Whores
Various fools and idiots have tried to make the argument that “black people say it too so it’s OK”.
Responding to Barnes, Kondracke said, “That sounds correct. On the other hand, they live in a — they do live in a culture where a ‘ho’ is a commonly tossed-around term. … By whom? By the rap music industry, by black men, largely.” Kondracke’s statement echoed Imus’ own non-defense of his comments that the phrase “nappy-headed hos” “originated in the black community” and that “I may be a white man, but I know that … young black women all through that society are demeaned and disparaged and disrespected … by their own black men and that they are called that name.”
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And there’s CNN:
I don’t know, maybe I’m sheltered. I live in West Philadelphia, and drink pretty much every might at the local bar at 47th and Baltimore Avenue, owned by an Ethiopian family, in a majority African-American neighborhood. Maybe I’m a townie. Maybe the black guys I drink with pretty much every fucking night are different from the guys that hang out in Mort and Fred’s neighborhood (and for that matter Joe Biden’s neighborhood). But for the record, I have never heard any of the black guys I know refer to woman as a “ho” unless she actually was a whore. And when you’re a barfly like I am, and like my friends at the bar are, you meet a lot of women that fall short of the Biblical ideal of kinder, kuchen, kirche. So far as music goes, even though hip-hop is in regular rotation on the jukebox, I have rarely heard anything really offensive, and before you say “well, yeah you’re a dirtbag”, I have a really strong feminist streak and that’s the kind of thing that sets me right off.
What the fuck do either of these two bloviating apologists for the wealthy and the stingy know about “black culture”? From the nonsense they’re spewing, it’s probably less than me, and I’m as white as they fucking come. I probably have a better perspective: I’ve been the lone white guy on my block for 4 years, and have lived in majority black West Philly for nearly a decade, and guess what? I don’t presume to know thing number one about black culture, the same way I don’t presume to know anything about Italian-American culture.
I’m SO sure that Mort and Fred listen to a lot of hip-hop music, so they know that they’re talking about: I’m sure both Kondracke (68) and Barnes (age unknown, but clearly well into his 50s) have enormous libraries of black literature, music through the past 50 years, including hip hop in all its variations.
Jesus;s General takes the point further:
I can imagine how my daughters and I would have felt had they been singled out on a popular radio and television program and called “Jew-nosed sluts.” These young women didn’t need to be degraded in that way by Imus, especially on the day following their greatest achievement thus far, taking second place in the National Woman’s College Basketball Championship. They were terribly wronged. Not only were they insulted in one of the most vile and despicable ways possible, but it may have very well ruined one of the greatest moments of their lives.
These women weren’t making a political statement (not that that should matter) that made them targets for loudmouth douchebags like Imus, who like his colleagues on the fecal end of the dial, jumps at the chance to take a victory lap around the toilet bowl: they were playing sports.
Fuck Don Imus, and furthermore fuck Tom Oliphant, fuck Tim Russert, and fuck Howard Fineman (who ought to know better than to defend this kind of racist crap.
A bunch of rich,powerful white guys expressing “the way it is” for black people. The presumption. The arrogance. The sheer ass-licking sycophantry makes your stomach turn.
Don Imus called a college women’s basketball team, black or otherwise, a bunch of whores. That’s unacceptable. The real whores are people like Imus, and the media prostitutes enabling him. I’d like to see Imus, or any of the scum he associates with, say what he said in my neighborhood.
3 Responses to “Whores”
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April 12th, 2007 at 2:44 am
As I have mentioned in a previous post, I have had longtime misgivings about Imus. Only minutes ago, I learned that MSNBC shitcanned him for good. I am not quite sure how I feel about that. Who is perfect? Who has never said anything inadvertently hateful? Who has never done anything inadvertently wrong? Not me, for one. As retarded as longtime frequent Imus participant Bo Dietel (for the record, I fucking HATE him) said, his characterization of MSNBC’s actions as “rash” is nothing short of apt. There are so many other things that Imus has done and said in his radio program in recent years that easily could have earned him early retirement — the show is a shadow of its former self. If you don’t like the guy, don’t fucking listen to him. My biggest fear about this latest development in the idiotic, mean-spirited, truly hateful shit that Don Imus (and, more damningly, his producer, Bernard McGuirk) said is the implications it has about the current state of free speech in this country. What are we supposed to do? Pretend that there are not hateful, stupid white people today that are living and wasting oxygen that smarter people could be using? What is this decision going to solve? Should anybody unafraid to mention the numerous good things that this particular radio host has done in his life start to fear for their own public hanging? What year is this? What country is this?
I will add more soon, but now I am too pissed off to go any further. Goodnight, free speech. Good fucking night.
April 12th, 2007 at 3:09 am
Another scary thing that I am trying to get my head around is that Imus is not exactly a liberal. Not to downplay the truly shitty, hateful nature of the comments that transpired on Imus’s show, but who will be next to go? Someone even more blatantly hateful like Rush Limbaugh, who spews bile and idiocy and bigotry far more hateful than Imus has done on a daily basis? Don’t get me wrong; that motherfucker’s next appearance in the media should be the bloody shit end of a snuff film. But what good are the airwaves if you aren’t allowed to learn about the true nature of the people that we walk among, regardless of whether or not you agree with them? As far as I am concerned, I would much rather know what people like Imus, Limbaugh, Howard Stern, and Bill O’Reilly really feel than not have the opportunity to see it. Everything in this country is NOT hunky dory in terms of race, class, opportunity, etc., but now I have one less source of proof of that. Who wants to remain in the dark? Not me.
The only lesson that I have learned from this railroad job is that there is even more proof now that our freedom is at stake now more than ever. And for all the talk about values and decency, the only thing that corporate media cares about is the bottom line and any potential liability to it. This is not about virtue. This is about liability and money. Sleep tight.
April 12th, 2007 at 11:02 am
I don’t see it as an abuse of free speech on the part of MSNBC, although I agree that you’re absolutely right that it’s a bottom-line thing with them as opposed to virtue. but you might also say that MSNBC is responding to their listeners and their advertisers who have every right NOT to be associated with what comes out of Imus’s mouth (or limbaugh’s or O’reillys etc).
“But what good are the airwaves if you aren’t allowed to learn about the true nature of the people that we walk among, regardless of whether or not you agree with them?”
Interestingly, my father and i had a mirror image of this discussion. He claims that Imus isn’t a racist at all, but that he plays one on the radio: however, what Imus is, in his opinion, is a bully.
“Who is perfect? Who has never said anything inadvertently hateful? Who has never done anything inadvertently wrong? ”
I don’t know Tim: when you’re on the radio, your free speech is also limited: you can’t drop F-bombs, there are all sorts of regulations to adhere to. This isn’t a “mistake” on Imus’s part: this is part of a longstanding pattern of behavior. Gwen Ifill as the cleaning lady; Howard Kurtz as the “boner-nosed beanie wearing Jew Boy”. The Williams sisters “belong in national geographic.”
It strikes me, and you may disagree, that when you’re behind the microphone and reaching literally millions of people, that your “free speech” is much more powerful than others’ free speech (I could sit here in my office and call the rutgers’ team the same things as Imus, and no more than 3 people would hear me).
the government doesn’t have the right to abridge your free speech, but it is widely acknowledged that employers DO have that right, especially when you are representing them. So you can’t go on the air at MIT and say “Mayor Menino’s a dirty wop and his wife’s a cunt.” You’d get kicked off immediately, and your claim of free speech would be laughed at.
What is remarkable to me isn’t that Imus got shitcanned: it’s that he (and Limbaugh and the rest) has been protected for as long as he has. The FCC goes after Janet Jackson’s tits, and people like O’Really who have seriously exploited the end of the Fairness Doctrine get away with murder.
I agree with the “don’t like it don’t listen to it” argument, but WTF? It’s not like Imus was attacking some public figure like a Clinton or a Hilton. He abused the privilege that he had, that privilege being a perch at MSNBC from which whatever was on his mind was amplified and sent to millions of households.
No one’s taking Imus’s free speech away: they’re taking his talk show host job away because his standard “royal asshole” schtick finally offended enough people that there was a shitstorm.