the Womens Nat'l Championship..won by Tom's Lady Vols. This is pretty shocking in todays age, and he's a veteran radio guy. You would think he'd know better. Also I'll bet he's the first to jump on somebody else making supposed politically incorrect comments. And believe me these are very offensive. Terry Imus Comments
That's disgusting. I waste a lot of classroom time trying to undo damage that the kids get from radio and rap songs. I hope they boil him in oil...
Imus gave a thirty minute live apology on his show this morning. Let's use some perpective here. This guy raises millions for terminally ill children and their families and for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome research. He makes no excuses for what he said and feels terrible. He wants to meet with the team and their coach to apologize in person. Who among us has not said as bad or worse in private conversation or in joke form?
Sorry, George. Have to disgree with you on this one. He does good things for sure and deserves to be recognized for that. But this was no mere slip of the tongue. It was intentionally racist and in the poorest taste. I have no use for either Sharpton or Jackson, so for that reason alone, I don't agree he should be fired. What should happen is happening as we speak. Like Michael Richards, he will be forevermore persona non grata in the court of public opinion. If you are a public figure, you don't recover overnight from this kind of stupidity.
If you want to hear raw racist terminology turn on MTV and take in some black music videos. Imus show is the engine that drives his charity work. What's the greater good here?
re: Imus Get rid of dat bum... re: the greater good Some other notable civic minded citizens... "Mussolini made the trains run on time." "Even Hitler loved his dog." (But he did take "Blondi" with him.) "If the Czar only knew..." This sounds like Al Gore's global warming scheme. If your car pollutes too much, you just plant a tree and call it even. Is there a racial equivalent of being "carbon neutral?"
I'm not nearly as filled with angst as the rest of you seem to be. I listen to what blacks call each other, how they treat each other and exploit one another and I view this Imus situation with a big yawn. You want to hear some real outrageous commentary.... watch Def Comedy Jam. I think he owed one general apology to his listeners, which he delivered yesterday, and one face to face apology directly to the Rutgers womens team and coach. And that's it. If the network sees fit to suspend him, so be it. To go pay homage to that two bit, race baiting phony Al Sharpton is where he went overboard. A lifelong scammer who claimed to be an anointed minister at age ten, Sharpton has done more harm in his lifetime than Imus could ever dream of doing. Imus is a shock jock who has been doing this for 35 years.He went over the line this time. He apologized. He's being punished. That's enough.
Comparing Imus to Hitler and Mussolini is a little bit of hyperbole. I have been listening to Imus for years. He is funny, well read, and a curmudgeon. Racial humor is a part of his show. But, racial and ethic humor is a minefield and he just lost his legs. And, as George said, the undefined rules as to what is acceptable when commenting upon matters of race etc. differs depending upon the race, ethnic background, or religious affiliation of the speaker. Jackson referred to New York as Hymietown but still remains a revered figure in the media. If a white political or religious figure called Detroit "Coontown", his career would have be over in hours. Sharpton libeled a white police officer falsely accusing him being involved in the rape of a black woman, claiming also that major public officials covered up the supposed crime. He inflammatory comments about Jewish people and Koreans triggered violent attacks leading to death. And Sharpton is the now the final arbiter of what is socially appropriate in the context of racial relations? I agree that Imus' comments were horrible and stupid and the girls he and his producer insulted and their families deserve true atonement from them. Whether he should be fired or suspended is beyond my intelligence to judge. But, what seems to be taking place now resembles some weird modern form of a Mayan public sacrifice where the transgressor is publicly flayed while media onlookers frivolously cluck their tongues about how morally superior they are to the transgressor. These public rituals do some good for they may deter some future speaker from blurting out a grossly offensive comment. But, spectacles like this, with its overdose of moral posturing and double standards, probably, in the long run, cause harm for the natural inclination of regular folks is to avoid speaking about race, ethnicity or religion outside of their inner circle for fear of being branded a bigot. In a county divided along racial, religious, and ethic lines, I am not sure that silence is the best tool to acknowledge and deal with our divisions.
OK. But we will have to fire Stern as well. And of course, Opie and Anthony. and Bob and Tom And probably a lot of DJs on your local radio dials. Where does it stop? Talk about a tempest in a tea pot!
Get rid of all of them. They're all haters. So I assume...ahem...that Bobda would turn this case down if the Rutgers players decide to sue?
It's not often that you see two major corporations shaken down by the same two grifters in the same day. :evil:
I have no problem with their seeking legal representation if they believe they have been libeled, Jo Co. The difficult point with the argument that we should get "all the haters" off the airwaves is determining who will be in charge of this task and the standards used to determine the haters to be expunged. For instance, most of the posters on this BB tend to be very thick-skinned pragmatists . However, let's suppose the membership for this board suddenly increased 10 fold with our new members possessing far more progressive social leanings. Our new members would be determined to raise the standard of civilized discourse here and to eliminate from the board posters they deem to have spewed "hate speech" Could one of those enlightened posters point to the topic titled "Gopher Dis or Gopher Dat", dealing with the subject of allegations of rape made against black football players, and claim the author engaged in a crude racist insult by inserting Amos-and-Andy styled language in a topic heading dealing the subject of rape and black perpetrators? Maybe. And could some of those new posters comb through the archives, pull out and compile every push-the-envelope comment and joke made by us during our 10 + years of posting, and argue that this compilation proves the old members of SB to be irredeemably racist and sexist. I am sure many of us, including me, would be promptly voted off this island, based on a compilation of insult & jokes, without examining the full context of our lives, actions, and words. To some degree, this is what happened to Imus. And what is hate speech? There are obvious examples but at some point the line between acceptable and unacceptable blurs. The term "illegal alien" is viewed by many as racist that should be replaced by the phrase undocumented alien. I do not. There is a lot of gray area out there and there are multitudes ready to set definitions based on political, ethnic, racial or sexual frames of reference. For instance, on the Dailykos site today, one poster celebrated the cleansing of the airwaves by Imus' firing and awaiting the brighter tomorrow, free from the haters: I agree that everyday life is becoming too coarse and vulgar, and that better manners and cleaner language are sorely needed in this courty. But, I get a little nervous about the subject of expunging "hate" speech for our politically charged times have spawned a host of people who seemingly define hate speech as comments contrary to their political philosophy.