I just didn’t verbalize it.
Richard Bottoms
>You’ll have to third it, I already seconded it in my mind, I >just didn’t verbalize it.
Gov. LePetamaine: “We have to do something immediately!”
All spectators in room: “HARUMPH, HARUMPH HARUMPH!”
Gov. LePetamaine: “I didn’t get a HARUMPH outta that guy!”
Hedley Lammar: “Give the Gov. HARUMPH!”
Man: “HARUMPH!”
Gov. LePetamaine: “You watch your butt!”
Jim: You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.
Bart: Hey, where the white women at?
Blazing Saddles
rachel
Imus is a shitbird. His remarks were hurtful, and yes they are the kind of thing that can hurt you for the rest of your life–which is why he deserved to be canned.
But now that he’s gone, I’m not going to waste any more time on him.
BIRDZILLA
HANG AL SHARPTON INSTEAD