Imus Calls Rutgers Women's Basketball Team "Nappy Headed Hos"

[MrsSpringsteen]

Did I ever say I hated him? I just dislike him.

Well you called him a f***tard, a bozo, and a piece of shit.

 

[BVS]

Did I ever say I hated him?

It was pretty obvious.

 

[Justin24]

Well you called him a f***tard, a bozo, and a piece of shit.

But I never said Hate, thats another word on it's own. Trust me you have not seen my hateful side. I would have said far worse and wishes of bad things upon him.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

But I never said Hate, thats another word on it's own.

To me those are hateful and hate filled words. If they're not to you well that's the way it is.

 

[deep]

I don't think firing him does one ounce of anything really worthwhile other than to relieve CBS's guilt over allowing him to get away with so many comments in the past.
I suppose perhaps the firing might have a chilling effect on any similar people who might be afraid of losing their jobs..

I agree with you here


This slip up by Imus, was one too many.

On a target, that the nation could relate to.


and with this incident,
too much light got shed on really poor humor and boorish behavior.

who wants to defend this crap and tell me that it is clever or funny to anyone but 7th grade white boys?

"One time, a friend, he says to me, 'Listen, one of these days you're gonna see Venus and Serena Williams in Playboy.' I said, 'You've got a better shot at National Geographic.'

Kylie Minogue, who had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. According to a May 25, 2005, New York Post article, Rosenberg said: "She won't look so pretty when she's bald with one tit."


or

On serial gay-killer Andrew Cunannan: "Why are they bothering to catch this guy? He's just whacking off freaks!"

On superstar Gloria Estefan: "this little Chihuahua-looking 'ho."

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

Trust me you have not seen my hateful side. I would have said far worse and wishes of bad things upon him.

Why Justin? If someone hurts you personally you can hate what they have done. You can dislike certain types of people, certain personality types. But all hate does is eat away at your soul. It has no effect on the people you claim to hate. You can hate whatever Al Sharpton says or does that bothers you, but insulting him and wishing bad things upon him is a colossal waste of time. And really not a good thing.

 

[BVS]

But I never said Hate, thats another word on it's own. Trust me you have not seen my hateful side. I would have said far worse and wishes of bad things upon him.

Sharpton is a man of God. He is a Rev. So don't you think he should have preached forgivness instead of hate, which he did.

Your words were much much stronger than Al's why is his hate and yours aren't?

 

[Justin24]

Why Justin? If someone hurts you personally you can hate what they have done. You can dislike certain types of people, certain personality types. But all hate does is eat away at your soul. It has no effect on the people you claim to hate. You can hate whatever Al Sharpton says or does that bothers you, but insulting him and wishing bad things upon him is a colossal waste of time. And really not a good thing.

Personaly I believe my soul has been corroding away, but I want to fix that, but then I hear and see people like sharpton a man who preaches gods word of forgiveness and does not show it.

Let's just say I wish MLK was arround still, that way if Sharpton started his usual jargon. MLK would show him what God's real teaching is.

 

[phillyfan26]

And again, how much impact did Sharpton really have on this situation?

 

[Justin24]

He got his wish by having Imus fired.

 

[Diemen]

But I never said Hate, thats another word on it's own. Trust me you have not seen my hateful side. I would have said far worse and wishes of bad things upon him.

That depends on what your definition of "is" is...

You can show hatred for something or someone without actually using the word "hate."

Ex:
"My mom is the greatest. I'm truly blessed to have her. She's always there for me, makes me feel good about myself, comforts me when I'm down, celebrates my successes, and makes me a better person."

Now any logical person would assume that I love my mom after hearing me say something like that. When you call someone a fucktard, bozo and a piece of shit all in one post, that's going beyond just dislike, and most people would come to the conclusion that you hate that guy.

I find it interesting that you fling all this abuse at Sharpton, but Sharpton did not once insult Imus. Not once.

 

[phillyfan26]

He got his wish by having Imus fired.

How is that an impact on the situation?

 

[deep]

I think the president of cbs was the fucktard that had his wish carried out


now, can we all just move on


by the way it is not rappers that started this "ho" thing


I looked it up

some fat old white bastard

started yelling ho ho ho

a long time ago

 

[BVS]

I looked it up

some fat old white bastard

started yelling ho ho ho

a long time ago

 

[Justin24]

I think the president of cbs was the fucktard that had his wish carried out


now, can we all just move on


by the way it is not rappers that started this "ho" thing


I looked it up

some fat old white bastard

started yelling ho ho ho

a long time ago

LOL

 

[financeguy]

Well you called him a f***tard, a bozo, and a piece of shit.

I find this type of language quite offensive and very culturally demeaning.

Can you tone down the language a bit?

I know you mean well, but I think you should bear in mind not everyone is used to this kind of foul language.

 

[sue4u2]

Let's just say I wish MLK was arround still, that way if Sharpton started his usual jargon. MLK would show him what God's real teaching is.

and I can't help but think if MLK had been around all this time the phrase "nappy headed ho's" would not even exist.
The power of the words the man spoke during his time would have eliminated the kind of disrespect that has become the norm, for some. Of course that is speculation.
But based on his teachings, be one black or white I think he would have been able to teach a whole different level of respect to minorities and women, and how they should be referred to.
Either way, we sure could have used him all these decades..
There is no getting around it, Don Imus was wrong.
One has to accept the consequences of one's actions.

 

[Bono's shades]

Don Imus works (well, did work) in the media. That doesn't mean he has unlimited freedom of speech (at least not if he wants to keep his job). I also work in the media, and my colleagues and I can't write any darn thing we please. If one of us snuck something as offensive as what Imus said on the air past the copy editors/page designers somehow and into the paper we would be fired immediately.

 

[Carek1230]

What Don Imus said was simply wrong and no apology from him makes anything right or excuses him in any way. I am glad he was fired. It doesn't matter if he is a celebrity or not, to publicly make such statements as he has is simply wrong and racist.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

just remember... this is only the begining.

 

[Ormus]

Imus is a foulmouthed shock jock who was always playing with fire. In case people haven't noticed (and maybe they have...I'm getting a headache just reading one or two pages of this thread, let alone 26), he has a pattern of using slurs:

African Americans

* "Nappy-headed hos" April 4, 2007 (about the Rutgers University women's basketball team, which had recently played in the national championship finals; the team has eight blacks and two whites)

* "Chest-thumping pimps." (Description of the New York Knicks.)

* "William Cohen, the Mandingo deal." (Former Defense Secretary Cohen's wife is African-American.)

* "Wasn't in a woodpile, was he?" (Responding to news that former black militant H. Rap Brown, later known as Abdullah Al-Amin, was found hiding in a shed after exchanging gunfire with police. Imus is alluding to the expression "****** in the woodpile.")

* "We all have 12-inch penises." (When asked what he has in common with Nat Turner, Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, New York Knicks basketball player Latrell Sprewell, and Al Sharpton.)

* "A cleaning lady." (Reference to African American journalist Gwen Ifill. Imus has said he did not make that statement.)

* "****** jokes" (What Imus told a 60 Minutes employee that Imus' program producer, Bernard McGuirk had been tapped to do on the radio show, as Imus later admitted saying when confronted by Mike Wallace in a 1997 interview)

From a tape of the 60 Minutes program as it appeared in a transcript of "On the Media", a program on National Public Radio:

MIKE WALLACE: You told Tom ANDERSON, the producer, in your car coming home that Bernard McGuirk is there to do "******" jokes.

DON IMUS: Well I've n-- I never use that word.

MIKE WALLACE: Tom?

TOM ANDERSON: I'm right here.

DON IMUS: Did I use that word?

TOM ANDERSON: I recall you using that word.

DON IMUS: Oh, okay, well then I used that word, but I mean-- of course that was an off the record conversation-- [LAUGHTER]

MIKE WALLACE: The hell it was!

Handicapped people

* "Janet Reno's having a press conference. Ms. Reno, of course, has Parkinson's disease, has a noticeable tremor. [...] I don't know how she gets that lipstick on [laughter] looking like a rodeo clown." Reno was U.S. Attorney General in the Clinton administration.

Homosexuals

* "I didn't know that Allan Bloom was coming in from the back end." (The homosexuality of Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind, became widely known after Bloom died.)

* "The enormously attractive [NBC political correspondent] Chip Reid, I can say without being accused of being some limp-wristed 'mo [homosexual]."

Japanese

* "Old Kabuki's in a coma and the market's going up. [...] How old is the boy? The battery's running down on that boy." (Referring to Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, who died the next week.)

Jews

* "I remember when I first had [the Blind Boys of Alabama] on a few years ago, how the Jewish management at whatever, whoever we work for, CBS, or whatever it is, were bitching at me about it. [...] I tried to put it in terms that these money-grubbing bastards could understand."

* "Boner-nosed … beanie-wearing Jewboy." (Describing Washington Post columnist Howard Kurtz, a frequent guest on Imus in the Morning.)

Native Americans

* "The guy from F-Troop, Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell."

So, to Don Imus, I say "fuck you." You have freedom of speech, sure, but that doesn't mean that anyone has to pay you for it or that you have a constitutional right to blather over the airwaves for everyone to hear. In fact, the public exercised a great example of freedom of speech by protesting until this loudmouth was fired. So great! The system is working as intended. If he wants to live by the sword, he's going to die by the sword.

In the end, however, I doubt he'll be off the air forever. I'm sure that some right-wing broadcasting corporation is salivating over the opportunity to blast him over AM radio. So as much as I'd enjoy him being permanently unemployed, I don't think it is realistic to expect that.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

Yes his pattern eventually led to a point where a line was drawn. The problem is that the line seems capricious and arbitrary because he had such free reign in the past, and because it isn't written in stone what you can and cannot say. It all comes down to civility, and if individuals can't define what that is for themselves then eventually it will catch up with them and others will draw a line and define it for them. There is a line, even for shock jocks. CBS didn't draw that line sooner, so they are partially to blame. And if it seems arbitrary or unfair to certain individuals or to Imus, well that's the way it goes. Self awareness tends to make that line sort of obvious.

Don Imus kept mentioning his charity work, and it is very commendable. And about what a nice guy and good person he is. But it's like when someone is very uncivil in certain ways and then proclaims that that "really isn't them" they are really a "nice person", their friends think so, etc. That just doesn't cut it when your words and behavior indicate otherwise, and people are going to notice. Your friends might accept it for whatever reason (or maybe they're just in denial of that side of you), but the whole world isn't your friends. You can't be civil just to your friends, the world at large will eventually ask more than that from you.

 

[Ormus]

Yes his pattern eventually led to a point where a line was drawn. The problem is that the line seems capricious and arbitrary because he had such free reign in the past, and because it isn't written in stone what you can and cannot say. It all comes down to civility, and if individuals can't define what that is for themselves then eventually it will catch up with them and others will draw a line and define it for them. There is a line, even for shock jocks. CBS didn't draw that line sooner, so they are partially to blame. And if it seems arbitrary or unfair to certain individuals or to Imus, well that's the way it goes. Self awareness tends to make that line sort of obvious.

It's "arbitrary," because it's not as if Imus was ever breaking any laws. However, there eventually comes a tipping point, and if Imus is going to build his entire career on being a foul-mouthed jackass, he has to accept that he is always playing with fire.

Don Imus kept mentioning his charity work, and it is very commendable. But it's like when someone is very uncivil in certain ways and then proclaims that that "really isn't them" they are really a "nice person", their friends think so, etc. That just doesn't cut it when your words and behavior indicate otherwise, and people are going to notice. Your friends might accept it for whatever reason (or maybe they're just in denial of that side of you), but the whole world isn't your friends. You can't be civil just to your friends, the world at large will eventually ask more than that from you.

I believe that Ivan the Terrible used to give opulent state funerals to the nobles he slaughtered too. In other words, sure, "charity" is nice and all, but its not everything. I'm sure those state funerals were a nice gesture to the families, but it still doesn't change the fact that Ivan was a psychopath. And, in this case, Imus' charity work doesn't change the fact that he's hurt many people with his words, and his charity would probably be much better off with a more chemically balanced spokesperson.

 

[martha]

So, to Don Imus, I say "fuck you."

Speak it, brother. I still can't figure out why people think this nasty, mean-spirited man is worth defending.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

Apparently some of his listeners have been sending hate mail to the Rutgers team members-well isn't that special.


tmz.com

Don Imus got an earful from the Rutgers student-athletes he labeled "nappy-headed hos" last night, as he met with them for the first time since he made the racist slur that cost him his jobs at MSNBC and, yesterday, CBS Radio.

According to Deirdre Imus, Don's wife, who was filling in for him this morning on WFAN, the shock-jock heard from each player on the Rutgers women's basketball team, their coach, some of their parents, and university administrators during the three-hour meeting at the New Jersey governor's mansion. The common refrain from all the players was, according to the New York Daily News, "Why us?"

Deirdre Imus pleaded with listeners to stop sending hate mail to the Rutgers team members – and invited them to send the hate to her husband instead.

(AP)NEW YORK - Don Imus’ wife took over his radio fundraiser Friday after CBS fired the host for racist remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team. She described Imus’ brief meeting with the team the night before and praised the women as “beautiful and courageous.”

“They gave us the opportunity to listen to what they had to say and why they’re hurting and how awful this is,” author Deirdre Imus said as she co-hosted the fundraiser for children’s charities.

“He feels awful,” she said. “He asked them, ‘I want to know the pain I caused, and I want to know how to fix this and change this.”’

“I have to say that these women are unbelievably courageous and beautiful women,” she said.

Imus’ troubles have also affected his wife, the founder of a medical center that studies links between cancers and environmental hazards whose book “Green This!” came out this week. Her promotional tour was called off “because of the enormous pressure that Deirdre and her family are under,” said Simon & Schuster publicist Victoria Meyer.

The Deirdre Imus Environmental Center for Pediatric Oncology in Hackensack, N.J., works to identify and control exposures to environmental hazards that may cause adult and childhood cancers.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

anyone who would send hate mail to the rutgers players is an ignorant douchebag of the highest level

 

[martha]

anyone who would send hate mail to the rutgers players is an ignorant douchebag of the highest level

And a Don Imus fan.

 

[yolland]

So basically, to Snoop, a woman from the hood who didn't go to school is nothing but a nappy headed, gold digging ho? Shit, at least you could make the excuse that Imus is old & out of touch and really had no idea how offensive his "nappy headed ho" comment might be...ol' Snoop sat there, thought about it, pondered, and busted that out. Way to go.

I kind of had the same reaction you did to his explanation (though he's probably right that only Imus would've seen fit to refer to college athletes that way), and this angle does seem to be getting quite a bit of media attention right now. It's hard for me to imagine press conferences or boycotts--which I doubt would be widely observed--having much effect on recording artists, though. Musicians in general tend to have carte blanche for using that kind of language, especially where misogyny is concerned, even if it is more pervasive in hiphop.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

And a Don Imus fan.

yes, and a don imus fan. and i'm sure there are ignorant douchebag pieces of shit who go to rutgers university, too. perhaps who've even played basketball for them.

there are pieces of shit in all walks of life... but the insinuation that keeps going on that everyone who has listened to imus' show is some racist piece of crap is getting very tiresome.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

I agree that African Americans degrade each other and themselves with some of that rap music- but that sells and makes money, just like Imus. If people didn't buy it/download it well it wouldn't thrive, right? There are some womens groups and some African American men who are trying to curtail it, but what record company will do anything when they stand to lose a fortune? The rappers say that is their cultural view, their cultural experience, their artistic expression and license. I think it's sad to say that your culture consists of that sort of degradation of women rather than to try to move beyond that and promote something better, but then again women participate in those videos too. So what is the answer?

But Imus bringing rap up as a defense, or Al Sharpton, or anything else just makes it appear that he's making excuses and justifications. Most people have far more respect and forgiveness for someone who admits their own mistakes without doing that. He was defiant in his apologies, and that just wasn't smart.

Where do you draw the line?

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3034041&page=1


Author and satirist Marty Beckerman describes Imus and others — Richards and conservative commentator Ann Coulter who used a homophobic slur in public recently — as having "landed on their faces even though Americans love to laugh at bigotry."

"These entertainers poured salt into centuries-old wounds with cheap punch lines; simple, worthless slurs; spiteful, desperate pleas for attention — instead of throwing our collective ridiculousness back into our faces," wrote Beckerman for the Web site for Reason magazine.

"Not only does speech matter, but the person who says it matters," said University of Southern California law professor Daria Roithmayr.

"We need to know who says something to evaluate the credibility," said Roithmayr, who specializes in legal issues of gender and race. "We are familiar with the idea that I can talk about my family, but you can't. The way in which an insult is judged is as much on the basis of identity of the person who says it, as on what it is they say."