Imus a racist?

[TJones]

I love it when you talk dirty.

No, that is a different train, and it will be pulling into the station TONIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT !!!

......and if anyone makes any referrences to being as fast as a "Bullet Train", they are gonna catch a beatin' !

Back on topic now, shall we ? I think Imus and Sharpton go to the same barber in New York, probably around 125th street.

[houstonmacbro]

No, that is a different train, and it will be pulling into the station TONIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT !!!

......and if anyone makes any referrences to being as fast as a "Bullet Train", they are gonna catch a beatin' !

Back on topic now, shall we ? I think Imus and Sharpton go to the same barber in New York, probably around 125th street.

LOL You know, now that you mention it... they prolly do goto the same barber.

Wouldn't that be a coincidence.

Actually, I have always wondered about high profile media spats. I tend to believe that people are closer than they let on in public.

[lockmat]

I got sick of this thread about two or three days ago. But I must post this video of Jason Whitlock talking about this issue. It's a must see, really.

[Guest Marty]

I said this in another thread called racism in America

I wish you would get a CB radio ch 19 or a scanner 27.185 MHZ

We Whites/Blacks and Latinos get along pretty good but I hear the most disgusting thing's it would break your heart They are usually 14-20 years old white boys who start it with shut up ......... then the Blacks lock up the channel with there several thousand watt Mobile's then it's like a snow ball effect. I don't blame them. They usually say you want say that to a black mans face then you here silence.........

I am a 32 year old white boy who been around the block several times listen to 27.185 MHZ on a scanner or radio around noon or after 4:45 -7:00 PM In my opinion the white boys start it first.

I am sorry I am not saying African American because you was born hear not there.

[houstonmacbro]

People still use CBs? I mean, regular people, not truckers..?

[dgreco]

I got sick of this thread about two or three days ago. But I must post this video of Jason Whitlock talking about this issue. It's a must see, really.

jason whitlock as written some great articles to about the whole situation...

[editor]

I was in the grocery store a couple of days ago (Friday?) and heard something that, in my mind, is connected to this thread. I heard a mother admonish her child for saying something. I didn't hear what the child said -- only her voice, which was clearly that of a child. I didn't see either of them -- I was around the corner of an endcap. But I heard the mother quite clearly, "You can't say that! What if someone hears you!"

The first thing that flashed in my mind was something out of all those Cold War novels I read as a child in the 80's. Be careful what you say in public because someone might hear you and turn you in to the thought police and you'll be paraded in front of the TV cameras and jeered at by your comrades across the nation.

Chances are the child in the grocery store didn't point to a Wheaties box and say, "nappy headed ho." But what did she say? What words could possibly come from a child's mouth that would warrant that reaction from her mother? It's the reaction that is most interesting. The mother isn't embarrassed that the child uttered a swear word and is correcting her for being vulgar. The mother is AFRAID of what might happen if someone hears the words of her child.

I'm just old enough to remember when there was free speech in America. Real free speech, not the watered down light beer variety of free speech we have today. I'm too young to be this cynical, so I feel that something must be going on.

One of the newsletters I subscribe to noted that on the same day that Imus got fired, PBS ran a piece of the death of Kurt Vonnegut. The broadcast ran a clip of him saying, "It distresses me deeply that ideas are not to be circulated freely in this country if certain persons have their way. One of the things that was great about this country was that I could say anything and that everyone else could say anything and we would compare all possible ideas and arrive at opinions."

With free speech comes responsibility. But Don Imus didn't yell "movie" in a crowded fire house. What he did was hurt some people's feelings. Not defenseless children, but grown adults. For that he loses his job, his career, and more. Right or wrong, Imus just didn't know any better. He's been telling the same jokes for 40 years. He's been making fun of blacks, whites, Jews, Catholics, Muslims, gays, conservatives, liberals, Democrats, Republicans, and pretty much anyone else with a pulse for as long as he's been on the air. What he said about the basketball team was nothing new. But he probably didn't realize it was a problem because he's adopted and used black American vernacular for his entire career. It's something 20 years ago he was praised for -- being a link between "black America" and "white America." He values black culture more than the average white person because he's studied much of it, experienced some of it, and used its music, its slang, and its ideas as the basis of his radio shows since radios had transistors in them.

Imus has lived a long, hard life. He's gone through extended bouts with drugs, alcohol, and worse. You can hear it in his voice. You can see it weighing down his face. But he makes no excuses for it. He has enough dignity to do something that most Americans won't these days: He blames himself for his failings. Much of the Imus In The Morning show was about him and his troubles, and many of the cruelest skits weren't about college basketball teams, they were about him; his failings, his abuses, and even his medical procedures.

The problem is that Imus lived in his own world. He didn't one day wake up and decide to be a racist or a sexist or any of the other things he's suddenly accused of. Imus didn't change. American society changed around him. Yes, Don Imus is a fossil. And while it's well past time for his retirement, this isn't the way it should have happened. He would much rather have been found dead in a cheap hotel in Tijuana covered in booze and blow than to have to apologize on national TV and slink off into the sunset with his tail between his legs.

It's not the 80's anymore, but in certain situations it's hard to tell if we're in a Soviet state or not. I guess all we can do is heed the advice of Random Anonymous Mother and watch what we say in grocery stores.

[TheNiche]

Wow. This is the first time that I've ever taken a gander at this thread, and I'm glad it was at this moment.

Editor: beautiful analysis. I really think that you hit on some really key issues that I've noticed as well, and I think that they're basically generational in nature. I've got a baby boomer friend that was lamenting to me on the splitting up of the art car people into two camps. There are the 'art car people', and there are the 'art car renegades'. The divide is generational. Care to guess which age cohorts proudly take on the 'art car renegades' title? It's the boomers. They party hard, drink hard, screw hard. They are more or less what they were when they were young. ...and the youngsters are uncomfortable with that. Artists tend to be a pretty liberal group on the whole, but the young ones just act like die-hard conservatives next to their older counterparts. And I like the example within the art community because it always seems like a much more visible and extreme expression of more subtle changes in the greater part of society.

And as the Gen X and Gen Y folks become a larger media market by virtue of rising spending power, you can expect that this trend will continue. It'll be like a repeat of the 1950's (if that's not what it already is). But not to worry, these things are cyclical. The kids being born today are going to stage a counter-cultural movement. At least, so it is foretold in Generations.