Imus... - Page 4 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Hanxter · 04-12-2007, 04:30 PM

i'll make no bones about it - i like the guy...

what he said was wrong - flat out wrong!!!

he's said some shit that my wife (who also likes him for his being candid) and i have looked sideways thinking "well now, that was nasty" but we have big shoulders and can read thru it...

what i don't get is he has rob bartlett on doing bill clinton calling hillary his white house "ho" when they were dealing with vincent foster's death...

bartlett doing roberto gonzales as inept...

yet you don't hear anyone bitching about that...

or larry kinney doing ted kennedy and chappa...

what you have here is sharpton and jesse jackoff going on a tirade for their own spin...

i don't like the hypocracy and the media bullshit condemning one individual when they are the feeding trough for the same...

as clapton said... "before you accuse me, take a look at yourself..."

ubertuber · 04-12-2007, 04:45 PM

Point taken dc - although I'd have to say the program you brought up would be sexism. Good, bad, or indifferent, it's sexism.

Hanxter · 04-12-2007, 05:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by American

Apologies only count when you're a liberal; if you're a conservative (which Imus is not)

he's a registered republican... prolly the only one in manhatten which may explain why he has no friends

mixedmedia · 04-12-2007, 05:53 PM

Shakran,

I've been giving this a lot of thought this evening, and I think I've come to the conclusion that we are debating this argument in two completely separate arenas.

I feel like you are making an idealistic argument about racism that, theoretically, I can agree with.

While I am making a completely different argument about the realities that distinguish what you are calling racism today when contrasted with the institutionalized racism of our past and why it colors our present making it, popularly, more offensive when black people are denigrated by a white person than vice versa. Not HOW things should be, but what THEY ARE and why it shouldn't be difficult for anyone to comprehend why they are that way. And I will grant you that I mistook what I am supposing to be a "tough love" kind of attitude towards American blacks and their need to move out of the past with a dismissive attitude towards that past. I don't agree with it, but I can understand it.

When I started on this subject I was not responding to a statement made by you. Your initial contributions to this thread seemed to center on Imus' right to say what he said. Therefore, your responding to my post seemed to come out of left field and maybe you can understand how it was interpreted by me to be a negation of my simple explanation about the dynamics at play in race relations in America. Surely, you do not deny the simple reality of why we react the way we do? You can wish for things to be different and still see the way things are, yes?

I would love nothing more than this not to be an issue. But it is. Do I have to feel guilty about it or responsible for it to realize it? No, I don't. And I have grandparents who directly participated in the racist system - who were against the de-segregation of the south. But I don't feel guilty. I feel understanding. It doesn't mean I feel satisfied. It means I can make the logical connections and understand why we are behaving this way. That is all. There is no basis to extrapolate from this that I am accepting of racism in any form.

Then there is the subject of comedy and its role in perpetuating racism. A concept that, personally, I just flat-out disagree with. And unless you can come up with some proof of that, it's just your opinion against mine.

Now that this is all said, I am officially taking leave of this conversation. You can respond, but I'm not going to address it. Not out of anger or frustration, but just because my time is precious and I don't think I have anything else to say about it. Hopefully there isn't any doubt about where I stand. And I'm under no compulsion to make anyone see things my way.

Bye

pig · 04-12-2007, 06:25 PM

damn mixed, i think you just beat me to the punch. i've been waiting this one out a bit, unable to express my thoughts coherently in any useful way that would elevate or move the conversation forward. i want to agree with the spirit of many of shakran's points, but i simply can't buy the notion of "wiping the slate clean" in any meaningful way. i think roach stated the basic presuppositions of why this isn't possible. i agree with shakran and uber that i'd like to see aa policy moved towards socio-economic status, but i also can see easily why it has been traditionally race/ethnicity-based. i don't think think, from the perspective of a white southerner with ancestry from irish immigrants of about 1900, that this is entirely about personal "guilt," but rather a recognition of historical perspective. ergo, mixed's comments in her last post reflecting what i think i meant to say.

on the role of comedy, i'd definitely have to say that someone like chris rock, or richard pryor, or for that matter eddie izzard, is a little different than someone walking down the street calling someone else a nigger or a cracker. i believe comedy, when its well-done, brings light and exposure to perspectives that we don't often like to admit to as a society. sure, they probably could perpetuate racism/sexism/gender issues to an extent, but i think they are more of a hyperbolic cultural expression of a cultural phenomenon. that's a little different than a political commentator, or a lecturer.

as far as imus, i'm surprised to see he's been fired. i agree with hanxter and others that its hypocritical to pay this guy to serve this function for 20 or 30 years, and then to fire him because of this particular situation. its not as though something of this nature was predictable.

Cynthetiq · 04-12-2007, 07:30 PM

Quote:

Jackson called the firing "a victory for public decency. No one should use the public airwaves to transmit racial or sexual degradation."

Said Sharpton: "He says he wants to be forgiven. I hope he continues in that process. But we cannot afford a precedent established that the airways can commercialize and mainstream sexism and racism."

I guess they've not seen any hip hop videos on MTV.

shakran · 04-12-2007, 08:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mixedmedia

I feel like you are making an idealistic argument about racism that, theoretically, I can agree with.

Good. You and I tend to agree more than we disagree, so I was disturbed over this one

Quote:

While I am making a completely different argument about the realities that distinguish what you are calling racism today when contrasted with the institutionalized racism of our past and why it colors our present making it, popularly, more offensive when black people are denigrated by a white person than vice versa. Not HOW things should be, but what THEY ARE and why it shouldn't be difficult for anyone to comprehend why they are that way.

And I have no problem with this analysis. That's how it is. No doubt about it. Where I have a problem is when people get the attitude that "well, that's how it is, and therefore that's how it's going to be."

That may be how it is, but I don't find it acceptable that we should think it OK that it continue to be that way.

Quote:

And I will grant you that I mistook what I am supposing to be a "tough love" kind of attitude towards American blacks and their need to move out of the past with a dismissive attitude towards that past. I don't agree with it, but I can understand it.

You're right, it is certainly not a dismissive attitude.

Quote:

Your initial contributions to this thread seemed to center on Imus' right to say what he said. Therefore, your responding to my post seemed to come out of left field and maybe you can understand how it was interpreted by me to be a negation of my simple explanation about the dynamics at play in race relations in America.

Yeah I can see where it came out of left field. Honestly I expected someone to pounce on me for that long before now. But I think despite the appearance of being 2 different opinions, you'll see that actually I'm staying consistent. Imus has the RIGHT to say this stupid crap if he wants to. That doesn't mean it's right for him to say it. I support his right to say it just as I support the right of the National Socialist Movement to tell us the Jews are evil. Doesn't mean I agree with 'em, or approve of 'em, but one of the things that makes this country potentially great is that it is founded on the belief that even unsavory or unpopular opinions should be able to be expressed. Remember, that in 1950 it was unpopular to say that you supported equal rights for black people. But because of the unpopular views of a minority of the population, eventually society started to realize that picking on black people because of their skin color is wrong. In a country that did not support the expressing of unpopular opinion, that change may never have come about.

Quote:

Surely, you do not deny the simple reality of why we react the way we do? You can wish for things to be different and still see the way things are, yes?

Of course. I see the way they are today. It pisses me off, and I want it to be different tomorrow. That won't happen if we sit around and complain that people in the past were wrong. Yes. They were wrong. Now let's stop rehashing that, and work toward a better society.

Quote:

It means I can make the logical connections and understand why we are behaving this way. That is all.

Understanding why the system is the way it is, is fine. But are you happy with the system as it is, or would you like to see a change toward a society where people don't have to worry about being judged based on stupid physical characteristics?

Quote:

Then there is the subject of comedy and its role in perpetuating racism. A concept that, personally, I just flat-out disagree with. And unless you can come up with some proof of that, it's just your opinion against mine.

Well it all depends on your definition of racism I suppose. If you think calling a black guy a nigger is racist, then Michael Richards was racist in his "comedy" a few months back. And if you think calling a black guy a nigger is racist, then to stay consistent you must think that calling a Muslim a cameljockey, or a Mexican a beaner, is also racist.

warrrreagl · 04-13-2007, 03:46 AM

If somebody already linked this story, then I aologize. I'm way too damn lazy to read through 4 pages of posts from the beginning.

Why bother fixing the problem when it's so much easier to fix the blame?

Quote:

http://www.kansascity.com/159/story/66339.html
Imus isn’t the real bad guy
Instead of wasting time on irrelevant shock jock, black leaders need to be fighting a growing gangster culture.
By JASON WHITLOCK
Columnist

Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.

You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.

You’ve given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor.

Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.

The bigots win again.

While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’s or Young Jeezy’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos.

I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don’t have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.

It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.

Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and wait for someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves.

It’s embarrassing. Dave Chappelle was offered $50 million to make racially insensitive jokes about black and white people on TV. He was hailed as a genius. Black comedians routinely crack jokes about white and black people, and we all laugh out loud.

I’m no Don Imus apologist. He and his tiny companion Mike Lupica blasted me after I fell out with ESPN. Imus is a hack.

But, in my view, he didn’t do anything outside the norm for shock jocks and comedians. He also offered an apology. That should’ve been the end of this whole affair. Instead, it’s only the beginning. It’s an opportunity for Stringer, Jackson and Sharpton to step on victim platforms and elevate themselves and their agenda$.

I watched the Rutgers news conference and was ashamed.

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for eight minutes in 1963 at the March on Washington. At the time, black people could be lynched and denied fundamental rights with little thought. With the comments of a talk-show host most of her players had never heard of before last week serving as her excuse, Vivian Stringer rambled on for 30 minutes about the amazing season her team had.

Somehow, we’re supposed to believe that the comments of a man with virtually no connection to the sports world ruined Rutgers’ wonderful season. Had a broadcaster with credibility and a platform in the sports world uttered the words Imus did, I could understand a level of outrage.

But an hourlong press conference over a man who has already apologized, already been suspended and is already insignificant is just plain intellectually dishonest. This is opportunism. This is a distraction.

In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no threat to black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so destructive and must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about the idiot rappers on BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the country who use words much more powerful and much more destructive?

I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?

When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim.

No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.

sky_driver · 04-13-2007, 04:44 AM

Although I don't listen to Imus often, I think this is the best thing that could have happened to him.

Now he can say good by to CBS...move over to Satellite radio, and make millions more than he was with CBS.

He should be thanking Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton, and all the other Reverends for giving him this great opportunity to move on.

It is sad that Jackson and Sharpton feel that only black people can say what they want, when they want, against who they want and be insulated by the fact that they are poor depressed black people.

The_Jazz · 04-13-2007, 04:52 AM

Skydriver, if it were only that simple. Sentiments and racial politics aside, the chances of Imus landing on satellite radio aren't very good. His arch-nemisis Stern is a major shareholder and would probably never conceed a slot to Imus. With the proposed XM/Sirius merger, there won't be a competitor to try.

Infortunately, Imus is most likely taking a big paycut somewhere else, if he comes back at all.

Deltona Couple · 04-13-2007, 06:07 AM

I agree with the OP. I bet we will see Imus on Sirius within the next 3 months.

shakran · 04-13-2007, 06:22 AM

so do I. Stern is above all things interested in making money. Remember he started as a rock / country music jock until he figured out being the Asshole of the Airwaves would make him a lot richer. If he thinks Imus will bring money to the company he owns stock in, he'll roll out the red carpet for him.

host · 04-13-2007, 06:30 AM

Begging your pardon....I thought that this used to be the "POLITICS" forum....now...we enjoy not just one.....but TWO "Imus" threads. This new one seems more like a topic for "E" Entertainment Tonight, than it does for this forum.

I propose a "deal". I won't start a new...."What did Imus eat for breakfast this morning", or..."What will Imus wear today....say today.....do today", if this thread can be moved, merged, closed....smashed into bytes....any or all of the
above?

Does anybody even want to "do" a politics forum at TFP, anymore? I am immersed in what I perceive to be unprecedented crimes against the US constitution, and the country and it's government, by the most corrupt, secretive, compromised, American executive branch in my lifetime, and maybe even in the last 5 generations.....do I have to watch while most posters "gravitate" to the two Imus threads, too?

There are plenty of other places to escape to, on this forum, and on the rest of the internet.

Why do it here, too? ENOUGH, already??

shakran · 04-13-2007, 06:48 AM

Good point Host. This post should be in entertainment or general, as should the other Imus thread. I view the entire forum by hitting the "new posts" button, which means I often don't notice what forum it's in (which has gotten me in trouble before for mouthing off in the ladies lounge

) - - so my lame defense is that I didn't realize this was posted in politics.

ubertuber · 04-13-2007, 06:49 AM

There's more to the political world than the crimes of G. W. Bush. The relationship of the commercial world to free speech is a political topic. My compromise is that I'm going to merge this thread with the other.

P.S. Tilted Politics IS just another forum on TFP. Part of what shapes the life of threads is where they are posted. Since this is in Tilted Politics, it will get different responses and different responders than it would in Entertainment or GD.

Rekna · 04-13-2007, 08:06 AM

All I know is on Foxnew's show redeye the other night they managed to somehow tie the Imus flap back to the global war on terrorism..... So Fox thinks its political.

Anyway this story has been monopolizing the network news for the past week and needs to go away quickly because it is pushing all other news to the background. For instance did anyone know that there was a major bombing within the green zone yesterday? You hardly hear about these things because Americans are frankly more interested in gossip about who said what to whom and who is the father of whom.

Sorry for the rant

ubertuber · 04-13-2007, 08:52 AM

As I said before, I'm really curious to see how Imus' next employer pre-empts the Sharpton posse when they pick him up. Someone is sure to give in to the temptation of an unemployed guy who once earned his network $15 million.

Rekna · 04-13-2007, 09:17 AM

If he gets picked up on satellite I don't see what Sharpton can do. He can't go after the advertisers because their are none. He can have people boycott them but I don't think that would be terribly effective because I'm betting that a large percentage of people who have satellite radio don't care about this story enough to cancel their subscription.

Dane Bramage · 04-13-2007, 09:21 AM

Very interesting article, warrrreagl. This is exactly what I have thought since I first heard this.

Thanks for posting that.

roachboy · 04-13-2007, 09:25 AM

i think this is a political thread--it involves a number of explicitly political issues, and enables a broadening of the purview of the political in this space--conflicts over the implications of racist remarks involve all kinds of political factors--social norms are political matters---the mobilization of either pressure or the appearance of pressure is a political matter.

i havent look at the other thread because i didnt see the point to another thread, but that's just me.

btw:
i think that the networks are cowards.
this even though, like i have said, i think what imus said was deplorable---and i think his schtick is tiresome----in general i would rather drive tacks into my hand than sit through his performances.
but he shouldn't have been fired over this.
it would in many ways be better for him to have been hauled over the coals for his idiot remark and then continue: who knows, perhaps the controversy would have had a salutary effect on his thinking and maybe his audience would have benefitted from the effects.

smooth · 04-14-2007, 02:05 PM

I find the responses to these racism threads odd, to say the least. Always have and my suspicion is I always will...

Is it willful ignorance or just plain ole not knowing how shit works that compels people to post info that is flat out incorrrect factually?

ng added an extra 150 years to our "normal" racist/slavery timeline...yes, I'm quite sure EVERYONE in this forum knows our "US" country isn't 300 years old and slavery didn't END until 1865...so the notion that whites are somehow being called to pay for the "sins" of others' actions over 300 years ago is absurd and hyperbolic on the face of it.

Shakran, in answer to your question of whether it's going to take an extra 100 years for anyone to "get over it" is most likely...yes given that it took just shy of 100 years between black "freedom" and the ability to attend "white" schools! And you ought to check your facts on Dr. King and not use him in this type of argument...given that he was a proponent of affirmative action. Perhaps reading up on the how and why of that would alter your opinion on the matter...unless you walk away thinking he was racist in theory!

Which leads to the next point...even setting aside the notion that whites benefit disproportionately from a social/political/economic context based on our history (which I don't, and fail to comprehend how anyone can...yet they are doing exactly that in this very thread without ANY explanation for how one can be seperated from our collective history other than "I don't believe that"), racism didn't end in someone else's time...blacks were still being lynched as recently as 40 years ago. Our civil rights era just started kicking as little as 50 years ago. Are you people so young that your parents or grandparents weren't DIRECTLY involved in personal and structural racism?

Finally, AA programs are not, and have not, been primarily based on race/ethnicity. They are based on disadvantaged minorities. Someone correctly pointed out a number of programs that directly benefit women and persons with disabilities. In fact, women are the largest group to have benefited from AA programs...

Now, one might wonder the impetus behind the sentiment that blacks are stealing white jobs...and I don't mean *I* wonder about you. I mean you should wonder about yourself. And juxtapose that sentiment against roachboy's argument and self-examine whether you really have or can seperate yourself from our collective history and culture...

EDIT: forgot to add, uber, that your response to those AA examples appears bullheaded. Just an observation... The response to women benefit is that AA is sexist? Assuming your assumption was correct that socio-economic status is not relevant to AA beneficiaries, what would prevent your or anyone else from arguing that it then was "class warfare" or "classism"? Not that it would change much, in case anyone didn't know it already, blacks and women, particularly black women, are the poorest in this country.

Psycho Dad · 04-14-2007, 02:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rekna

He can't go after the advertisers because their are none.

Only the music channels are typically commercial free on satrad. And I'd think if a sattelite provider would want to pick him up, it would be XM because Stern would cry like a bitch and Sirius has to much wrapped up in his contract. But even at that XM likely wouldn't go out on too much of a limb with the pending merger.

Rekna · 04-14-2007, 03:19 PM

I think the biggest looser in all of this is going to be the kids at Imus's ranch. He used his show to raise funds for the kids who are ill will cancer. Without his show it is likely that this camp will shut down.

host · 04-14-2007, 03:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smooth

.......Our civil rights era just started kicking as little as 50 years ago. Are you people so young that your parents or grandparents weren't DIRECTLY involved in personal and structural racism?.......

smooth, I was tempted, but they really, really, really, really seem to "know what they know"....complete with the denial of the reality of who the poorest and most disadvantaged in the US are......and why that is the case.....vs. the fact that ALWAYS.....at least 90 percent of US fortune 500 CEOs and most of the political leaders in the federal government, are WASP males

Anyway, good of you to try to persuade that the opposite of what most here posted, is more accurate, more fair, more just. How can you ask people to consider the wrongs that their parents and grandparents committed against fellow countrymen, and other peoples of the world, when they see not the wrongs that they themselves are committing every day?

Do 6 percent of the world's population, have the right to take 25 percent of the total daily petroleum output, using borrowed money, bidding up the price of that petroleum, with the net effect of making the price of that fuel, even for essential uses such as cooking and for producing cheaper and more plentiful food, so high that it is out of reach to the majority of the rest of the world's inhabitants?

How much better would the lives of the world's poorest be, if US residents consumed only the average daily petroleum that is used by the average western European?

We don't see cause and effect, we don't want to think about it, and we don't come here to be reminded about specifics by misguided liberals, because we know what we know!

mixedmedia · 04-14-2007, 03:55 PM

Surely, host, you have noted that it is not conservatives here who are arguing about present race relations and ongoing socio-economic factors and the relevance of their relation to the past?

I'm not ready to stop talking about this issue, but I think I'm going to dwell on it and start a new thread. I can't seem to shake the disturbing sense that the chronic loss of attention span in this country has caused its people - young, old, liberal, conservative, rich, poor - to conveniently minimize its role in its own history.

host · 04-14-2007, 04:37 PM

mixedmedia, I don't know of any conservatives who would write in the vein of the opinions posted by smooth and myself.....the idea that there is a need and a responsibility to redistribute the power and it's associated influence, privilege, access and networking, and the wealth that it keeps on bringing to the entrenched powerful....away from them, and to capable but "unconnected" have nots.....including everyone who is not a WASP male, according to a combination of need and legitimacy and scope of past injustices and "takings" by the largely WASP male establishment...

"Poilitics" seems to me to be about the "business" of the preservation of wealth and power, vs. the redistribution of both, by any means necessary. Conservatives tend to be against redistribution, and everyone else seems generally disposed to some degree of redistribution.

I referred to myself as an "old liberal". I think that anyone who is against affirmative action, and does not see a need to replace it with some at least equally activist methods of redistributing entrenched wealth and power AWAY from the largely WASP male establishment, is supporting the continuation of that establishment, and that means supporting continued inertia of even more wealth and power accumulation by that group. Most especially since the Supreme Court, and Federal Appeals Courts have been stacked with conservatives who no longer see the courts or the constitution as institutions with a bent to protect the least of us from the concentrated wealth and power.....today, unlike in the time of Justices Thurgood Marshall and William O. Douglas, the current judges view the "least of us" as the aggressors against a minority of rich powerful, WASP males.....

So.....if you accept the idea that it is "high time" for everyone to "make it" on their own, because injustices happened a "long time ago", you are, IMO, a conservative when it comes to the core political struggle in the US, and in the world.....

I am confused about your other comment:

Quote:

Originally Posted by mixedmedia

.....I'm not ready to stop talking about this issue, but I think I'm going to dwell on it and start a new thread. I can't seem to shake the disturbing sense that the chronic loss of attention span in this country has caused its people - young, old, liberal, conservative, rich, poor - to conveniently minimize its role in its own history......

Were you saying that "chronic loss of attention span" is the core problem, or the plight of women and minorities whe it comes to equal ooportunity, or....
something else?

mixedmedia · 04-14-2007, 05:15 PM

Quote:

So.....if you accept the idea that it is "high time" for everyone to "make it" on their own, because injustices happened a "long time ago", you are, IMO, a conservative when it comes to the core political struggle in the US, and in the world.....

Well, host, I agree with you. Those are not the things that I am saying. Maybe you should go back a few pages and read this thread. Then you will know what I am referring to.

Quote:

Were you saying that "chronic loss of attention span" is the core problem, or the plight of women and minorities whe it comes to equal ooportunity, or....
something else?

I am saying that there is a disturbing lack of consideration of the very concepts that you put forth in your thread above. Among every strata and substrata of American ideological thought and socio-economic groupings. You identify as an "old liberal," as do I. In fact, my parents were among the first generation of (at that time) "new liberals" to come out of the south in the 1950's and 1960's and I'm very proud to carry on their ideals, especially when it comes to the subject of race relations. Even though it seems to have gone out of fashion.

FoolThemAll · 04-15-2007, 03:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rekna

I think the biggest looser in all of this is going to be the kids at Imus's ranch. He used his show to raise funds for the kids who are ill will cancer. Without his show it is likely that this camp will shut down.

Just heard about this today, and it only reinforced my nagging suspicion that there wasn't an actual positive benefit to getting Imus fired.

Xazy · 04-15-2007, 03:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cynthetiq

I guess they've not seen any hip hop videos on MTV.

There was an interesting article I stumbled upon.

Quote:

Imus isn’t the real bad guy
Instead of wasting time on irrelevant shock jock, black leaders need to be fighting a growing gangster culture.
By JASON WHITLOCK - Columnist

Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.

You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.

You’ve given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor.

Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.

The bigots win again.

While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’s or Young Jeezy’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos.

I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don’t have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.

It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.

Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and wait for someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves.

It’s embarrassing. Dave Chappelle was offered $50 million to make racially insensitive jokes about black and white people on TV. He was hailed as a genius. Black comedians routinely crack jokes about white and black people, and we all laugh out loud.

I’m no Don Imus apologist. He and his tiny companion Mike Lupica blasted me after I fell out with ESPN. Imus is a hack.

But, in my view, he didn’t do anything outside the norm for shock jocks and comedians. He also offered an apology. That should’ve been the end of this whole affair. Instead, it’s only the beginning. It’s an opportunity for Stringer, Jackson and Sharpton to step on victim platforms and elevate themselves and their agenda$.

I watched the Rutgers news conference and was ashamed.

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for eight minutes in 1963 at the March on Washington. At the time, black people could be lynched and denied fundamental rights with little thought. With the comments of a talk-show host most of her players had never heard of before last week serving as her excuse, Vivian Stringer rambled on for 30 minutes about the amazing season her team had.

Somehow, we’re supposed to believe that the comments of a man with virtually no connection to the sports world ruined Rutgers’ wonderful season. Had a broadcaster with credibility and a platform in the sports world uttered the words Imus did, I could understand a level of outrage.

But an hourlong press conference over a man who has already apologized, already been suspended and is already insignificant is just plain intellectually dishonest. This is opportunism. This is a distraction.

In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no threat to black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so destructive and must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about the idiot rappers on BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the country who use words much more powerful and much more destructive?

I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?

When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim.

No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.

While I do believe that racism exists, I think this article sums up a lot of my viewpoint about what type of battles they fight.

host · 04-15-2007, 07:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xazy

There was an interesting article I stumbled upon.

While I do believe that racism exists, I think this article sums up a lot of my viewpoint about what type of battles they fight.

Xazy, I first heard gushing praise for Whitlock and his Imus "column", on my new fav radio station...... one of the 1200 stations of the CNP's Salem Comm. Network, home of SRN, Salem Radio News.....

Whitlock is a darling of the right, but why does that make him more relevant than Ms. Crawford, who refers to Whitlock, in the bottom quote box that follows, as "Uncle Tom"?

IMO, Whitlock's "column" is pure spin....intended to take the blame off of the man who insulted members of a college sports team...... with racial slurs, and intended to take the focus off the real, larger problem....the still growing concentration of wealth, power, and opportunity into the hands of American WASP males!

Quote:

http://hotair.com/archives/2007/04/1...on-terrorists/

Video: Jason Whitlock calls Jackson and Sharpton “terrorists”
posted at 6:39 pm on April 13, 2007 by Allahpundit

Quote:

http://sports.aol.com/whitlock/_a/ti...11111509990001
Updated:2007-04-13 16:07:16
Time for Jackson, Sharpton to Step Down
Pair See Potential for Profit, Attention in Imus Incident
By JASON WHITLOCK
AOL
Sports Commentary

I’m calling for Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the president and vice president of Black America, to step down......

Quote:

http://crawfordstake.blogspot.com/20...uncle-tom.html
Friday, April 13, 2007
Whitlock = Uncle Tom?

My friend Dave and all the other Wisconsin conservative bloggers have found one defense for Imus. It's the only one they have and it was written by a black sports columnist in Kansas City MO <a href="http://www.kansascity.com/182/story/66339.html">Jason Whitlock</a>. Conservatives on radio and tv are echoing it and I'm getting sick of the false argument.

Somehow, Imus is no longer responsible for Imus's comments because the real bad guys are the rappers. Imus is quickly becoming a victim of rapper culture.

Totally unfair Dave...
Everyone's missing the real point here. This has become the perfect excuse. Instead of finding a way to use this dialogue to build up respect and self worth in the black community, the dialogue is turning to a way to trash it some more.

Listen. NO one's talking about the effects of negative language and sexual content in rock and roll or the drug culture in grunge or the break up of the American poor white alcoholic families so glorified in country music and how women are denigrated in all of the above. This is ALL about finding another way to pigeon hole the black community as one homogenous group that is destroying from within. No one in white America has any sense of responsibility for any of the ills of the African American experience anymore. White America seems to have washed it's hands of black America and is happier for it.

Lack of decent educational systems, employment opportunities, healthcare, the prison industrial complex, (I could go on... ); suddenly none of these are the matter with black America. It's those two hypocritical guys Sharpton and Jackson, the right's favorite whipping boys, who are distracting us from the real issue, rap music.

The idiocy of this argument is beyond my comprehension. And that's my take...

(I can't believe I've let myself get "sucked in" to this thread, but as Mixedmedia stated so well, the larger issue that this thread is symptomatic of,
is the trend of "the haves" to "look away"....(even denying that it is an unsolved and increasingly ignored crisis.....) from race/gender based socio-economic disparity and injustice in this country.....and that is worth posting in protest of....insistently and frequently.

"The Haves" want to focus on their own agenda, a "Fair Tax" that will shift the last 2-1/2 percent of total US assets from the bottom 50 percent...to....WASP males.)

ubertuber · 04-15-2007, 08:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Whitlock is a darling of the right, but why does that make him more relevant than Ms. Crawford, who refers to Whitlock, in the bottom quote box that follows, as "Uncle Tom"?

IMO, Whitlock's "column" is pure spin....intended to take the blame off of the man who insulted members of a college sports team...... with racial slurs, and intended to take the focus off the real, larger problem....the still growing concentration of wealth, power, and opportunity into the hands of American WASP males!

That's ridiculously selective host. There's room for fault on both sides. I think there are lots of factors operating here (how could there not be?), among them:

1) Imus said something stupid.
2) It was wrong and on some level, executives may have acted based on values considerations.
3) Commercial pressure certainly drove him out more than values in any case.
4) Sharpton has an amplifying platform from which to speak and he uses that at times in ways that raise issues of ends vs. means

There is a problem with racism in this country, both in terms of past behaviors and in terms of vestigial structures. HOWEVER, there is also a problem with a parallel culture in this country that operates alongside the mainstream culture of success and achievement. Having lived in Harlem in a high crime, low employment neighborhood and having friends in Spanish Harlem, I've seen this first hand. It's a real problem and calling people who realize it "Uncle Toms" perpetuates that part of the equation.

The discussion about what remedies to apply to the situation is distinct from the one about whether any remedies are needed. Conflating the people who hold these distinct views also doesn't help. I haven't seen a single person in this thread (maybe in this forum?) say that there aren't inequities in this country. I haven't even seen anyone in this thread clearly state that remedying inequities is a bad thing. I HAVE seen people question the "conventional" or "liberal" wisdom about how that could or should happen. There's a huge difference there.

BTW, I'm glad you've joined our conversation.

roachboy · 04-15-2007, 08:54 AM

ahem.

Quote:

there is also a problem with a parallel culture in this country that operates alongside the mainstream culture of success and achievement

i dont understand anything about this sentence.

what is this "mainstream culture of success and achievement" you speak of?
i remember hearing a parallel characterization in the big lebowski--the other lebowski, the non-dude lebowski, said it. but he was a character in a satire.

these "parallel cultures"--what are they? informal economies?

what problems are you talking about? for whom are there these problems?

obviously a messageboard conversation tends to be about generalities...but there is a kind of line past which i no longer understand things: once they float at a sufficient altitude, i cant see them. what it sounds to me like is that you are juxtaposing a mythological construct--this "success and achievement" business--to a reference to a vastly more complex social reality that involves everywhere, all the time "parallel" forms of activity...what it sounds like is that you have an aesthetic preference for this myth of unity and are disturbed by evidence that it is only a myth.

or you could be talking about social spaces that seem transparent to you, that you move through effortlessly and that you characterize with this curious phrase "success and achievement"--and to which yuo juxtapose more closed-seeming spaces that are not about you.

it's hard to tell. maybe the term culture is the problem.

anyway, please explain, sir.

ubertuber · 04-15-2007, 09:49 AM

I think the problem was in saying success and achievement. That was what I was talking about, but I didn't want to be talking about it in the way that it looks after the fact. I'm talking about the dominant culture in America in which a certain set of values tends to manifest results that display themselves in things like education, relative stability, safe neighborhoods, and a level of economic fluency (not always success or prosperity). The news isn't all good, in that materialism, a focus on self to the exclusion of others, and entitlement are also transmitted.

The parallel culture in particular that I referred to (and there are obvious problems with that characterization as well) is one in which values manifest themselves in behaviors and results that are quite different - higher crime, lower employments rates, lack of education, less economic fluency and mobility, etc...

I definitely used the word culture on purpose though. I'm not one that thinks that the problem is "self-victimization", which I saw in some thread around here. I guess that could be a part of it, but I tend to look at the system - what things are valued and the social pressures surrounding these people. A large part of this is media. We talk a lot here about the saturating power of media in the context of women's body image or commercial pressures, but there are other standards propagated to people who are just as susceptible. Hip-hop or thug culture are two examples among many more.

To be more succinct, I don't think what I'm talking about is determined or defined by race, although there is a huge overlapping incidence. It's more tightly encapsulated by geography and class.

Obviously I'm making a generalization - there are more finely defined strands of what I'm referring to as culture within the large streams. There are individuals who exist within these islands of culture and are able to exit. It's not a hard distinction.

smooth · 04-15-2007, 01:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ubertuber

To be more succinct, I don't think what I'm talking about is determined or defined by race, although there is a huge overlapping incidence. It's more tightly encapsulated by geography and class.

Yes, so hugely overlapping that it's not very productive to seperate the the three: race, geography, and class.

A few things that might give you more insight of the factors in the argument you are making:
1) primarily, it's what would be called a culture of poverty, which has been empirically studied out of the dominant texts because
a) researchers found that people cycle in and out of poverty; the most impoverished rarely stay there intergenerationally
b) researchers found that poor parents, by and large, are supportive of 'decent' values and try to instill them in their kids. No one *wants* their kids to be in danger or in prison (perhaps you could point to *an* example or two, but hopefully we don't start picking nits to make our points)
c) (and I'd think you would have experienced this first hand given the context you just wrote you grew up in) That the poorest are often the most hardworking, intent on succeeding, capitalist, horatio algersist people I meet.

Whether their social context buttresses those beliefs is a sererate question that ought not denigrate their value system (as if it were different than "ours")...

there is a branch of criminological theory that interrogates this disjuncture between desire to succeed and means to do so called "strain theory" kicked off by Robert Merton, followed by Cloward and Ohlin and Cohen. So if you are interested in such things I'm writing about, you could pick up a crim theory reader and it would have summations of those theories. It wouldn't take a lot of read time to go over such a book, and not hard to find at any bookstore....just ask for an entry level criminology theory book and you should be directed right to something relevant.

If you're interested, this is the book I used for my comprehensive exams studying: http://www.amazon.com/Juvenile-Delin...6670262&sr=1-1
It's $6! A jewel of a book as it has the actual writings of the theorists, instead of summations of them

Anyway, when we talk about poor education we should not do so without recognizing the ramifications of not providing enough seats, books, pencils, and now even computers should be considered necessary items for students. Is that the culture's fault or a social issue? attributed more to insane funding policies or recalcitrant students?

When we discuss safe/unsafe neighborhoods, we should do so with the caveat that even police know that in the highest crime "ridden" areas, only a small, TINY portion of the ZIP code accounts for the majority of the crime. I don't have my sources in front of me, but I'm talking about even in the most high crime areas, only ~3% of the addresses account for over 90% of the crime...this isn't one of those stats on the fly deal, this is empirically grounded analysis that I've done myself and can produce the sources if necessary, but once again, the factual information is available freely and widely enough that anyone interested could check without difficulty.

This whole discussion revolving around hip-hop and rap is interested to me because:
1) even the vilest hiphop and rap on the RADIO, the public airwaves, doesn't repeat Nigger, Ho, or Bitch, or Cunt. That kind of shit is edited out and you have to buy albums with "Explicit Content" labels on it after a controversial public campaign to require such labeling back in the day of the likes of public enemy and 2livecrew, among others, that were arrested/harassed/fined for their performances.
2) the dominant forces in the recording industry are white producers and the bulk of sales go to white consumers. I'm not "blaming whitey" but I am claiming that there is a slew of pro-social rap, even gangta rap, that simply doesn't get produced, promoted, or played. And people who fail to recognize that do so primarily because they haven't been exposed to its existence, which is unfortunate...

But all that said, I'd claim that a black Harlemite is about as likely as a white dude in minniesodah to dream of floating on an 80ft yacht while sipping mimosas...but that doesn't mean either one isn't a firm believer in the culture of success. More likely they just realize the reality of their social situations

exempting, of course, southern californians since we are, by and large, a delusional bunch that is most likely attributed to hubris and simulacra given our climate and hollywood/disneyland proximity! But shit, coss compare Biggie's "Things done changed [if I wasn't in the rap game, I'd be in the crack game] to anything coming out of west coast rap [a la Snoop or Mr. Doctor] and you'll see just how different these perspectives can be about the world arond them....

Cynthetiq · 04-15-2007, 01:25 PM

Quote:

April 15, 2007
Radio Days
Hey, That’s (Not) Funny
By RANDY KENNEDY
LINK
SECOND maybe only to the Big Bang, the elusive essence of comedy has been subjected to a lot of theorizing. In Woody Allen’s “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” a character played by Alan Alda described it pompously and mathematically as “tragedy plus time.” Steve Martin says it’s what makes you laugh but not puke. Schopenhauer believed it was based on a false syllogism, and other philosophers said it revolved around a hidden misunderstanding. (Lone Ranger: “Looks like we’re surrounded by Indians, Tonto.” Tonto: “What’s all this ‘we’ stuff, kemo sabe?”)

At this point, at least one thing is known: if you have to explain after a joke that you were trying to be funny, then it was not funny.

And if you are Don Imus — or anyone on a growing list of comedians who work in the treacherous terrain where race and humor meet — then you are guilty of more than flopping. You are guilty of indecent exposure, caught out in the cold without your clown suit on. All of your intentions and beliefs, ones that did not matter much as long as laughter was your primary goal, suddenly become relevant. So you find yourself trying to justify humor, never a pretty sound bite, as Mr. Imus demonstrated when he appeared Monday on the Rev. Al Sharpton’s radio show.

“I didn’t think it was a racial insult,” he told Mr. Sharpton, of his now-endlessly repeated reference to the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos.”

“I thought it was in the process of us rapping and trying to be funny,” he said, sounding very little like the straight-talking Imus that his fans and detractors have come to know.

More than anything, it seems, his downfall has pointed to a double standard — or what one might call simply a standard — at work in humor that uses racist and sexist stereotypes. If comedians or talk-show hosts are funny enough, in any of the hard-to-define ways that can be determined, they often earn a pass when offensive material is used.

Of course, it’s not a universal pass; many people will never find humor that flirts with racism or sexism or homophobia funny and will continue to be offended and hurt by it. But the pass often works even if the humor is what comedy experts sometimes call “outsider to insider” joking — a white comedian wielding minority stereotypes; a straight woman making fun of lesbians — a much trickier proposition than insider humor.

Mr. Sharpton, for example, has not campaigned for the cancellation of other shows that tread up to and sometimes cross the line, like “South Park,” the slash-and-burn cartoon satire on Comedy Central, created by two white men, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, where racial epithets are about as plentiful as pronouns and ugly stereotypes are strip-mined down to the last laugh.

Leslie Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, which canceled Mr. Imus’s radio show on Thursday, spoke of “the effect language like this has on our young people.” But Mr. Moonves is part of same media empire, Viacom, controlled by Sumner M. Redstone, that oversees “South Park.” In a 2003 episode of the show, to cite just one of countless examples, a hand puppet version of Jennifer Lopez used so many offensive ways of portraying Hispanics it was hard to keep track.

“It’s indefensible on any level, and yet it’s hilarious,” said Chris Kelly, a writer for “Real Time With Bill Maher” on HBO. “It’s almost the purity of the racism. Or something. I don’t know.”

“Things like this require you to make a quality distinction, which is so hard to do,” said Mr. Kelly, who is white.

Comedians and commentators interviewed over the past several days offered numerous explanations for why Mr. Imus failed the funny test so spectacularly this time, after years of dealing in the same kind of material.

For one thing, they said, the danger was more acute for his show because it confused the kinds of expectations that humor needs to succeed. While Howard Stern’s guests, for example, tend to follow the stripper-bum-drunk-fallen-celebrity continuum fairly closely, Mr. Imus made his name by making his show a forum for serious thought and serious thinkers.

“It really is about expectations when you get down to it,” said Larry Wilmore, a longtime comedy writer who is a correspondent on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.” (He is billed as the show’s “senior black correspondent” though he is also its sole black correspondent, and he often uses raced-based humor.)

“I mean you just can’t say, ‘So let’s talk about what’s happening to the economy this week, and up next, nappy-headed hos!,’ ” he said. “People get confused.”

He added that while Mr. Stern and many other white comedians trafficking in race-and-gender-based humor — Sarah Silverman, Sacha Baron Cohen — make it clear to one degree or another that they are playing a role, Mr. Imus has presented himself more or less as Don Imus, a craggy-faced contrarian in a 10-gallon hat.

And while he might have been trying to sling street lingo for its discordant comic effect — as if to say, “Isn’t it ridiculous to hear this coming from a guy who looks like me?” — he was not able to pull it off. Instead, it seemed merely provocative, another sop thrown to his more Neanderthal fans, the kind he has been throwing for years.

“I have a mathematical equation for all this,” said Mr. Wilmore. “White guy plus black slang equals comedy. But here’s where the equation breaks down. White guy plus black slang minus common sense equals tragedy.”

“I think he failed comedically more than anything else,” he added.

As many people have remarked, he also fumbled badly in choosing a target for his joke — a specific and sympathetic target, a come-from-behind women’s basketball team that had just lost a tough championship game. He did not level his lampoon at all black people or all women or, alternately, the kinds of supposedly bulletproof figures used for target practice by the comedy world all the time — politicians, reality-show contestants and celebrities like, for example, Jennifer Lopez.

“That kind of humor works pretty well from below, when you are blasting people who are powerful and rich and who can’t be hurt much,” said Victor Raskin, a professor of English and linguistics at Purdue University and an editor of the International Journal of Humor Research. “But here, it doesn’t work, racist or not.”

Or as the Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., put it: “If he had decided to parody the hip-hop world or whomever he got this lingo from, then maybe that would have been funny. But I think his primary goal was to elicit shock, not to make people laugh.”

Some people interviewed suggested that Mr. Imus’s career might have had at least a slim chance of survival if he had parried the attacks by simply being really funny, instead of making the customary rounds of repentance and apologia.

Mr. Kelly cited the example of Ms. Silverman, who was criticized for using an epithet offensive to many Asian-Americans in a joke during “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” in 2001. She never apologized and even worked the incident itself into a new comedy bit that continued to use the word — in essence, defending her comedy with comedy (though many viewers were not placated and will never find the joke funny).

Mr. Wilmore said that instead of apologizing Mr. Imus probably “should have said, ‘You know, it’s hard out here for a pimp.’ Or something like that. Say something really funny.”

“It’s his job to remind people that he’s irreverent, and he’s a satirist,” he added. “I certainly would have done that. I’d have tried to entertain my way out of it.”

If people would just admit that they are racist, even a little bit, the world would be a better place in my opinion.

smooth · 04-15-2007, 01:34 PM

I agree with that analysis that he should have just acted like he didn't do anything wrong. Then at least people could have written him off as an irrelevant, harmless douchebag if they wanted and the people who liked him could have laughed.

Instead, he kept reminding people how sorry and inappropriate it was.

Damn, didn't he ever steal cookies as a kid?
Everyone knows you're supposed to deny, deny, deny...even with crumbs on your fingers and lips!

host · 04-15-2007, 02:42 PM

hey smooth, great post (#154) ! Why does it so often seem that "what everybody knows", and what "most people think" is so distant from what should be so obvious?

Examples are the impact of 18 recent years of conservative republican presidential judicial appointments to federal appeals courts and to the supreme court, vs. an 8 year opportunity for one centrist democrat to make those appointments...... the impact of "white flight" from public schools and from former "near urban" residences to gated communities far more distant from urban areas than formerly.......the loss of corporate "give backs" to the local community, a phenomena of similar concentration of wealth and power that leaves us with just a few major banks and telecom, or media, or pharmaceutical companies.....a trend of concentration that leaves the bottom half of the US population in ownership of just 2-1/2 percent of total national assets, with many experiencing a negative net worth.

Must what "everybody knows", remain in such a misguided state, until, say.....
50 percent of total wealth is owned by the top one percent, and 30 percent by the next top nine percent (the top ten percent "owns" 70 percent of everything, now, and unionized private sector jobs have slipped under ten percent)...... before "everybody" shifts to "knowing" that violent revolution is the next "order" of political business in the US?

Why are we so dense? Why the extreme shift, in less than 2 generations, from union jobs encompassing more than 30 percent of all private sector jobs, and a top tax bracket of 89 percent, to.....this, and why is there still no recognition that clamoring for more....a "Fair Tax", entrenched anti unionism, advocacy for "support for business" that has reunited much of ATT's former monopoly, and permits Salem Comm. to own 1200 radio stations....a clamor that results in nearly 50 million Americans with no health insurance?

Why is all of that new concentration, new disenfranchisement, considered beneficial, or positive, by so many, when the constituency for what is happening should be no more than 20 percent of our adult population, if everyone acted in their own best interests?

Everyone agrees that the "robber barons" of the late 19th century, went "too far", and that it was necessary for government to "reign them in", to break up their predatory monopolies of railroads and fuel, but no one seems interested in even defining what "too far", is....now. Must it be "in your face"....a phenomena such as the recent manipulation of gasoline price to a low, just before the mid-term election, last november.....just 20 weeks ago, of $1.90/gal in my area, to $2.80, today? How can anyone plan or invest in alternative energy sources, with the risk of such dramatic, swift price shifts, of vital motor fuel?

The silence, the complacency, the advocacy for such a broken system, is deafening.......and I've not even mentioned the liquidity "crunch" that is tightening lending standards and will bring down housing valuations to unanticipated low levels, after too loose lending policy drove housing prices, artificially, to levels that priced honest first time mortgage applicants, out of half of local housing markets.

Must it take until we "don't got mine", anymore...before we question what "we know"? That question will be answered, proabably for many, in the next 48 months, and it will be an ugly era.

Why the denial that $850 billion trade and $500 billion federal budget annual deficits, are unsustainable, and will destroy the buying power of the national paper currency?

IMO, we have no hope of reversing socio-economic inequity and injustice. We are plummeting quickly into a time when scrounging for basic necessities will consume the attention and the strength of most of us....no way to stop where we're heading, now.....

loquitur · 04-17-2007, 02:47 PM

FWIW, <A HREF="http://boldface0.blogspot.com/2007/04/i-might-as-well-pile-on-too.html">here</A> is what I had to say about Imus on my blog:<BLOCKQUOTE>
If you spend any time talking to me you know I'm not a prude. I like bawdy jokes as much as the next guy -- probably more, much to my dear wife's chagrin -- and one friend of mine who thinks I look overly serious when I wear a suit finds it anomalous that I still enjoy Cheech & Chong. In other words, I'm not the sort of guy who would find a "shock jock" all that shocking. I just don't shock that easily. Potties, severed limbs, poop jokes -- these things are more likely to draw a yawn from me than anything else.

But even with this taste for declasse humor, it never even occurs to me to make derogatory racial comments. It's not that I think the thoughts and suppress them: I just don't think that way at all in the first place. And when I hear them from other people I cringe. And I can't imagine I'm the only one, either. If you're my age or younger, you likely as not grew up in an environment that hammered into you on no uncertain terms that people had to be treated as individuals, with respect, no matter what their background.

To me, this whole contretemps means that Mr. Imus has been carrying around some pretty serious racial baggage for a long time. Think back to Mel Gibson: he was stopped by cops, he was drunk, and he let loose a string of anti-Semitic insults. Presumably, he doesn't spend his days saying bad things about Jews when he's sober, but being drunk loosened his tongue and allowed out the stuff that in normal circumstances he'd keep bottled up inside him. But Gibson had an excuse. He was drunk. What' s Imus's excuse?

Imus's excuse is that he is a shock jock. He made his name and his fortune by saying outrageous things. The more outrageous, the less decorous, the more likely he'd be able to keep his ratings high. In other words, he made good money from letting his guard down. And because he had his guard down, he might just as well have been drunk for all the inhibition he had. Whatever censor he might otherwise have had between his mind and his tongue he had to deliberately suppress in order to let the outrageousness flow and the ratings to rise.

But if you do that, and you disinhibit yourself at the same time you're harboring some ugly thoughts in your head, sooner or later you'll slip up and let some of the ugliness show. Imus isn't catching heat for having bad thoughts. If he had evil racial ideas and kept them to himself, never acted on them and never talked about them, he would still have his job. In fact, because we don't have a thought police in America, there's no reason he can't have all the bad thoughts he likes, so long as he keeps them to himself and doesn't do anything about them. But if you are walking around with ugly thoughts in your mind at the same time you're deliberately setting about to suppress your sense of decorum, well, how can anyone be surprised that something as revolting as "nappy-headed 'hos" comes out of your mouth?

Sho Nuff · 04-19-2007, 06:36 AM

I hate being put in a position of speaking for my race because it just reinforces the false notion that races are homogenous. But as a Black man, let me make a few points:

1. Imus' comments revealed an underlying prejudice in his character which is not surprising to me or anyone else that has listened to his show. That is what he is paid to portray. He sells the voice of the angry white male just like Sharpton and Jackson sell the voice of the angry black male. The issue though is not that Imus has prejudices, but that he dared break the illusion and cross the line of deniability for his investors. Imus is probably no more prejudice against black people that I am prejudice against white people. I have no problem with white people on an individual basis but I have residual bad blood because of my upbringing and perceived slights against my people and my country and I would guess that Imus feels the same way about us.

2. Please Please Please, stop dusting off Jesse and Al every time there is a racial issue. They are self sustaining business and have very little credibility beyond a certain nostalgia for the leaders of the past that they represent the last crumbs of.

3. You cannot compare Snoop to Imus because when Snoop talks about a ho he talks about hos he knows personally. There are hos of all races and they exist in real life and should be discussed. Hos are dangerous people. But to call refer to a Black woman as nappy headed ho is a racial and sexual attack on an innocent woman based solely on her race and sex. I am outraged by the unprovoked attack on innocent Black women as much as if it were aimed at my wife, mother, sister, etc. But attacks on real hos I have distance from. Sure they may be mothers, wives, sisters too, but the hos we talk about in rap music are caricatures more often than not. These are real women. Still, a suspension, fine, apology, some form of restitution would have been sufficient for me. Firing Imus just sweeps the issue of race and meaning racial dialogue under the rug.

4. Affirmative Action is a racist and sexist policy but fully defensible at the time it was created. It needs to be revamped now into a more comprehensive socio-economic model that encompasses the needs of disadvantaged people from all walks of life.

Thank you all. Ive been needing to get that off my chest for a couple days now.

loquitur · 04-19-2007, 03:06 PM

Sho Nuff, I hear you, but let me ask you something. I'm not defending Imus (as you can tell from reading my comment, which is right above yours). I'll accept that use of the word "ho" is different when it comes from a rapper than when it comes from Imus. But rap is now part of mainstream culture, and much of its sensibility has been absorbed into the mainstream. If white guys are using "ho" it's because they learned it from its casual use by the people who introduced them to it. So if the word "ho" is not acceptable, then maybe no one should be using it? Isn't it always a degrading term? I can't imagine there aren't other ways for rappers (or anyone else) to criticize specific, useless, heedless or bad women.

This is all part of the general coarsening of the culture, from all directions. It's not just the rappers, it's just that this incident highlighted them. Next time it'll be a videogame or some thrill seeker.

04-12-2007, 04:45 PM	#122 (permalink)
ubertuber spudly Location: Ellay	Point taken dc - although I'd have to say the program you brought up would be sexism. Good, bad, or indifferent, it's sexism. __________________ Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam

04-12-2007, 05:53 PM	#124 (permalink)
mixedmedia has all her shots. Location: Florida	Shakran, I've been giving this a lot of thought this evening, and I think I've come to the conclusion that we are debating this argument in two completely separate arenas. I feel like you are making an idealistic argument about racism that, theoretically, I can agree with. While I am making a completely different argument about the realities that distinguish what you are calling racism today when contrasted with the institutionalized racism of our past and why it colors our present making it, popularly, more offensive when black people are denigrated by a white person than vice versa. Not HOW things should be, but what THEY ARE and why it shouldn't be difficult for anyone to comprehend why they are that way. And I will grant you that I mistook what I am supposing to be a "tough love" kind of attitude towards American blacks and their need to move out of the past with a dismissive attitude towards that past. I don't agree with it, but I can understand it. When I started on this subject I was not responding to a statement made by you. Your initial contributions to this thread seemed to center on Imus' right to say what he said. Therefore, your responding to my post seemed to come out of left field and maybe you can understand how it was interpreted by me to be a negation of my simple explanation about the dynamics at play in race relations in America. Surely, you do not deny the simple reality of why we react the way we do? You can wish for things to be different and still see the way things are, yes? I would love nothing more than this not to be an issue. But it is. Do I have to feel guilty about it or responsible for it to realize it? No, I don't. And I have grandparents who directly participated in the racist system - who were against the de-segregation of the south. But I don't feel guilty. I feel understanding. It doesn't mean I feel satisfied. It means I can make the logical connections and understand why we are behaving this way. That is all. There is no basis to extrapolate from this that I am accepting of racism in any form. Then there is the subject of comedy and its role in perpetuating racism. A concept that, personally, I just flat-out disagree with. And unless you can come up with some proof of that, it's just your opinion against mine. Now that this is all said, I am officially taking leave of this conversation. You can respond, but I'm not going to address it. Not out of anger or frustration, but just because my time is precious and I don't think I have anything else to say about it. Hopefully there isn't any doubt about where I stand. And I'm under no compulsion to make anyone see things my way. Bye __________________ Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

04-12-2007, 06:25 PM	#125 (permalink)
pig pigglet pigglet Location: Locash	damn mixed, i think you just beat me to the punch. i've been waiting this one out a bit, unable to express my thoughts coherently in any useful way that would elevate or move the conversation forward. i want to agree with the spirit of many of shakran's points, but i simply can't buy the notion of "wiping the slate clean" in any meaningful way. i think roach stated the basic presuppositions of why this isn't possible. i agree with shakran and uber that i'd like to see aa policy moved towards socio-economic status, but i also can see easily why it has been traditionally race/ethnicity-based. i don't think think, from the perspective of a white southerner with ancestry from irish immigrants of about 1900, that this is entirely about personal "guilt," but rather a recognition of historical perspective. ergo, mixed's comments in her last post reflecting what i think i meant to say. on the role of comedy, i'd definitely have to say that someone like chris rock, or richard pryor, or for that matter eddie izzard, is a little different than someone walking down the street calling someone else a nigger or a cracker. i believe comedy, when its well-done, brings light and exposure to perspectives that we don't often like to admit to as a society. sure, they probably could perpetuate racism/sexism/gender issues to an extent, but i think they are more of a hyperbolic cultural expression of a cultural phenomenon. that's a little different than a political commentator, or a lecturer. as far as imus, i'm surprised to see he's been fired. i agree with hanxter and others that its hypocritical to pay this guy to serve this function for 20 or 30 years, and then to fire him because of this particular situation. its not as though something of this nature was predictable. __________________ You don't love me, you just love my piggy style

04-13-2007, 04:44 AM	#129 (permalink)
sky_driver Insane	Imus...Time to Cash In Although I don't listen to Imus often, I think this is the best thing that could have happened to him. Now he can say good by to CBS...move over to Satellite radio, and make millions more than he was with CBS. He should be thanking Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton, and all the other Reverends for giving him this great opportunity to move on. It is sad that Jackson and Sharpton feel that only black people can say what they want, when they want, against who they want and be insulated by the fact that they are poor depressed black people.

04-13-2007, 04:52 AM	#130 (permalink)
The_Jazz Asshole Administrator Location: Chicago	Skydriver, if it were only that simple. Sentiments and racial politics aside, the chances of Imus landing on satellite radio aren't very good. His arch-nemisis Stern is a major shareholder and would probably never conceed a slot to Imus. With the proposed XM/Sirius merger, there won't be a competitor to try. Infortunately, Imus is most likely taking a big paycut somewhere else, if he comes back at all. __________________ "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin "There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush "We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

04-12-2007, 04:30 PM	#121 (permalink)
Hanxter The Griffin	i'll make no bones about it - i like the guy... what he said was wrong - flat out wrong!!! he's said some shit that my wife (who also likes him for his being candid) and i have looked sideways thinking "well now, that was nasty" but we have big shoulders and can read thru it... what i don't get is he has rob bartlett on doing bill clinton calling hillary his white house "ho" when they were dealing with vincent foster's death... bartlett doing roberto gonzales as inept... yet you don't hear anyone bitching about that... or larry kinney doing ted kennedy and chappa... what you have here is sharpton and jesse jackoff going on a tirade for their own spin... i don't like the hypocracy and the media bullshit condemning one individual when they are the feeding trough for the same... as clapton said... "before you accuse me, take a look at yourself..."

04-13-2007, 06:07 AM	#131 (permalink)
Deltona Couple Addict Location: Spring, Texas	I agree with the OP. I bet we will see Imus on Sirius within the next 3 months. __________________ "It is not that I have failed, but that I have found 10,000 ways that it DOESN'T work!" --Thomas Edison

04-13-2007, 06:22 AM	#132 (permalink)
shakran Tone.	so do I. Stern is above all things interested in making money. Remember he started as a rock / country music jock until he figured out being the Asshole of the Airwaves would make him a lot richer. If he thinks Imus will bring money to the company he owns stock in, he'll roll out the red carpet for him.

04-13-2007, 06:30 AM	#133 (permalink)
host Banned	Begging your pardon....I thought that this used to be the "POLITICS" forum....now...we enjoy not just one.....but TWO "Imus" threads. This new one seems more like a topic for "E" Entertainment Tonight, than it does for this forum. I propose a "deal". I won't start a new...."What did Imus eat for breakfast this morning", or..."What will Imus wear today....say today.....do today", if this thread can be moved, merged, closed....smashed into bytes....any or all of the above? Does anybody even want to "do" a politics forum at TFP, anymore? I am immersed in what I perceive to be unprecedented crimes against the US constitution, and the country and it's government, by the most corrupt, secretive, compromised, American executive branch in my lifetime, and maybe even in the last 5 generations.....do I have to watch while most posters "gravitate" to the two Imus threads, too? There are plenty of other places to escape to, on this forum, and on the rest of the internet. Why do it here, too? ENOUGH, already??

04-13-2007, 06:48 AM	#134 (permalink)
shakran Tone.	Good point Host. This post should be in entertainment or general, as should the other Imus thread. I view the entire forum by hitting the "new posts" button, which means I often don't notice what forum it's in (which has gotten me in trouble before for mouthing off in the ladies lounge ) - - so my lame defense is that I didn't realize this was posted in politics.

04-13-2007, 06:49 AM	#135 (permalink)
ubertuber spudly Location: Ellay	There's more to the political world than the crimes of G. W. Bush. The relationship of the commercial world to free speech is a political topic. My compromise is that I'm going to merge this thread with the other. P.S. Tilted Politics IS just another forum on TFP. Part of what shapes the life of threads is where they are posted. Since this is in Tilted Politics, it will get different responses and different responders than it would in Entertainment or GD. __________________ Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam Last edited by ubertuber; 04-13-2007 at 06:53 AM..

04-13-2007, 08:06 AM	#136 (permalink)
Rekna Junkie	All I know is on Foxnew's show redeye the other night they managed to somehow tie the Imus flap back to the global war on terrorism..... So Fox thinks its political. Anyway this story has been monopolizing the network news for the past week and needs to go away quickly because it is pushing all other news to the background. For instance did anyone know that there was a major bombing within the green zone yesterday? You hardly hear about these things because Americans are frankly more interested in gossip about who said what to whom and who is the father of whom. Sorry for the rant

04-13-2007, 08:52 AM	#137 (permalink)
ubertuber spudly Location: Ellay	As I said before, I'm really curious to see how Imus' next employer pre-empts the Sharpton posse when they pick him up. Someone is sure to give in to the temptation of an unemployed guy who once earned his network $15 million. __________________ Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam

04-13-2007, 09:17 AM	#138 (permalink)
Rekna Junkie	If he gets picked up on satellite I don't see what Sharpton can do. He can't go after the advertisers because their are none. He can have people boycott them but I don't think that would be terribly effective because I'm betting that a large percentage of people who have satellite radio don't care about this story enough to cancel their subscription.

04-13-2007, 09:21 AM	#139 (permalink)
Dane Bramage Insane Location: Charlotte, NC	Very interesting article, warrrreagl. This is exactly what I have thought since I first heard this. Thanks for posting that. __________________ Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules — and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress. Kurt Vonnegut - Sirens of Titan

04-13-2007, 09:25 AM	#140 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i think this is a political thread--it involves a number of explicitly political issues, and enables a broadening of the purview of the political in this space--conflicts over the implications of racist remarks involve all kinds of political factors--social norms are political matters---the mobilization of either pressure or the appearance of pressure is a political matter. i havent look at the other thread because i didnt see the point to another thread, but that's just me. btw: i think that the networks are cowards. this even though, like i have said, i think what imus said was deplorable---and i think his schtick is tiresome----in general i would rather drive tacks into my hand than sit through his performances. but he shouldn't have been fired over this. it would in many ways be better for him to have been hauled over the coals for his idiot remark and then continue: who knows, perhaps the controversy would have had a salutary effect on his thinking and maybe his audience would have benefitted from the effects. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

04-14-2007, 02:05 PM	#141 (permalink)
smooth Junkie Location: Right here	I find the responses to these racism threads odd, to say the least. Always have and my suspicion is I always will... Is it willful ignorance or just plain ole not knowing how shit works that compels people to post info that is flat out incorrrect factually? ng added an extra 150 years to our "normal" racist/slavery timeline...yes, I'm quite sure EVERYONE in this forum knows our "US" country isn't 300 years old and slavery didn't END until 1865...so the notion that whites are somehow being called to pay for the "sins" of others' actions over 300 years ago is absurd and hyperbolic on the face of it. Shakran, in answer to your question of whether it's going to take an extra 100 years for anyone to "get over it" is most likely...yes given that it took just shy of 100 years between black "freedom" and the ability to attend "white" schools! And you ought to check your facts on Dr. King and not use him in this type of argument...given that he was a proponent of affirmative action. Perhaps reading up on the how and why of that would alter your opinion on the matter...unless you walk away thinking he was racist in theory! Which leads to the next point...even setting aside the notion that whites benefit disproportionately from a social/political/economic context based on our history (which I don't, and fail to comprehend how anyone can...yet they are doing exactly that in this very thread without ANY explanation for how one can be seperated from our collective history other than "I don't believe that"), racism didn't end in someone else's time...blacks were still being lynched as recently as 40 years ago. Our civil rights era just started kicking as little as 50 years ago. Are you people so young that your parents or grandparents weren't DIRECTLY involved in personal and structural racism? Finally, AA programs are not, and have not, been primarily based on race/ethnicity. They are based on disadvantaged minorities. Someone correctly pointed out a number of programs that directly benefit women and persons with disabilities. In fact, women are the largest group to have benefited from AA programs... Now, one might wonder the impetus behind the sentiment that blacks are stealing white jobs...and I don't mean I wonder about you. I mean you should wonder about yourself. And juxtapose that sentiment against roachboy's argument and self-examine whether you really have or can seperate yourself from our collective history and culture... EDIT: forgot to add, uber, that your response to those AA examples appears bullheaded. Just an observation... The response to women benefit is that AA is sexist? Assuming your assumption was correct that socio-economic status is not relevant to AA beneficiaries, what would prevent your or anyone else from arguing that it then was "class warfare" or "classism"? Not that it would change much, in case anyone didn't know it already, blacks and women, particularly black women, are the poorest in this country. __________________ "The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann "You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman Last edited by smooth; 04-14-2007 at 02:11 PM..

04-14-2007, 03:19 PM	#143 (permalink)
Rekna Junkie	I think the biggest looser in all of this is going to be the kids at Imus's ranch. He used his show to raise funds for the kids who are ill will cancer. Without his show it is likely that this camp will shut down.

04-14-2007, 03:55 PM	#145 (permalink)
mixedmedia has all her shots. Location: Florida	Surely, host, you have noted that it is not conservatives here who are arguing about present race relations and ongoing socio-economic factors and the relevance of their relation to the past? I'm not ready to stop talking about this issue, but I think I'm going to dwell on it and start a new thread. I can't seem to shake the disturbing sense that the chronic loss of attention span in this country has caused its people - young, old, liberal, conservative, rich, poor - to conveniently minimize its role in its own history. __________________ Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

04-15-2007, 09:49 AM	#153 (permalink)
ubertuber spudly Location: Ellay	I think the problem was in saying success and achievement. That was what I was talking about, but I didn't want to be talking about it in the way that it looks after the fact. I'm talking about the dominant culture in America in which a certain set of values tends to manifest results that display themselves in things like education, relative stability, safe neighborhoods, and a level of economic fluency (not always success or prosperity). The news isn't all good, in that materialism, a focus on self to the exclusion of others, and entitlement are also transmitted. The parallel culture in particular that I referred to (and there are obvious problems with that characterization as well) is one in which values manifest themselves in behaviors and results that are quite different - higher crime, lower employments rates, lack of education, less economic fluency and mobility, etc... I definitely used the word culture on purpose though. I'm not one that thinks that the problem is "self-victimization", which I saw in some thread around here. I guess that could be a part of it, but I tend to look at the system - what things are valued and the social pressures surrounding these people. A large part of this is media. We talk a lot here about the saturating power of media in the context of women's body image or commercial pressures, but there are other standards propagated to people who are just as susceptible. Hip-hop or thug culture are two examples among many more. To be more succinct, I don't think what I'm talking about is determined or defined by race, although there is a huge overlapping incidence. It's more tightly encapsulated by geography and class. Obviously I'm making a generalization - there are more finely defined strands of what I'm referring to as culture within the large streams. There are individuals who exist within these islands of culture and are able to exit. It's not a hard distinction. __________________ Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam

04-15-2007, 01:34 PM	#156 (permalink)
smooth Junkie Location: Right here	I agree with that analysis that he should have just acted like he didn't do anything wrong. Then at least people could have written him off as an irrelevant, harmless douchebag if they wanted and the people who liked him could have laughed. Instead, he kept reminding people how sorry and inappropriate it was. Damn, didn't he ever steal cookies as a kid? Everyone knows you're supposed to deny, deny, deny...even with crumbs on your fingers and lips! __________________ "The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann "You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

04-15-2007, 02:42 PM	#157 (permalink)
host Banned	hey smooth, great post (#154) ! Why does it so often seem that "what everybody knows", and what "most people think" is so distant from what should be so obvious? Examples are the impact of 18 recent years of conservative republican presidential judicial appointments to federal appeals courts and to the supreme court, vs. an 8 year opportunity for one centrist democrat to make those appointments...... the impact of "white flight" from public schools and from former "near urban" residences to gated communities far more distant from urban areas than formerly.......the loss of corporate "give backs" to the local community, a phenomena of similar concentration of wealth and power that leaves us with just a few major banks and telecom, or media, or pharmaceutical companies.....a trend of concentration that leaves the bottom half of the US population in ownership of just 2-1/2 percent of total national assets, with many experiencing a negative net worth. Must what "everybody knows", remain in such a misguided state, until, say..... 50 percent of total wealth is owned by the top one percent, and 30 percent by the next top nine percent (the top ten percent "owns" 70 percent of everything, now, and unionized private sector jobs have slipped under ten percent)...... before "everybody" shifts to "knowing" that violent revolution is the next "order" of political business in the US? Why are we so dense? Why the extreme shift, in less than 2 generations, from union jobs encompassing more than 30 percent of all private sector jobs, and a top tax bracket of 89 percent, to.....this, and why is there still no recognition that clamoring for more....a "Fair Tax", entrenched anti unionism, advocacy for "support for business" that has reunited much of ATT's former monopoly, and permits Salem Comm. to own 1200 radio stations....a clamor that results in nearly 50 million Americans with no health insurance? Why is all of that new concentration, new disenfranchisement, considered beneficial, or positive, by so many, when the constituency for what is happening should be no more than 20 percent of our adult population, if everyone acted in their own best interests? Everyone agrees that the "robber barons" of the late 19th century, went "too far", and that it was necessary for government to "reign them in", to break up their predatory monopolies of railroads and fuel, but no one seems interested in even defining what "too far", is....now. Must it be "in your face"....a phenomena such as the recent manipulation of gasoline price to a low, just before the mid-term election, last november.....just 20 weeks ago, of $1.90/gal in my area, to $2.80, today? How can anyone plan or invest in alternative energy sources, with the risk of such dramatic, swift price shifts, of vital motor fuel? The silence, the complacency, the advocacy for such a broken system, is deafening.......and I've not even mentioned the liquidity "crunch" that is tightening lending standards and will bring down housing valuations to unanticipated low levels, after too loose lending policy drove housing prices, artificially, to levels that priced honest first time mortgage applicants, out of half of local housing markets. Must it take until we "don't got mine", anymore...before we question what "we know"? That question will be answered, proabably for many, in the next 48 months, and it will be an ugly era. Why the denial that $850 billion trade and $500 billion federal budget annual deficits, are unsustainable, and will destroy the buying power of the national paper currency? IMO, we have no hope of reversing socio-economic inequity and injustice. We are plummeting quickly into a time when scrounging for basic necessities will consume the attention and the strength of most of us....no way to stop where we're heading, now..... Last edited by host; 04-15-2007 at 03:03 PM..

04-17-2007, 02:47 PM	#158 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	FWIW, <A HREF="http://boldface0.blogspot.com/2007/04/i-might-as-well-pile-on-too.html">here</A> is what I had to say about Imus on my blog:<BLOCKQUOTE> If you spend any time talking to me you know I'm not a prude. I like bawdy jokes as much as the next guy -- probably more, much to my dear wife's chagrin -- and one friend of mine who thinks I look overly serious when I wear a suit finds it anomalous that I still enjoy Cheech & Chong. In other words, I'm not the sort of guy who would find a "shock jock" all that shocking. I just don't shock that easily. Potties, severed limbs, poop jokes -- these things are more likely to draw a yawn from me than anything else. But even with this taste for declasse humor, it never even occurs to me to make derogatory racial comments. It's not that I think the thoughts and suppress them: I just don't think that way at all in the first place. And when I hear them from other people I cringe. And I can't imagine I'm the only one, either. If you're my age or younger, you likely as not grew up in an environment that hammered into you on no uncertain terms that people had to be treated as individuals, with respect, no matter what their background. To me, this whole contretemps means that Mr. Imus has been carrying around some pretty serious racial baggage for a long time. Think back to Mel Gibson: he was stopped by cops, he was drunk, and he let loose a string of anti-Semitic insults. Presumably, he doesn't spend his days saying bad things about Jews when he's sober, but being drunk loosened his tongue and allowed out the stuff that in normal circumstances he'd keep bottled up inside him. But Gibson had an excuse. He was drunk. What' s Imus's excuse? Imus's excuse is that he is a shock jock. He made his name and his fortune by saying outrageous things. The more outrageous, the less decorous, the more likely he'd be able to keep his ratings high. In other words, he made good money from letting his guard down. And because he had his guard down, he might just as well have been drunk for all the inhibition he had. Whatever censor he might otherwise have had between his mind and his tongue he had to deliberately suppress in order to let the outrageousness flow and the ratings to rise. But if you do that, and you disinhibit yourself at the same time you're harboring some ugly thoughts in your head, sooner or later you'll slip up and let some of the ugliness show. Imus isn't catching heat for having bad thoughts. If he had evil racial ideas and kept them to himself, never acted on them and never talked about them, he would still have his job. In fact, because we don't have a thought police in America, there's no reason he can't have all the bad thoughts he likes, so long as he keeps them to himself and doesn't do anything about them. But if you are walking around with ugly thoughts in your mind at the same time you're deliberately setting about to suppress your sense of decorum, well, how can anyone be surprised that something as revolting as "nappy-headed 'hos" comes out of your mouth?

04-19-2007, 06:36 AM	#159 (permalink)
Sho Nuff Addict Location: Harlem	I hate being put in a position of speaking for my race because it just reinforces the false notion that races are homogenous. But as a Black man, let me make a few points: 1. Imus' comments revealed an underlying prejudice in his character which is not surprising to me or anyone else that has listened to his show. That is what he is paid to portray. He sells the voice of the angry white male just like Sharpton and Jackson sell the voice of the angry black male. The issue though is not that Imus has prejudices, but that he dared break the illusion and cross the line of deniability for his investors. Imus is probably no more prejudice against black people that I am prejudice against white people. I have no problem with white people on an individual basis but I have residual bad blood because of my upbringing and perceived slights against my people and my country and I would guess that Imus feels the same way about us. 2. Please Please Please, stop dusting off Jesse and Al every time there is a racial issue. They are self sustaining business and have very little credibility beyond a certain nostalgia for the leaders of the past that they represent the last crumbs of. 3. You cannot compare Snoop to Imus because when Snoop talks about a ho he talks about hos he knows personally. There are hos of all races and they exist in real life and should be discussed. Hos are dangerous people. But to call refer to a Black woman as nappy headed ho is a racial and sexual attack on an innocent woman based solely on her race and sex. I am outraged by the unprovoked attack on innocent Black women as much as if it were aimed at my wife, mother, sister, etc. But attacks on real hos I have distance from. Sure they may be mothers, wives, sisters too, but the hos we talk about in rap music are caricatures more often than not. These are real women. Still, a suspension, fine, apology, some form of restitution would have been sufficient for me. Firing Imus just sweeps the issue of race and meaning racial dialogue under the rug. 4. Affirmative Action is a racist and sexist policy but fully defensible at the time it was created. It needs to be revamped now into a more comprehensive socio-economic model that encompasses the needs of disadvantaged people from all walks of life. Thank you all. Ive been needing to get that off my chest for a couple days now. __________________ I know Nietzsche doesnt rhyme with peachy, but you sound like a pretentious prick when you correct me.

04-19-2007, 03:06 PM	#160 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	Sho Nuff, I hear you, but let me ask you something. I'm not defending Imus (as you can tell from reading my comment, which is right above yours). I'll accept that use of the word "ho" is different when it comes from a rapper than when it comes from Imus. But rap is now part of mainstream culture, and much of its sensibility has been absorbed into the mainstream. If white guys are using "ho" it's because they learned it from its casual use by the people who introduced them to it. So if the word "ho" is not acceptable, then maybe no one should be using it? Isn't it always a degrading term? I can't imagine there aren't other ways for rappers (or anyone else) to criticize specific, useless, heedless or bad women. This is all part of the general coarsening of the culture, from all directions. It's not just the rappers, it's just that this incident highlighted them. Next time it'll be a videogame or some thrill seeker.