Last Imus Post Ever (I Hope)

by hilzoy

Via ThinkProgress, Gwen Ifill has one pf the best responses I've seen to the whole episode:

"You know, it’s interesting to me. This has been an interesting week. The people who have spoken, the people who issued statements and the people who haven’t. There has been radio silence from a lot of people who have done this program who could have spoken up and said, I find this offensive or I didn’t know. These people didn’t speak up. Tim, we didn’t hear from you. David, we didn’t hear from you. What was missing in this debate was someone saying, you know, I understand that this is offensive. You know, I have a 7-year-old god daughter. Yesterday she went out shopping with her mom for high-Thetop basketball shoes so she can play basketball. The offense, the slur that Imus directed at me happened more than 10 years ago. I would like to think that 10 years from now, that Asia isn’t going to be deciding that she wants to get recruited for the college basketball team or be a tennis pro or go to medical school and that she is still vulnerable to those kinds of casual slurs and insults that I got 10 years ago, and that people will say, I didn’t know, or people will say, I wasn’t listening. A lot of people did know and a lot of people were listening and they just decided it was okay. They decided this culture of meanness was fine — until they got caught. My concern about Mr. Imus and a lot of people and a lot of the debate in this society is not that people are sorry that they say these things, they are sorry that someone catches them. When Don Imus said this about me when I worked here at NBC, when I found out about it, his producer called because Don said he wants to apologize. Well, now he says he never said it. What was he apologizing for? He was apologizing for getting caught, not apologizing for having said it in the first place. And that to me is the debate we need to have, David is right, about the culture of meanness, about the culture of racial complaint, about the internal culture within our community about how we talk to one another. But just this week it was finally saying, enough."

What Imus said this about Gwen Ifill was this:

“Isn’t The Times wonderful,” Mr. Nelson quoted Mr. Imus as saying on the radio. “It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House.”

That was outrageous at the time. It's outrageous now. And Ifill is right: one of the real questions that this whole episode has raised is: why were so many people who presumably knew better willing to appear on his show and lend him credibility? Why are normally intelligent people like Tom Oliphant saying "Solidarity Forever" to Imus, instead of showing some solidarity with Ifill or the women of the Rutgers team?

This is not about humor: for one thing, Imus wasn't funny, and for another, it's perfectly possible to be funny without being mean-spirited. (just ask Garrison Keillor.) Pace Ifill, it's not about a "culture of complaint": I didn't hear the women of Rutgers complaining about anything before Imus decided to insult them out of the blue. It's about why people not only tolerate, but listen to and go on the air with, people who make their living being offensive for no good reason.

***

The single dumbest widespread response to this has to be the question: why don't Al Sharpton et al go after the rappers who say things that are even worse than what Don Imus said? Lots of people were saying this. Examples: Rush Limbaugh:

"Anyway, if you look at the lyrics that are on radio, the public airwaves that need to be detoxified, where are the Reverend Sharpton and Reverend Jackson dealing with those lyrics, not just the words uttered by deejays and hosts. I mean after all they are the public airwaves. These songs should be banned now! If this is about cleaning up all this garbage, these songs need to be banned, and when we're done fixing TV and radio, folks, next we're going to move on to Hollywood, because a lot of pollution in popular culture is coming from and produced by, a bunch of white liberals in Hollywood. Of course, they never come under attack, by the same liberals who are now attacking me and others, saying we're next."

Mark Levin:

"But Sharpton and Jackson have now highlighted something they never intended to address, i.e., the vile and disgusting content of much hip-hop and rap music. Conservative talk show hosts don't play this stuff on the air. It's the bread-and-butter of Urban radio stations. Hollywood celebrates it ("It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" won the 2006 Academy Award for Best Original Song—lyrics here) Sharpton and Jackson have never picketed an Urban radio station; they've never called for boycotts of the record labels that produce this filth; they've never asked the FCC to investigate the playing of these recordings on the public airwaves; and they've never demanded the firing of any DJs or executives who promote it. Yet, this junk is demeaning like nothing else and perpetuates all the worst stereotypes.

The real story is the failure of these self-appointed guardians of morality to speak the truth. But, then again, to do so would take guts and integrity."

Michelle Malkin:

"Is the Sharpton & Jackson Circus truly committed to cleaning up cultural pollution that demeans women and perpetuates racial epithets? Have you seen the Billboard Hot Rap Tracks chart this week? [there follow some loathsome quotes from rap songs.]

Al Sharpton, I am sure, is ready to call a press conference with the National Organization for Women to jointly protest this garbage and the radio stations and big pimpin' music companies behind it."

Etc., etc., etc.

This isn't stupid just because it's generally stupid to respond to something bad by pointing out that all the other kids do it to, though it is. And it isn't stupid because Al Sharpton doesn't deserve a lot of criticism: he does. It's stupid because it's, um, not true that Al Sharpton hasn't gone after degrading and violent rap music.

Two notes for the people who say this sort of thing: (1) Google exists. Use it. (2) The mere fact that something would confirm your preconceptions about liberals does not make it true.

***

Finally, the lamest response comes from Dan McLaughlin at RedState, who seems to think that the most important thing to say, in response to this whole episode, is that the members of the Rutgers women's basketball team didn't react properly. By talking about what it meant to them to have what ought to have been one of the best days of their lives turned into a media firestorm focussed not on their achievements but on the question whether or not it was OK to call them "nappy-headed hos", you see, they were not just being human beings, but participating in "the Culture of Victimology at its most destructive."

That was absolutely the first thing I thought of when I saw the press conference. A group of articulate, accomplished women were talking about having been gratuitously trashed, and my mind turned instantly to the question: are they fully adhering to the special RedState-Approved™ Code of Conduct for Victims?

As Gwen Ifill said: Whatever.

Comments

[rdldot]

"This isn't stupid just because it's generally stupid to respond to something bad by pointing out that all the other kids do it to, though it is."

This is absolutely correct, but it's also par for the course. Typical discussion on TV/Radio has come down to a defense that 'the other guy did it, too', and attacking the people who criticize, instead of defending the action, primarily because there is no defense for that action. In this case, it's the New York/Washington political elites defending one of their own.
They have learned their lessons well from any and all of the current White House administration.

And how anybody can, with a straight face, contend that a 65-year old white man is taking his cultural clues from hip-hop music without being laughed at out loud is a wonder to me.

[Ugh]

Finally, the lamest response comes from Dan McLaughlin at RedState Bizarro World.

Fixed to make applicable to any response to anything.

[spartikus]

Meanwhile, Pravda clues us in on the real reason behind the Imus firing.

It's like it's 1983 again.

[liberal japonicus]

Now, now, I'm sure that people were calling women of color 'cleaning ladies' in order to denigrate them much earlier than Mr. Imus ever thought to. He is not stupid. He may be just a white man, but he knows that the urge to denigrate comes from inside the black community itself.

/snark

[cleek]

there really is no point at all to pay any attention to anyone at RedState says, ever, about anything, for any reason.

this is RedState:

[It'sTheDemsFault] + [news] = [It'sTheDemsFault] * 2

"hack" is too nuanced. "integrity" is their polar opposite. "thoughtful" is not even wrong.

why bother yourself even looking at that site ?

[kth]

ESPN's Dan Patrick had some clown from Newsday take the "what about the rappers" argument a step further. He thought the Rutgers women's basketball team themselves should have taken a stand against misogyny in rap. As if, to respond to Imus' personal insults, the players were obligated to pick a fight with 50 Cent or Slim Thug or whoever, none of whom ever said 'boo' about the women who play basketball for Rutgers.

[Ugh]

"hack" is too nuanced.

Heh.

[Jon H]

Am I the only person who thinks there's a huge difference between specific allegations of ho-ness against individuals, general and vague allegations of ho-ness against unnamed persons, and the use of the word 'ho' in general?

Context is important.

There are, indisputably, people for whom 'ho' is, to a greater or lesser degree, a fitting descriptor.

As to the often-cited dancers in rap videos: being disrespected by being called 'hos' ? Or hired to knowingly *portray* 'ho's'? (I mean, good lord, you'd think people are under the impression that rap videos are documentaries of actual black behavior and culture, with 50 Cent playing the role of David Attenborough.)

Today Andrew Sullivan ran a quote of Barack Obama complaining about use of the word 'ho'. It's not the word, it's the CONTEXT, dammit.

[SomeOtherDude]

White men have been demeaning Black women for hundreds of years, and they never needed Black Artists to inspire them, before.

I wonder what type of backlash would there have been if Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton decided the best way to describe some Jewish women at Rutgers was “hooked-nose hookers” or some Italian women at Rutgers as “oily Papist prostitutes” or some Asian women at Rutgers as “me-love-you-long-time sluts” or some white women at Rutgers as “trailer-park skank” there would have been some holy hell to pay.

[SomeOtherDude]

Are some of these people suggesting that Imus was so overwhelmed by the eloquence of Rap artists that he just couldn’t control himself?

Or that he hates everything about Rap but can appreciate the misogyny?

Are folks suggesting that the women of Rutgers “know how their men talk to them in their community, and should smile that Imus feels so familiar with them”?

Shit, I blame Classic Rock for Right-Wing nationalist’s lying us into some fucked up war. And its Rock’s fault for white liberals’ being so gullible.

Damn, the rage started, for me, when rappers started to get blamed for Imus' mouth.

[JoeC]

I think Gwen hit the nail on the head with the story about her god-daughter.

As a father of a teenage girl, if I heard some old fart refer to my daughter as a 'ho' on national television/radio, I'd personally kick his ass. The end.

[liberal japonicus]

I blame Classic Rock

Actually, I think it was the fault of Soft rock, which paved the way for modifying anything with anything.

[OCSteve]

I just don’t “do” talk radio, so I can honestly say that I never heard him even once before this. The closest I came was living with my father in law 25 years ago – he used to listen to Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story” and I admit that drew me in a bit.

I will say that this whole thing seems a little bit contrived. They were waiting for it and they pounced. Where is it going now?

But as Media Matters for America has extensively documented, bigotry and hate speech targeting, among other characteristics, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and ethnicity continue to permeate the airwaves through personalities such as Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Michael Smerconish, and John Gibson.

You folks have the power now, and will likely get more in 17 months – do you really want to go here?

[jrudkis]

Michael Smerconish for race baiting? I don't think so. That guy is one of the most decent attorneys I have ever worked with, and his program has always been barely right of center.

I suppose his support for officer Faulkner and his wife (the guy killed by Mumia abu Jamal) might make people think it is race baiting, but from my point of view it is about ensuring justice is served for a fallen officer.

[hilzoy]

I blame the Bee Gees for everything that can possibly be blamed on music. The end.

OCS: Media Matters wasn't particularly waiting to pounce on Imus; they've been doing this stuff for ages. And I don't really have a problem with excoriating anyone, of any party, who refers to people who have done precisely nothing to deserve it as "nappy-headed hos".

I used to listen to talk radio. One of my many bad predictions: I heard Rush Limbaugh substituting for someone sometime around '88, and thought: geez, he's such an idiot he can't possibly make it even in this medium. Oops.

[OCSteve]

More:

At 6:14 a.m. on Wednesday, April 4, relatively few people were tuned into the "Imus in the Morning Show" when Don Imus referred to the Rutgers women's basketball team as "nappy-headed ho's."

Ryan Chiachiere was. A 26-year-old researcher in Washington, D.C., for liberal watchdog organization Media Matters for America, he was assigned to monitor Mr. Imus's program. Mr. Chiachiere clipped the video, alerted his bosses and started working on a blog post for the organization's Web site.

Let me be clear – from what I know of him, Imus is an ass. I never gave him or his sponsors 30 seconds of my attention. But I am concerned that this is going to turn into something bigger – specifically, if liberals can’t compete (see Air America) in the marketplace with (right) talk radio they will work to get rid of it. The Fairness Doctrine rears its ugly head, now this.

I think every idiot should be free to spout off their ludicrous beliefs on our airwaves. I will continue to tune into FM and try to find some good tunage.

[OCSteve]

I am having a serious problem with closing tags today. I give up.

[Dantheman]

Smerconish's response to the Media Matters comment.

Of the three statements cited, which he defends in the article, Smerconish seems unable to see the first example equates opposing the GWOT with being gay, and the second example argues that Muslims praying in the same stadium as the President is "a form of terrorism in itself".

So, no, whether Smerconish's commentary is far right of center, it certainly has offensive elements.

[Dantheman]

Sorry -- forgot to put the cite to the Smerconish article in my comment.

[rilkefan]

"What was missing in this debate was someone saying, you know, I understand that this is offensive"

This is 100% straw.

[kth]

Shock-jocks Opie and Anthony (second-gen Howard Stern types, I listen to them so you don't have to) were right for once: the proper context of the Imus firing is Howard Stern and Janet Jackson. I don't have a big problem with the Imus getting dumped, but if you do, you need to blame the Michael Powell-led FCC, whose draconian fines and threats, at the bidding mostly of religious conservatives, have broadcast media quivering in their boots (especially because cable and satellite radio can have no limits whatsoever).

[liberal japonicus]

100% straw? First, Ifill may have been referring to herself being called a cleaning lady, which I didn't follow, but I certainly haven't seen a lot of quotes from people denouncing that, but a secondary point is that some pundits, if they mention the offensiveness of it at all, are only saying that as a springboard to launch into a defense of Imus or an attack on current black culture. To me there is a world of difference between.

"I think it was offensive."

"Of course, we agree that this was offensive, but what about all the good deeds Imus has done?"

[Peter]

OCSteve:

"I think every idiot should be free to spout off their ludicrous beliefs on our airwaves."

Then buy your own radio station or broadcasting network. The network that hired Imus chose to fire him and they had every right to do so.

Let me repeat that: Imus wasn't fired by MediaMatters. He was fired by his employers after sponsors began pulling out. Presumably the sponsors didn't want to be associated with racist bullshit, and if so then good for them. And kudos to MediaMatters for making the effort to call out racist bullshit when it happens.

The First Amendment doesn't guarantee a right to a nationwide radio program, and exposing idiots like Imus for what they are isn't censorship.

[gwangung]

I think Jon Rogers has a good take on this. The power of humor is to dethrone the powerful, humble the mighty and to show the elite that they are no better than the common man.

And the problem here is that, compared to Don Imus, the Rutgers players were certainly not more powerful than he, nor more famous and certainly not more wealthy. In fact, I think it can be fairly said that the majority of the country is currently better off and will be better than these women in the future (even as they take their opportunities as far as they can take them and better themselves).

The whole thing about shock jock is very disheartening to me, if you go by the humor-stealing-power, or humor-equalizing-power rubric. That there are vast amounts of this country that find Rush Limbaugh humorous because he steals power from liberals and from blacks, that these segments feel that blacks, liberals and whatnot have so much pwoer over them that it is OK for the likes of Imus and Limbaugh to mock these "powerful" people.

[Jon H]

OCSteve, don't forget that the right wing has had media monitors for a lot longer than MediaMatters has been around, and the right wing ones freak out about the most absurd things.

[jrudkis]

DantheMan:

Sure, he has said some things that can be considered offensive, but is that race baiting? As I think his article puts it, he has been on the air 15 years, writes columns, books, guest hosts others shows, etc., and those are the three examples that are used to indicate he should be put off the air?

I am reasonably certain that I could find somewhere in the writing history of anybody three things that could be considered offensive to somebody despite the fact that person does not intend to do anything like that. And writers get to edit. Imagine how hard it is to edit as you do live interviews and try to make it interesting.

[Phil]

But I am concerned that this is going to turn into something bigger – specifically, if liberals can’t compete (see Air America) in the marketplace with (right) talk radio they will work to get rid of it. The Fairness Doctrine rears its ugly head, now this.

1. Imus was hardly "right talk radio."

2. They didn't do this during the Clinton years, when the President was regularly being accused of rape, murder and drug running on television and radio nearly every day, now did they?

[wonkie]

OSCSteve, what is wrong with monitoring the content of the airwaves?

I really think very one except Gwen Ifell has missed the point. The point isn't who talks bad about black women or free speech or liberals pouncing or the fact that this crap has been going on for over a decade or any of those side issues. The point is, to use Ifell's phrase, that a "culture of meanness" has been tolerated too long and the tolerance should stop. The MSM is assumed in our culture to broadcast content which is socially acceptable. Speech on the MSM is legitimized by its presence there. Abusive talk of everytype has become acceptable because it has been allowed on the MSM. Everyone who allowed it is complict. That's the problem. Maybe the marginalizing of Coulter and the firing of Imus will put a stop to the tolerance of abusive talk on the MSM.

We teach kids to adapt their talk to the conventionns of a situation: don't swear in front of Grandma, use your inside voice, scream while watching a football game but not in church. As a culture we should be doing the same thing. For political discourse to work in a democracy there has to be a norm of civil communication and there has to be a common vehicle for setting the stanndard of normal.. The MSM used to serve that role. Now it doesn't. Instead Coulter, Hanity, Beck, Limbaugh,and O'Reilly are allowed to set the standard. It has become normal even for the reporters who aren't wingnuts to shout at and interrupt the person they are interviewing,exhibiting the kind of public behavior most adults wouldn't tolerate in their children.

It doesn't matter a hill of beans that Imus has done this stuff before. All that means is that the people who failed to stop him in the past are complict in his career of abusive talk. It doesn't matter that other talking heads do it to--all that means is that the powers that be on their respective stations are complict in abusive talk now. It doesn't matter a damn that Imus does good stuff in his private life. No person is completely good or bad and god can sort that out later., Here on earth the bosses at the station are responisble for what they allow on air and that's all that should matter.
That guy Fineman was quoted talking to Imus and he said that Imus's remark would have been accepted two years ago but isn't now because there has been a political change. Well, I certainly hope so. I hope people are not able to rationnalize continued tolerance any of the abusive bullies currently on the MSM.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

I just want to mention that Imus most definitley wasn't part of "the right" in the sense that people 'round here typically use it. He was a Kerry supporter for instance.

[CaseyL]

As was pointed out when the Dixie Chicks' CDs were being burned and the band members were getting death threats, the First Amendment only applies to governmental action. There's no First Amendment right to have one's expression socially accepted, nor to make money off it. The First Amendment gives you the right to say what you want to say without the government censoring you or putting you in jail.

I, for one, would love to see not just the RW foamers like Limbaugh and Savage, but all shock jocks generally, lose their audiences. Not through governmental action, but through the marketplace discovering they're no longer acceptable, no longer profitable. Swear words don't bother me at all. Encouraging, and celebrating, ignorance, stupidity, cruelty, and "ditto-headedness" bothers me a lot.

[washerdreyer]

Going off of Sebastian's comment, how exactly did the Imus incident come to take on the political (left/right) valence which it did? Did it happen prior to Al Sharpton's involvement?

[John Thullen]

It is a curious phenomenon that "shock jocks" can sit in the isolated and insulated studio, probably in a building with tight security and cast casual, mean-spirited insults that would get their butts kicked in any other venue.

I don't believe Imus would have insulted the women from a courtside seat.

While we're cleaning up the culture of meanness, brought to us by the wonderful world of unlimited capitalistic competition in cable TV and radio broadcasting, I'd like to "fire" Donald Trump and set a firehose on the hosts and camera crews of "Cheaters".

And, after poking so many crocodiles, who were just minding their own business, with sticks to make us think he was going to be eaten, I've got to say that crikey Aussie got his comeuppance when he decided to mess with the sting ray.

I have a special place in my meanness pantheon for those reality show 20-somethings who spend three days in a beachside condo, fall in love, break up, and then diss each other and make each other cry on camera, all in a 72-hour time period. They are encouraged to be sadistic punks.

For this, they get agents and show up eating worms on another show.

I'd like to let a crocodile loose in their condo just about the time they are straggling into the kitchen with hangovers.

That would be real.

Limbaugh, Savage, O'Reilly, and the rest: this could have been stopped a long time ago if someone, anyone, would just go across the desk at them.

Though now that I think about it, Jim Rome, another jackass who made the most of the American dream, had his career soar after he persisted in ridiculing Jim Everett by repeatedly calling him "Chrissy Everett", because of some bad performance on the field. Jim Everett asked Rome nicely to stop and when he didn't, lots of furniture on the set got broken.

It's too bad Chrissy wasn't there to do a tag team with Jim Everett on Rome, the punk.

[KCinDC]

It appears that the 10:30 comment plagiarizes several sentences from a related blog post, inserting Chinese spam links. Let's hope this sort of thing doesn't catch on.

[KCinDC]

I've never heard Smerconish, but would O'Reilly really have someone repeatedly as guest-host who was an inoffensive centrist? It doesn't seem like his audience would stand for it.

[DaveC]

Maybe a little off topic, but how many of you believe that fire cannot melt steel.

She must be right. Just listen to the applause!

Poor Elizabeth is just so stupid.

[Ara]

Gwangung: I think you hit the nail right on the head. A big part of what stuck in people's craws is that Imus wasn't picking on power, but rather picking on people a whole lot less powerful than Don Imus.

If you ask me, what he said about Gwen Ifell was actually far more hurtful.

[gwangung]

I just want to mention that Imus most definitley wasn't part of "the right" in the sense that people 'round here typically use it.

Well, yeah....but it's telling that there are a lot of supporters who ARE part of the "right"....

Shame on them. They approve of bullying. (Though not surprising; many of them are against anti-bullying measures in schools).

[gwangung]

If you ask me, what he said about Gwen Ifell was actually far more hurtful.

Though of the same piece: work hard, try your best, get near the top and all you deserve is insults and derision.

[OCSteve]

OCSteve, don't forget that the right wing has had media monitors for a lot longer than MediaMatters has been around, and the right wing ones freak out about the most absurd things.

You are right and I should have mentioned that. I just find it deeply offensive that these folks would come right out and say we have this hit list, we have folks monitoring these people and we plan to get them. (In so many words.) It is stupid when either side does it. But I think it is more of an issue when people are targeted for their political opinions. I don’t know where Imus was on the political landscape. (Apparently some Democrats are lamenting his loss because his show was a good venue for them?)

[Phil]

Maybe the marginalizing of Coulter . . .

Hahahahaha. As if.

OCSteve, don't you think it's at all noteworthy that the only person at all in this thread who is on record as wanting to ban anything at all from the airwaves is . . . Rush Limbaugh?

[Jesurgislac]

OCS: Apparently some Democrats are lamenting his loss because his show was a good venue for them?

Anyone, any political party, who is "lamenting his loss" is an asshole. (And I heard it was Lieberman, who is not so much a Democrat as a PartyOfMe...)

[jrudkis]

Do you think that today's Doonesbury falls into the category of unacceptable racial comments?

http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html

It seems to be linking email fraud with being Nigerian.

[Jesurgislac]

The most popular bank to use in the 419 scam used to be the Central Bank of Nigeria. The scam is still referred to as the "Nigerian Scam" even though the spam may purport to come from many different countries these days. (Snopes.com is an invaluable resource: Moe Lane included it in the blogroll for exactly that reason.) In the 1920s, it was called the "Spanish Prisoner" scam.

[jrudkis]

Sure, it is related to Nigeria, but I don't think all Nigerians or only Nigerians do it. I would think that would be stereotyping to conclude that any email scam you get is from Nigeria.

[SomeOtherDude]

I have read and heard from a number of sources that Imus’ audience is mainly “Reagan Democrats.” And voted, primarily for Kerry, in the last election.

[Hartmut]

There was an editorial cartoon (or was it a nonsequitur cartoon? not sure) last year with the Nigerian minister of finances sitting at his desk and complaining that nobody answers his emails :-)

[Jesurgislac]

Sure, it is related to Nigeria

Actually, there's no evidence that it is. "Nigerian scam" is just used as a name because (as I said) the most common bank named in these fraudulent e-mails used to be the Central Bank of Nigeria, but even that hasn't been true for years.

but I don't think all Nigerians or only Nigerians do it. I would think that would be stereotyping to conclude that any email scam you get is from Nigeria.

I don't know of anyone who does, not even the people who fall for the scams.

[jrudkis]

So that would be my question...is the Doonesbury cartoon an acceptable or unacceptable stereotyping of Nigerians?

[hilzoy]

OCSteve: it's not that Media Matters maintains a hit list. They listen to more or less every major media anyone. I just surfed over to their website, and one of the first stories I saw was this one, about something someone from Washingtonpost.com said on MSNBC's The Most (whatever that is.) Here they fact-check a story in the LA Times. This one is on Katie Couric, who seems to have repeated the false story about Obama going to a madrassa.

Like I said: they listen to (or read, or watch) most media figures. They weren't going after a specific hit list.

[Davebo]

I just find it deeply offensive that these folks would come right out and say we have this hit list, we have folks monitoring these people and we plan to get them.

Don't worry Steve. As long as there are all herbal sexual enhancement drugs and aluminum siding salesman there will be conservite talk radio shows to hawk them and sadly, conservatives with rotted wood and an inferiority complex to listen.

[Hartmut]

So that would be my question...is the Doonesbury cartoon an acceptable or unacceptable stereotyping of Nigerians?

I think this is not a stereotyping of Nigerians/Black People at all because it is directed at the well-known scam, not the alleged perpetrators. Btw, it is a Doonesbury running gag that the characters search their mailbox and throw out "obvious scams" (e.g. politically embarassing news) and then seemingly to fall for "manhood enlargement at a bargain" etc.

Btw, the author of Dilbert got into hot water because in a strip Dogbert sold obviously fake relics to morons. The joke was obviously on the morons that would buy such items (e.g. a football autographed by Jesus) but Scott Adams was accused of making fun of Christianity.

[jrudkis]

I love Doonesbury and Dilbert. I just wonder how far this issue is going to go.

But I disagree that the Doonesbury strip was about Nigerian scammers. I see that as tarring the nation.

I am also pretty sure that Jesus would only autograph a Philadelphia Eagles football, so the Dilbert was was an obvious fake.

[Toadmonster]

Saying this is about meanness is ultimately misleading and unhelpful. First off meanness and bullying are not the same thing. Bullying implies superior power, which, it has been pointed out, it what made this an issue. There’s a naïveté in the point about arbitrary meanness, which is not recent to American politics or human behavior. So, bullying – but what makes it that? The power dynamics, that is, the racism (and sexism). What’s the difference between calling John Edwards a faggot and calling Bush an idiot? It’s that the former is prejudicial, not that it’s meaner in some way apart from that. Nor was this, strictly speaking, about the fact that Imus’ remark was apolitical, that is, pointlessly mean – if he had offhandedly attacked a white male basketball team as stupid jocks, no one would have cared, and rightly.

Framing this as ‘meanness’ creates the opportunity for people to try to draw equivalence between ‘Bush is an idiot’ and ‘Edwards is a faggot’. Calling it meanness rather than what it more explicitly is just sounds like nagging, makes it sound like the issue is about a preference for a certain way of speaking, rather than about it being acceptable to publicly marginalize people for belonging to certain historically oppressed groups.

[John Thullen]

Hmm, how did the Imus flap get cast with a conservative/liberal valence?

Because jackasses on either end of the political spectrum (Redstate has a theory complete with the usual unnamed Democrats, which they threaten to name "Hillary") were happy to know for whom the Imus brayed until he kicked the innocent.

DaveC.:

Now look, please cite the last time Rosie O'Donnell was mentioned, linked to, cited as an authority, quoted approvingly, or invited to post here, or breathlessly interviewed by one of the front-page posters on any issue.

I don't recall Hilzoy quoting Rosie's poetry. Gary Farber has never cited any of Rosie's scientific papers or articles in Foreign Policy Review in his comments. Publius and Von and Sebastian have never cited Rosie's pronouncements as precedent for legal decisions.

I do remember Charles Bird giving us a survey of his favorite talk jocks, and lamenting the fact that the founding jackass of the genre in the modern era -- Rush Limbaugh -- had fallen to 8th place in his pantheon.

As for me, if Barbara Wawa accidentally on purpose poked Rosie in the eye with a fingernail half way through one of her honking diatribes, I might tune in to catch the slapfest.

If Dick Cheney had Rosie's sense of humor, he'd be even less funny.

If Imus and O'Donnell and Sharpton are all the Right can pin on the Left, than I fear for the quality of our jackasses.

We're just not keeping up.

[javelina]

spartikus, thank you for linking the breathtakingly weird (and, yes, retro) story in Pravda, linking the Imus firing to the US government's "9/11 cover-up." Who on earth is the publisher nowadays?

[javelina]

spartikus, thank you for linking the breathtakingly weird (and, yes, retro) story in Pravda, tying the Imus firing to 9/11. Who on earth is the publisher nowadays?

[javelina]

Okay, dunno how that happened.

[Ara]

I for one wouldn't care less if Rosie was fired because of a public uproar of what she said. She did say pretty stupid things. She's one of those easy targets who gives the Left a black eye. And she's says the kinds of things that scares people, make leftists seem like idiots, America-haters, and moonbeamers. It's counterproductive and far more divisive than it is helpful.

OT Jesurgislac: I got a Spanish Prisoner-style scam in the mail yesterday claiming to be from soldiers in the Gulf. Ain't that sweet? Exploiting gullibility, greed, and patriotism all at once.

[Common Sense]

jrudkis:

Didn't you say that Smerconish was an attorney? If so, how could he possibly be so ignorant about the first amendment?

I've got to say, my new criteria for guessing at whether someone is a political conservative has become how many irrational fears they've got. OCSteve, for all his other good qualities, seems to worry about things for which there is no rational basis. Smerconish thinks he's facing a lynch mob. Whether it is "immigrants are coming to kill us all!" or "the gays, the gays are coming to destroy marriage!" or "muslim terrorists are going to attack nowhere, Iowa, population 800." Its just bizarre.

[jrudkis]

Commonsense,

Smerconish is an attorney, but he is a plaintiff's attorney, so you can't except him to actually know the law...

He is actually a very good attorney, and when I knew him he was primarily doing high profile plaintiffs work at Beasley, Casey, and Erbstein in Philadelphia. He used to broadcast his show right from his office. He is still there, but I think part time, mostly being a talking head now.

My server blocks blogspot, so I can't see the reference that you linked to.

[russell]

Maybe I'm missing something.

Imus isn't a conservative, as far as I can tell. Nor is he particularly liberal. He's a cranky old guy who has all kinds of people on his show, and he humiliates them all without regard to their political stripe.

The Doonesbury cartoon isn't racist because it doesn't discuss, at all, race. As a point in fact, lots and lots of spam email putatively comes from folks in Nigeria. It has nothing to do with whether they are black or not.

Imus didn't get dropped because of a bunch of liberal bloggers. He got dropped because his sponsors didn't want to be associated with him anymore. It's their money, they can do whatever the hell they want with it. No money, no show.

The reason Imus got in trouble is that he called a team of hard-working, accomplished young women a bunch of "nappy headed hos". It was a stupid, ignorant, offensive thing to say. Enough folks were offended that it cost him his job.

Imus is a jerk. He's not just a jerk, he's a jerk for a living. In general, enough people find that entertaining that it made him a rich and influential guy. He crossed the line, and now he's going to pay.

It has nothing to do with politics. It has everything to do with how far you want to take being an utter jerk.

My guess is that, for better or worse, Imus will land on his feet and find a way to make lemonade out of this particular lemon. No need to shed a tear on his behalf.

Thanks -

[DaveC]

Gary Farber has never cited any of Rosie's scientific papers or articles in Foreign Policy Review in his comments.

Gary is probably not up early enough to watch "The View", or has turned his back on it since the "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" lady left the program*

(*pure speculation on my part)

[Dantheman]

In case anyone was holding their breath waiting to see who the next Imus will be, MSNBC is holding tryouts. First up, Michael Smerconish.

[jrudkis]

Reasonably sure he was chosen because he is not like Imus. I have not heard Smerconish in years because he is mostly local Philly, but when I was there, he was not especially childish (although he did host a party where you were supposed to throw tomatoes at Ira Einhorn's image).