Sometimes things just cut to the core... (Imus)
Tyrone Steels II
As a black man that has worked since 1997 protesting the CONSISTENTLY sexist lyrics in "gangsta rap", I'm not upset that Don Imus was fired. I'm STILL upset that many punk black male rappers STILL talk that "ho" crap. YET:
I disagree 110% with Dean's thoughts against the Rutgers coach and women's basketball team. I've coached high school girls' basketball (black, white, and Latino players). The amount of scorn that was directed at them was unbelievable. They were goddesses of the basketball court yet slugs in high school society. Especially the taller girls. Teenaged boys shied away from them citing with "lovely" reasoning such as: The ho's too tall! The basketball bitches are too big! Those chicks are some sweaty ho's!
Etc... Etc... This was from boys of all colors. Women athletes period (especially basketball and softball players) get "hated" on routinely in high school. Collegiate women's basketball coaches routinely have to build self-esteem as well as coach. You can talk all the "they're not tough enough" jive all you want but you get beat up on everyday, it just isn't THAT easy to shuck off the remarks.
The Rutgers women are some tough chicks. I've watched them all year. Imus' (and his equally boneheaded producer's) remarks probably brought up some nasty feelings. Some things just cut to the core. My own wife, who use to play high school basketball, is a bad mutha. One tough lady. But even she got rankled when she heard Imus and Co. remarks. Her exacts word: I heard that crap in high school and college. Now this prune-faced bastard wants to pile on? I should kick him down some stairs and take his job.
She wasn't jumping for joy when Imus got fired but she was pleased. Feelings surfaced and my wife reacted. That's not a sign of weakness. It's part of being human. We never really know when a word or phrase is just going to get under our skins. "Ho" gets under my skin. Off-handedly calling a woman a "whore" (which is what "ho" is short for those not in the know) is just bad in my opinion.
Last time I checked, women outnumbered real female prostitutes 1,000,000 to 1.
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CAUSE HE DIDN'T WANT THE NAPPY-HEADED LOOK!
Personally I love my aunt's "nappy dreadlocks".
And "nappy headed" just means that they have dirty hair, right?
So, translated into standard English, imus' claim was that some of the basketball players on rutgers team are women with dirty hair?
So I just haven't seen that. Thanks for opening my eyes, Tyrone.
Should everyone who uses the term "hos" be fired from their job? Why is Imus so special on this, when there are so many people using this word so often in so many contexts?
Indeed, is Imus the cause of all those *other* people who've said those things about those girls, if they've all experienced that so much?
I understand people being hurtful and mean--I was always a new kid in school because we moved a lot, so I got picked on a lot--but I do not understand why this Imus incident is so special that it requires days of national headlines, the involvement of major political leaders, sobbing press conferences, etc.
Why does *Imus* deserve blame for every rude punk who ever called female athletes hos?
I don't even *like* Imus, I'm just stunned. Is this suddenly the moment where everyone in the world decides "ho" is no longer acceptable? Maybe it is, I don't know, I'm just astonished.
And I do not understand why a basketball team of girls would decide that this one shock jock is the straw that broke the camel's back.
Totally agree. Life is already filled with numerous challenges for kids; trying to make friends, trying to find a sense of belonging, trying to find purpose; Hell, in some neighborhoods, just trying to make it safely to school.
This cuts across all race and sex lines. Why add more layers of stress, tension and anxiety?
We should be celebrating women's basketball teams at all levels and encouraging them; conversely, we should be stigmatizing this ghetto/ganster meme that spews forth ugly terms, "Hos," "Niggas" and "Bitches" with alarming frequency, simply because its hip, and folks are afraid to object.
If the firing of Imus helps staunch this ugly meme --not just from crochety old white guys like Imus, but from young urban black kids too -- I say, damn good.
Hell, I'm starting to sound like Bill Cosby!
HBarnes
NBC is in it to make money. If Imus said "cucumber" on the air and people got ticked off then, contract allowing, they could get rid of him. He's not owed his job and NBC, as far as I can tell, is under no obligation to grant him free speech (especially when they're subsidizing it).
Maybe we should just bring back Athenian ostracism, with actual ostraca (seeing as some folks apparently can't figure out how to use a punch card when voting).
But, then, I'm not a half-savage high-school student (and to clarify, being half-savage is evidently the common state of most high-school students, unrelated to their race).
CBS didn't fire him because he used those terms. They fired him because advertisers were getting squirrely and pulling out (like his dad should have). If they were firing him because of what he said, it would have been immediate much like the NBA firing Tim Hardaway for his anti-gay remarks. He was fired on the spot.
How do rappers and other comedians get away with it? They make money. Corporate America and the consumer dictate who gets fired. If people still want the product, the artist or individual is merely edgy, controversial, etc. Much like Dice Clay was when he started. He was selling out stadiums and concert halls. Eventually, his act wore off, sales dimished, but yet he did not grow less obscene or offensive, people just didn't want the product anymore.
That's what happened with Imus. He has certainly been more offensive in the past, but his schtick is tired. We just didn't want the product any longer.
I will say this. I can't stand Imus, but CBS are a bunch of cowardly goatfuckers. Imus CARRIED CBS radio for the better part of 15 years and this is how he is rewarded? Where's the fucking corporate loyalty?
While I'm not denying your wife's point, it sounds to me like what you're saying is "We're senstitive to this" not "He was disrespectful to tall, athletic women." After all, if I understand correctly, he made these remarks when comparing the women to other women's basketball teams. So he didn't disrespect tall, athletic women in general; but you're saying that his undeniable disrespect hit them harder because they are used to being disrespected as tall, athletic women. If that's the case, then he can't really be blamed for their reaction. What he said was vile on its own, but he couldn't know that they would read even more into it.
I guess I never noticed that tall, athletic women get disrespected. My sister (5'10", high school B-ball player) never mentioned it to me; but our family is prone to take insults as a badge of pride, so she probably would never say. Certainly her husband (5'8", high school football) never made an issue of it.
If MSNBC and CBS yanked him because of loss of ad money, well, can't say anything about that. But Imus' words cut deep. From what I see, he didn't know his words would be taken like much more to heart by those young ladies. Now if he would have said that to some hardcore female rap artists or Sarah Silverman (I love her), he would have gotten an earful of verbal vileness that would stop a comet. But these were Jane Does that played basketball. Who I bet got earfuls of verbal slop hurled at them daily. He may not have known, but... now he does.
Dean:
You know I'm down for educating the white folks! LOL!
You did make me rethink. Still, I think these women would have done better to get back in his face rather than cry about how hurt they were.
I also think he'd have been better to say, "Aw crap, that was obnoxious and I'm sorry, but I was trying to be admiring. Sorry if I was such a jerk about it."
The whole thing's a damned mess, really.
I didn't realize that there was that kind of reaction to them; perhaps I was concentrating on my own problems in high school too much to see others'.
Only the dead do not know Imus this week. Hardly had the words "nappy-headed hos" left his grizzled lips when he was chained, pushed into the tumbril, and rolled by the Sharpton-Jackson tag-team to lick their mire spatted boots, in a live demo of the "Bottom rail on top" ritual that should have passed sometime after Reconstruction. He was allowed to beg and beg shamefully he did as all bullies must. It was the show trial of one-man hostage taken in the American culture wars whose confession tapes were aired for all and sundry. Who says we can't learn anything useful from the Iranians?
Alas, Imus was not released with a goody-bag and a bad suit. Instead he was frog-marched up to the Gallup gallows and, amidst ecstatic shrieks from those who are eternally offended by pretty much any word that points at them that does not come from them, he was executed. He may have hoped for some sort of soft diplomacy to save him since both the entire British state department and Nancy Pelosi were unemployed after engineering fresh self-humiliations in the mideast, but to no avail.
He said it. He has confessed and kissed the Sharpton-Jackson rings!
Vanderleun, that fella knows how to write.
Yeah it's sad isn't it? 1) They shower after the game and 2) Taller=more to kiss, and in a good way! I have never understood the turn off. Unless of course it's the 400lb 7 foot tall guard named Bertha. Perhaps she may be a bit intimidating. This does not exist as far as I know however. Even if this person did exist, she wouldn't deserve ridicule.
On that note I have never understood why a big celebrity would find it so amusing to pick on a college girl's basketball team. To me, it's like calling a girl who's an A student a geek when you are a big celebrity and she's a nobody with little to no power to express her feelings to such a large audience. It's like driving up to the girl scout cookie drive and yelling, "Cookie selling hos!" out of your window at them as you drive by. Pointless, and stupid behavior in a way few men would dare let themselves practice for fear that the negative hit to your intelligence would forever render you incapable of coherent thinking. These girls are trying their best to do something positive and this big, bad, rich celebrity trashes them like such garbage.
On that note I think involving world leaders into this is a bit of an overreaction and chances are if the media had anything better to cover we probably wouldn't have known about this to begin with. Still, this was a dumb thing for Imus to do. Like any other grown man who has done something stupid, he can think about it for awhile in the doghouse.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.