Imus Fired
I'm glad he got fired.
I am depressed, however, reading the comments on MSNBC.com, which I have to believe represent the Average American.
There's the usual trite comments about "free speech" and "double standards,"
the expected vitriol against Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the brilliant analyses about how this is "all about money," and lots of folks saying Imus went too far but he shouldn't have been fired.
I'm too tired to write at length about this now, so I hope others of you will. I said my piece earlier and I'm still trying to process why I feel this episode was so particularly ugly and upsetting.
I am depressed, however, reading the comments on MSNBC.com, which I have to believe represent the Average American.
There's the usual trite comments about "free speech" and "double standards,"
the expected vitriol against Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the brilliant analyses about how this is "all about money," and lots of folks saying Imus went too far but he shouldn't have been fired.
I'm too tired to write at length about this now, so I hope others of you will. I said my piece earlier and I'm still trying to process why I feel this episode was so particularly ugly and upsetting.
posted by PeaceBang at 9:55 PM
4 Comments:
You know.....I didn't even know I was a "nappy-headed ho" before Don Imus said that about the Rutgers Women's Basketball team. Because if he could say that about women he had never met and only saw on the TV once, he'll say that about any black woman. (and he has said stuff about other black women)
Nappy-headed I was born (wigs cover that up nicely)....nappy-headed I shall die. Ho....well....that's for me to know.
What hasn't really been discussed in all the racist/sexist talk, is the colorist talk. Part of the reason he called those gracious young women "nappy-headed hos" was because the majority of the African American women on the team were darker-skinned. If you look at the Tennessee team that they played, the majority of those players were lighter-skinned African Americans. Hence the jiggaboos and wanna-bees comments that are also on the tape.
oh my.....for every two steps forward there seems to be one taken back.
I can't write at length yet, because I haven't sorted out my feelings either. I do wonder if Jesse and Al are going to apologise to the Duke Lacross players. Or whether the President of Duke will. Actually, I lie- I know none of them will.
Thanks for posting on this, PB. Like you, I feel like I need more time to process it. Frankly, I don't care if he was fired or not, but I do care about America's Response, too.
One thing I do think I'm ready to discuss, though, is that I think that it really confuses matters to start slinging vituperative at Sharpton and Jackson, as has been so common lately. And I don't quite get it - why in the same breath of talking about the woes of racism does the discourse IMMEDIATELY swing back to the black people? Is it because the Rutgers women are so innocent and blameless that, in order to deal with the guilt associated with bigotry (which I'd argue all of us, to a certain degree, foster) it becomes easier to assail these two men? Of course there are components of Sharpton & Jackson's histories that most people (including African Americans) would find questionable at best. But what exactly does that have to do with Imus? Why can't we talk about this particular form of racism openly and honestly and stay there for a moment?
Maybe it just *feels better* to be on the attack - even with tongue in cheek - to immediately move on to cases where African Americans have been wrong. Because that's a more comfortable place to sit - we hear those stories every day.
Kim, thanks for pointing out that aspect of the situation. I hadn't thought of that, although I felt it intuitively and just didn't realize what it was until you wrote in.
Joel, the parallel you raise is interesting -- and the Duke players have been through hell -- but part of me also wants to just stay with Imus and the Rutgers team, to, as krs says, "Stay there for a moment."
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