Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

first, Nick - there is no "double standard"; one is art (and heavily criticized art at that), the other is shameless self-promotion masked as social commentary. You can't have a double standard when you're comparing two different things.
Second, ER, it was an insult - a racist and sexist insult (yes, you're right, they forgot that part) - to a group of successful women. They were more than demeaned; they were robbed of their personhood, reduced to a label, a stereotype. Their achievement meant nothing. Like Doug "Greaseman" Tracht's comments that got him finally booted off radio (in which he said, after listening to a Lauren Hill track that won her multiple Grammies, "Is it any wonder why we drag them behind trucks?"), Imus' comment is more than mere insensitivity; it shows an almost pathological disdain for the humanity of others. We can joke about racist murder, about reducing successful, strong women to the vulgar caricature of a street prostitute because they're black, and blacks are only barely human, anyway, always have been in America, and everyone knows that. That is the thinking that lies behind the comment. Imus' words, in and of themselves, are merely stupid banter. Taken in a larger context they reveal a disgust at the successful assertion of the strength and humanity of those whom our society has consistently tried to rob of that humanity. It is another instance of someone in a position of power trying to keep uppity proles in their place.
This is my NSHO, so take it for what it is worth.
 

Well, as far as art goes, I think Imus's radio show can be seen a daily performance art. Besides, music and talk radio both are forms of mass communication, so they have that in common as well. So, the suggestion of a double standard isn't *that* farfetched, because they can be seen as comparable.

But. What irks me is in the song it's considered "African-American vernacular," and coming out of Imus's always-offending mouth, it's not, which means that our very motley but common language today is as segregated as the schools and water fountains ever were, and as a professional communicator I utterly oppose that.

I am sensitive to it because you get a damnyankee saying some of the things I my own self might say in denigration of rednecks or other rural and PWT Southerners and I'll get as pissed off and offended as Al Sharpton apparently was today -- but I don't, and no one else does, try to fire, silence or otherwise punish those who do. Mainly because it's other white people doin' the denigratin'.

My dream is to get rednecks-PWTs recognized as a legitimate cultural-ethnic minority in this country. They'd've never dared outlaw cockfighting if it hadn't been seen as an extrension of PWT-redneck-rural Southern culture, which, of course, is fair game.

Imuis's strongest defense is Imus. He has an "almost pathological disdain for the humanity of others" -- all others. He is the poster boy for all Equal Opportunity Offenders.

He should come back in two weeks with his hair cut, talk recipes and weather with his crew and play Pat Boone records -- and dare CBS and MSNBC to say a word.

Hereby, ER polishes and shines his R.
 

I still don't know: What got him in trouble? "Nappy-headed" or "hos"?

Would calling them "a bunch of hos" be enough for people to call for his head? I think the word "ho" is integrated enough that it wouldn't be seen as racist. My Bird has called any girl, of any race, she deems as not too bright a "stupid ho" for years now -- all through high school, and now she's a junior in college.
 

Ah, I guess it's because he directed it as real, specific people, the Rutgers girls.

So, I guess it's OK when he totlaly destroys Irish Catholics, by extension all Catholics and all European ethnic groups, when Bernie dons a FedEx box and portrays a profane cardinal?

No, it's not. Or is it? Well yes, it is but ...

Dr. ER tiptoes into it:

http://myboulderblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/don-imus.html
 

Imus owes the Rutgers girls a persoenl, private apology, which they are free to accept or reject. That's all. He owes nobody else a thing.
 

ER said: "Buffalo weren't know for being particularly fierce fitghers, I don''t think, ...."
As a Western Historian you should know better. The full grown buffalo (read Bison) bull could and did often kill the prairie grizzly bears which was more the size of todays Kodiac grizzly bears than the mountain grizzlies we have today. They are the most dangerous "wild" animal in the lower 48 states. Between 1978 and 1992, over four times as many people in Yellowstone National Park were killed or injured by bison as by bears (12 by bears, 56 by bison). In matches against the Mexican fighting bulls in Mexico the Buffalo has won without breaking a sweat.
Want a personal taste? Go down to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge during rutting season and watch the fights. Best show in the state and it is free.

As for Imus. Imus is a cantankerous old son of a bitch who is the classic "Shock Jock". What he said was stupid , not because it was racist but because it was said about 18 to 21 year olds doing their job as college athletes. Anyone who listens to Imus would not be shocked at what was said, but would be shock about whom it was said. Imus is a shock comedian and an equal offensive jokester. He most probably will say "kiss my ass" and go to satillite and get even richer than he is now. But do take note that both CBS and MSNBC postponed his punishment untill after his big charity radio marathon that's coming up.

I also heard a lot of drivel from black and white commentators who obvious had never listened to Imus and didn't even know what his sthick was. I was also amazed at the number of fruitcakes that made this into a political thing.

I like the Pat Boone suggestion, but I do have one fear; it might be a hit.
 

The fun of Imus is that he pushes the envelope until it starts to break.

Well, after I got over being appalled at the mixed metaphor, I was appalled that Americans' definition of fun hasn't changed any since the backrow of seventh grade health class.
 

I'm really trying to get over my disappointment here, ER, that you don't get it.

You have a daughter whom you call Bird, yes? And of whom you are extremely proud, right? Suppose someone went on national radio or teevee and said something similar about her whiteness, without knowing her or anything about her. Suppose that she was characterized as a redneck (with a capital R) just because she grew up in Oklahoma. Suppose that she was judged, as Martin Luther King said, solely by the color of her skin rather than the content of her character. Suppose she had done something that you and Dr. ER were unbelievably proud of, only to have that accomlishment dismissed by a slur completely unrelated to that accomplishment. If you can imagine these things, then you may be able to get the merest glimmer of understanding as to why Imus's comments were so offensive. Not only these women, but how must their parents feel? As GKS says, these really accomplished women were reduced to objects of ridicule by the comment. Words can be used as weapons, and these certainly were.

Truth be told, we white people can never truly understand the meaning of being black in America. To be black is always to be set apart.
 

One (or more maybe) technical note(s) in the midst of all this breast beating and psycho-introspectionation.

The buffalo has a fore skull that is up to 6 inches thick; a fighting bull's is about an inch thick. Most herd animals turn on their back feet like a cow or a horse. The bison turns, actually pivots, on his front feet. Thus he can do a 180 degree turn around in about 1 second. A bison outwieghs a horse by a factor of five. More bison facts on request(or not).

The buffalo soldiers had three things that may have earned them that title. 1. The curly nappy hair like the bison's winter hair. 2. The fact that they were issued buffalo robes captured from the indians to keep warm rather than the more expensive full Army coats. 3. The fact that the first recruits were often Civil War veterans generally from the Kansas and Indian Territory theaters of the war and fought as though they had nothing to lose just like a buffalo bull.

One more thing:
"Truth be told, we white people can never truly understand the meaning of being black in America."
There ain't no we white people.
We don't cluster, we don't flock, because we don't have to, to survive.
Empathy is good and often works well.
Black is not a single group.
Some white people understand black people better than some other black people understand black people. Most black and white people are simply clueless.

Imus's vinger is gone sour now. Time for him to move on.
 

RSB, I hope you read all the comments.

As I did say, after thinking it throug some, above: "Ah, I guess it's because he directed it as real, specific people, the Rutgers girls." And, I later said that Imus clearly owes them -- them -- an apology.

To be black in this country, indeed, is to be set apart. To be someone who lives, or grew up, outside of a big city and more than 15 miles off an interstate highway in this is also to be set apart.

In the South, blacks and PWTs always had more in common than blacks and whites in general, or PWTs and and whites in general, and it's still true.

I maintain: Language in this country is as segregated as the schools and water fountains ever were.
 

Re, "The buffalo soldiers had three things that may have earned them that title. 1. The curly nappy hair like the bison's winter hair."

"Nappy" hair! How dare you use an actual descriptive word! You're fired.

I confes you've taught me more about buffalo than I ever knew. I've watched them at the Wichitas, altho not in rut, and they seemed docile. And their only appearance in most of my studies has been at the margins, getting decimated.
 

I am sensitive to it because you get a damnyankee saying some of the things I my own self might say in denigration of rednecks or other rural and PWT Southerners and I'll get as pissed off and offended as Al Sharpton apparently was today -- but I don't, and no one else does, try to fire, silence or otherwise punish those who do. Mainly because it's other white people doin' the denigratin'.

Well, those people should be ashamed of themselves, and it makes me wince every time I hear the sneers. My grandmother was white, but as an immigrant she was what the neighbors called "black-haired Irish trash" (she had black hair, blue eyes, and white skin). The Irish, until they opened their mouths, were indistinguishable from other white people, but they were considered the bottom of the barrel, and it was acceptable to treat them like vermin. I don't bring this up to claim retroactive victimhood, just to emphasize that this culture has always sanctioned disrespect and these days even tries to make a virtue of it, and it's never okay, no matter who you're ridiculing. It's not defiantly "politically incorrect" to make remarks that make other people unpleasantly self-conscious about their skin color or hair texture or class or raising or whatever. It's just plain rude.
 

I am listening to the Ruger's Women's basketball team and coach quitely gutting Don Imus. He can not survive this. They are all mostly (7) Freshmen and Sophmores. The Captain says, "Mr. Imus has stolen a moment of pure grace from us." "This has driven us to a point of mental and physical exhaustion."
They are going to meet in a private meeting with Imus. Oh to be a fly on the wall there.
 

As for the commentarty about what is insulting or not. I would point to a story about John Wesley Powell. He is the first white who explored the Grand Canyon. After his exploring days were over, he became what would have then been the secretary of the interior. Part of his responsiblities were Indian affairs. On one of his trips he met with the Moki Indian tribe. When he asked them what he could do, what did they want, they had one response: to not be called by the name our enemies gave us. Call us by the name we want to be called. He went back to Washington and changed every referance to the Moki Indians to Hopi.

The point I am trying to make is that if you use words that are used by the enemies, you are tacitly supporting them. If you use language that is supported by the group, you are supporting them.

To call a group of successful African-American women "ho's" is degrading to them, in the same way as calling you poor white trash. What got him in trouble was the phrase "nappy headed ho's." It is both sexist and racist - degrading to these women.

You have taken on the name redneck by choice. They did not take on the name ho, they were given it.
 

There's a pic of the new car on the blog... a stock one of course 'cause we haven't had time to take our own pics since Mommy and Daddy work so much. We can't work the camera you know... But it looks just like that.
 

I think Drlobojo and jim r have answered my question. It's not the words used; it's the fact that the ones insulted don't want those words used by others in reference to them. I understand that.

But it's also because of the age, and gender, and success of those girls, and the fact that Imus is a crotchety old pasty-faced s.o.b.

Note, as The AP reports today:

"(Imus) has urged critics to recognize that his show is a comedy that spreads insults broadly. Imus or his cast have called Colin Powell a 'weasel, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson a 'fat sissy' and referred to Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, an American Indian, as 'the guy from "F Troop."" He and his colleagues also called the New York Knicks a group of 'chest-thumping pimps.' "

All of whom are public officials, except the Knicks, who are public figures. College teams are judged differently under libel law (although linquistic and etymological testimony in a trial in this case would be incredibly painful for all involved).

Note: I never questioned whether it was racist. I wondered exactly what was racist aboout it -- because I will always defend freedom of speech and expression -- and I don't just mean the constitutionality of it, but the very idea of it -- over anyone's hurt feelings. Even 20-year-old college girls. I always recognize its ramifications, and that is what is playing out now.


BTW, those "American Gentlemen" who commented up there are Apollo and Fenway, Bird and YankeeBeau's critters and my stepgrand-dogs. Bird and YanleeBeau got a new car, and I haven't seen it yet. :-)
 

Best part is every time those Knee Grows stand in the street and bitch and whine they lose a few more Honky supporters. Go ahead and riot until we all hate you!
 

Just watched Ann Coulter attack Don Imus. Now I am actually feeling sorry for the guy.

It is the colateral damage that is going un-heralded here. This will cut deeply into the charities that he is supporting including his ranch for Kids with Cancer in New Mexico. Scores, if not hundreds or thousands of children will pay a cost for his stupidity. He gets that. Now that's punishment.
Evil multiplies so very effectively.
 

I find the comment thread here to be, well, sad. ER, I understand the frustration you express when you talk about the denigration of poor whites as "Poor White Trash" (my mother's family came from Tennessee and moved to the Dayton/Springfield, OH area; OH does recognize "Appalachia" as a protected ethnic group for the very reasons you express; my roots are in what my mother refers to as "Tennessee Ridge Runners").
I am asking, however, that you consider this line of Imus' in the broader context (a) of the discussions he had, in which he also called them "Jigabooes" (the transcript is available at www.atrios.blosgpost.com), and (b) the even broader historical context in which blacks - denied even basic humanity for much of American history - are still rhetorically and (extra-legally) discriminated against and denied their proper place in our society. Every indignity they suffer, every word used against them, every time violence is used against them, whether it is idiotic (as in the case of Imus) or pathological (read Michelle Malkin) comes on the heels of close to four hundred years of the systematic attempt to deny African Americans their place at the American table.
We can bicker back and forth about whose feelings are hurt by what words, but we need to return to the point at issue - this is another instance in a long line, a whole history stretching back to before the US was even a nation, of the denial of the humanity and dignity of blacks. We whites - and yes, ER, whites need to be lumped together as a group if we are to start to get this at all - need to grasp this fundamental reality. Only when we understand this, only when we realize that every single African American can echo the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall's words that "not a day goes by that doesn't remind me I am a Negro in a white society"; that white supremacy is so ingrained in every aspect of our country - from our art and literature to our laws and even (until 1865) our Constitution - that crawling out from underneath it will take more than just a few years, or even a generation. We have decades of work ahead of us.
Sorry, but it makes me sad that you don't quite get this.
 

I see your sadness and raise you a misunderstanding. :-)

Seriously, we will start to get past that 400 years of experience when we actually start to move past it -- and when something like this happens, it postpones, again, that moment.

Some posts on this blog are works in progress. This is one. I stand my thinking herre, as it has evolved, and is evolving, because thinking to me is better than assuming, or knee-jerking, even if the assumers or the knee-jerkers are right in the end.

Again: Note: I never questioned whether it was racist. I wondered exactly what was racist aboout it -- because I will always defend freedom of speech and expression -- and I don't just mean the constitutionality of it, but the very idea of it -- over anyone's hurt feelings. Even 20-year-old college girls. I always recognize its ramifications, and that is what is playing out now.

Now, as for the Knee Grow commenter above:

Having made a pitch here for freedom of expression, even if feelings are hurt, it stays. But no more. Anything more like it here will be zapped.

That's called "editing," by the way, not "censorship."
 

I am a First Amendment fundamentalist. No question. Imus can say whatever he wants, whenever he wants, no matter how idiotic. As long as the government doesn't yank him off the air, but rather his station decides to remove him due to complaints from citizens, I do not see where there is a question of the violation of Don Imus' right to say whatever he wants.
I accept and understand that you recognize the racism inherent in Imus' comments. I was just trying to respond to your confusion as to what made the comments racist.
Part of "getting past it" is accepting our own culpability and participation in an entire system created and operating under rules that deny fundamental human dignity to minorities. Until and unless we get to that point - until there are no more people like the anonymous coward out there - there is no moving on. The depth and breadth of the crime is too profound, and the blood doesn't just wash off because even a hundred million people say "I'm sorry, it won't ever happen again." This isn't about people's feelings getting hurt. This is about another instance of the dehumanization of African Americans by one of the most idiotic people imaginable.
 

While I understand why Imus' comments offended the Rutgers' players I don't understand all of the attention being paid to the situation. After listening to his comments it seems as though he was just trying to be clever and comical. He was trying to use slang terms to show that the Rutgers' women have an intimidating appearance. If he made the comments to intentionally offend those women it would be one thing but he was clearly trying to be funny. Why is it ok for some comics to get up and degrade entire racial groups and receive standing ovations by their audiences, many of whom belong to the very racial groups that were made fun of, while others are seen as bigots? Lisa Lampanelli is one of my favorite comedians because she makes fun of everyone including herself. Her jokes are full of racial slurs and stereotypes yet people leave her shows laughing. Racial comments that are clearly meant to be jokes are funny. Imus' comments made me laugh, not hysterically but definately a chuckle. If they offended those women then they deserve an apology but thats all. It wasn't meant to offend the black community or even those women. It was meant to be an offhand funny comment and it backfired. I don't get all up in arms every time I hear someone refer to a redhead as a firecrotch or Opie. When did we all get so sensitive? I can understand anger over derogatory comments meant to disrespect another group but that was clearly not the intention here. I'm in no way a racist, one of my best friends growing up was Cambodian, so if I can laugh about these things they I'm sure lots of others are too. I hear derogatory jokes about "white" people all the time or people of a particular ethnic or religious group and it doesn't get the same reaction. I think this country has gotten a little out of control with trying to be politically correct all the time and this is coming from a MA liberal.
 

Yank speaks wisely -- and danged if I'd never heard the term "firecrotch," and there are three redheads in this scattered family counting the corgi.

Geoffrey, brother, we disagree, re: "Part of 'getting past it' is accepting our own culpability and participation in an entire system created and operating under rules that deny fundamental human dignity to minorities. Until and unless we get to that point - until there are no more people like the anonymous coward out there - there is no moving on."

On this point: There will always be people like the Anon out there. Ergo, we cannot wait. And, in fact, we have *not* waited. The march to enlightenment is under way.

And, I have to disagree with: "This is about another instance of the dehumanization of African Americans by one of the most idiotic people imaginable."

OMG. No. It is not. Slavery? Dehumanizing. Jim Crow? Dehumanizing. Dragging a man behind a truck? Dehumanizing. Lots of examples of dehumanizing behavior in the world. A backfired joke by an old white man is not one of them.

To insist at every painful slight that we review the entire historiography of racism is akin to me getting pissed at Dr. ER for something, but then reciting every thing she has done to piss me off since we've been married. Couples who do that fail because they can't move on.

Peoples get along like people do. They move on when enough are ready to move on. Plenty are moving on in this country -- not all, but most, I think. And the ones farthest out in front will see this for what it is: an aberration, somebody getting off track for a few steps. That's all.
 

Capitalism is prevailing in the Imus fiasco. The sponsors of the program are bailing out. No sponsors-no money-no program-no more Imus In The Morning.

This will also lead to the downfall of Sharpton. He will have his nose so high up in the air, because in opinion he took down one of the Man's Minions, that he will drown in the next good rain. Sharpton is an "Any Storm for a Port" type of guy, but this one he should have stayed out of.
 

OK, ER, here we come to a crux of the matter. To quote you:
OMG. No. It is not. Slavery? Dehumanizing. Jim Crow? Dehumanizing. Dragging a man behind a truck? Dehumanizing. Lots of examples of dehumanizing behavior in the world. A backfired joke by an old white man is not one of them.

To insist at every painful slight that we review the entire historiography of racism is akin to me getting pissed at Dr. ER for something, but then reciting every thing she has done to piss me off since we've been married. Couples who do that fail because they can't move on.

To compare social interaction to the interpersonal relationships and rules that hold in a marriage is to make a category mistake, comparing apples and oranges as it were. Again, you have to see it from the perspective of African Americans who live every day with the consciousness of being looked at first and foremost as black people living in America rather than as American people. All the little slights - being followed and watched in stores; DWB; racial profiling by police departments; the systematic racial depopulation of New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina - and the big ones - slavery; Jim Crow; the Klan; lynching - add up. Imus' comments are part of a continuum, a difference in degree rather than kind.
As for there always being bigots, that is not what I meant. I was speaking about the social, political, and economic institutions admitting their culpability in the systematic dehumanization of African Americans. This isn't about Don Imus as an individual; about him I care less than nothing. This is about Don Imus as a representative of our national media, and how what he has done reflects the attitudes of those in power, both politically and socially. This is about another very powerful institution supporting the belittling of persons, in fact women of color. There will always be bigots; what I meant was that our institutions need to recognize their own culpability and make amends for it.
This is about social justice on about the biggest scale imaginable. If we throw up our hands because there are morons, we won't get anywhere. We need to demand better of those social creations that are representative of our most basic values, and that includes our private media corporations.
 

As I said, we disagree.

Re, "You have to see it from the perspective of African Americans who live every day with the consciousness of being looked at first and foremost as black people living in America rather than as American people."

I think this might be a case of the North being not as far along the path of enlightenment as the South, which was dragged (kicking and screaming) way out in front, and, to this day, remains out in front when it comes to race relations, IMHO, stupid rhetoric and T-shirts and bumper stickers and such notwithstanding. On the other hand, I often feel like an outsider to the mainstream.

But, on yet another hand -- and here I unabashedely take out my R asnd shine it up again -- anyone who calls himself an "African American, who wasn't born in African, is presenting him-herself as a "person living in America" rather than an "American."

Re, "This is about social justice on about the biggest scale imaginable."

OMG again. No. Not it's not. You've stopped, for the moment, on the march, turned back, and are egging on those who have, through sloppiness of thoought and use of language, stepped out of line.

Fortunately, neither of us have a radio show simulcast on MSNBC.
 

TStock, where is the mixed metaphor?

Windowed envelopes break, through the window, when they get too full, which is what I was thinking about.

But seals on envelopes break, too.

If I'da meant "tear," I'da said tear!

You do have a point on the seventh-grade level of humor that prevails in this country. Eh.
 

Holy ...

And the piling on continues, from the right, INSPIRED BY the left.

Pathetic exploitation by Focus on the Family:

http://www.citizenlink.org/
CLtopstories/A000004339.cfm
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

Gee, Geoffrey, you're so right - and just the man to raise our consciousness (Raise our consciousness - did I get that right?) I suggest the grand gesture: go to one of those nasty statehouses that still flies the Confererate flag, douse yourself in gasoline, and drop a match - expiation and a protest all at once! Self-immolation - the sincerest form of apology! While it's true that some Darwinists in the crowd might rejoice that your self-righteous hysteria was also self-limiting, and may even remember you as the guy who thought that "dehumanization" from an insult was anything other than a feeling, but we - they, I ean, they - are a lost cause anyway, right?

and good save, ER!
 

Uh oh. TStock, I think you've put your membership, or at least your office, in the MOR John Spruce Society in jeopardy!
 

Gee, talk about late hits and pileing on; MSNBC had a "panel" of 4 black commentators on this morning all blasting Imus as though he were Gobbels himself.
The trouble with deamonizing Imus as the poster child of racial hatred is simply that it isn't true.
Ah, the pain and anguish and anger felt by the Rutgers Women's team you say. Not a single one of those young women originally actually heard Imus say anything. Within 24 hours however every "he said/you say" ambulance chasing "reporter" had called them to let them know how horrible they had been treated.
It is the same lowlife time fillers that are now sucking away these women's time and feelings in order to get their story. They have even refered to the "girls" statemnts as "victim impact statements". Old Al Sharpton hadn't even called the women to see how they felt before he decried their pain.
I can't help but ponder who has the high ground on this issue. The BS is so deep, how high would the high ground have to be, to be above it.

Meanwhile the son of my best friend is starting training so that he and 3,500 other Oklahoma National Guard can go back to Iraq.
That's 3,500 Oklahoma families screwed again. That's 3,500 jobs that will have to be "covered" or filled with temps. That's roughly 60 Oklahomans that will die there in the near future. And this doesn't count the 2000+ Oklahoma Reservist that already there. Do you think these guys/gals really give a shit what Imus said?

Let's refocus on the real obscenities in America.
 

RE:Erudite Redneck said...
"Uh oh. TStock, I think you've put your membership, or at least your office, in the MOR John Spruce Society in jeopardy!"

Nonsense! The JSS does not sanction its members.
-----The President, JSS

Anyone that needs a break from the heavy crud visit Junior The Bear's site and find the cutout R2D2 Mailbox. Cutting it out and putting it together will calm you down.
 

"I think this might be a case of the North being not as far along the path of enlightenment as the South, which was dragged (kicking and screaming) way out in front, and, to this day, remains out in front when it comes to race relations, IMHO, stupid rhetoric and T-shirts and bumper stickers and such notwithstanding. On the other hand, I often feel like an outsider to the mainstream."

ER, you cannot be serious about this. If you are, I reckon you need to spend some time in Louisiana or Alabama and see if you come back with the same opinion. I took my kids to Mississippi (Tupelo to be specific) for a vacation, and they heard the "N" word more times in those seven days than they had heard it their entire lives. Maybe Oklahoma is different (I always thought of OK as "western" more than "southern, but wev), but the same does not apply to the traditional Dixie states.

Finally, I do agree with GKS that Imus's comments towards these women was dehumanizing. How could it not be, since it was not based on any personal knowledge he has or had of these women? The comment reduced them to carricatures rather than real living and breathing people. If that's not the definition of dehumanizing, then I don't know what is.
 

As long as y'all equate use of offensive language, which is poor manners, with overt racism, which is active maltreatment, we will disagree totally on the import of the Imus thing. Same with any use of language being equated with "dehumanizing." Nope. Sorry.

I'll spare ya the reminder about the Five Civilized Tribes, who brother their slaves with them on the Trail of Tears, and the tribes' alliance with the Confederacy, which makes eastern Oklahoma as Southern as 'Bama. Oh, wait, I guess I didn't.
 

FYI:
It should be of note ER, that just last month or so the Cherokee Nation (one of those 5 civilized tribes) voted to disenfranchise and remove citizenship from any of its tribal members decended from their Slaves. So they may be even more "Southern" than Bama. More's the pity.
 

Yeah, I don't know what that's all about.
 

You may find this interesting and worth a read, ER et al.

Left click link and open in new tab or window for best results.

Keep on keepin' on.
 

Oh - and look at the date. 1995. Talk about prescient, though the demon PC has been with us for so long now... I just hadn't reallized it.
 

Awesome.

Re, "Trap the racists and anti-Semites, and you lay a trap for me too. Hunt for them with eradication in your mind, and you have brought dissent itself within your sights."

Amen.

It should go without saying that I think that creating something called "hate speech," and then making it illegal by legislation, is un-American, and bullshit besides.

I think what's happened in this thread is that I've demonstrated that I'm offended, but not offended enough, by Imus's stupid meanness to suit some doctrinaire libs who equate stupid, mean speech with actual, harmful racist action.

And suddenly it becomes clear: On this issue anyway, I'm left of center, but I got one toke over the line, brother, one toke over the line.
 

Let's see some outrage:

-- David Evans, one of the three men exonerated today when the final charges in the Duke lacrosse sex case were dropped, said they went "to hell and back" and he hoped changes to the legal system would be made as a result of their case.
 

"How did the Race Wars start, Great-Grandpa ER?"

"Well, little ER III, it was back in ought-7, when some people totally over-reacted to a radio comedian ..."
 

So now he has been fired. Corporate America has spoken.
Imus went from a reasonable profit center to an unprofitable liabilty in one week. Ain't America great!
 

Vigilantism in the marketplace of ideas sucks. My only hope is the idiots who circled him, and then shot him down, shot themselves.

Who'll be next?
 

Well I sure don't get the Imus thing either! What he said is from black culture. So if it's racist or sexist that's where responsibility should be dumped. But the pc mob mentality has neither the intelligence nor the sense of fairness to do so. Moreover it's rap and hip hop that have set the tone for reducing women to bithes and hos. DUH!
 

BTW has anyone started watching the ridiculous 60 minutes with the voiceover that amounts to "a team with everything going for it until Don Imus ruined it all for them." ?

Classic PC massochism. Someone else can only wreck things for you if you let them. Especially someone as peripheral as Don Imus.

Anyone here want to take bets that those team mates were calling each other nappy headed hos and worse before this happened?

What bothers me the most is that Imus ate $#/+ for an hour from Sharpton the racial dominatrix without ever standing up for himself. This is how whipped by political correctness we already are.
 

I thought the use of the lyrics here was brilliant! However I notice all the hard left slipperiness and double standards in responding to it. Is there some sort of mandatory lobotomy order sweeping the nation? I don't know how anyone can live with such a complete lack of intellectual integrity, consistency and, I don't know, self-awareness. Isn't there some moronic comment here about "Hos" as a term being tragically enforced upon hapless blacks?!! Yes that's right, it's the white boogie man who started mispronouncing the word whore and reducing women to "hos." Does anyone see this pink elephant in the room?!

Just a thought-why isn't anyone getting upset about evil white man erxtraordinaire Quentin Tarantino scripting women calling each other the N word for about 40 min. in "Death Proof"?
 

Nappy?