Don Imus has now been fired by both NBC and CBS. Whether this penalty is proportionate to the offense (no tears are being shed here) is and will continue to be debated.
A number of important issues and subjects remain to be considered and addressed in the aftermath of the Imus incident. In focusing on Imus we should not lose sight of the wonderful young women of the Rutgers Scarlet Knights women's basketball team who were the targets of the venomous and repugnant "nappy headed hos" statement. Focus on and support Coach Vivian Stringer's team: Katie Adams, Matee Avajon, Essence Carson (who writes poetry and plays the piano, bass guitar, drums, and the saxophone), Dee Dee Jernigan, Rashidat Junaid, Myia McCurdy, Epiphanny Prince, Judith Brittany Ray, Kia Vaughn, and Heather Zunich.
Focus on the fact that Imus and his sidekicks, including his longtime producer Bernard McGuirk, have a long history of disparaging persons and groups on the basis of race, sex, and religion. For instance, as Bob Herbert reports in today's New York Times, in a July 1998 "60 Minutes' interview with Mike Wallace, Wallace said to Imus, "You told Tom Anderson," a 60 Minutes producer, "that Bernard McGuirk is there to do nigger jokes." When Imus denied using the n-word Wallace asked Anderson whether Imus had in fact used that epithet. Anderson: "I recall you using that word." Imus: "Oh, O.K. Well, then I used that word. But I mean--of course, that was an off-the-record conversation." And just last month McGuirk referred to Senator Hillary Clinton as a "bitch" and, commenting that she tried to "sound black" while giving a speech in Selma, Alabama, stated that the presidential candidate would "have cornrows and gold teeth before this fight" with Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic Party's nomination for President is over.
Focus on the fact that politicans and well-known members of the so-called mainstream media and the chattering class were frequent guests on "Imus in the Morning." Senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Chris Dodd, and Rick Santorum; Representative and now Democratic Leadership Council chair Harold Ford, Jr.; journalists and pundits Tim Russert, David Gregory, Bob Schieffer, Tom Oliphant, Tom Friedman, Maureen Dowd, Craig Crawford, Evan Thomas, Howard Fineman, Jon Meacham, Jonathan Alter, Frank Rich, Brian Williams, Paul Begala, James Carville, Mary Matalin, Pat Buchanan, Mike Barnicle, Jeff Greenfield, and others. In the wake of the slur of the Rutgers team Russert, Thomas, Begala, Carville, Fineman, Oliphant and Barnicle appeared on the show, while Friedman, Crawford, and Schieffer indicated that they would continue to appear on the program. The now cancelled program.
Focus on the fact that Imus is not the only person who has engaged in the degradation of black women, and that others who do so should be subjected to a rigorous critique of any sexist and racist images and stereotypes they project and inject into the culture. But also focus on and question the sudden concern with this issue expressed by some who suddenly became moral relativists as they argued and lectured that Imus was doing the same as and nothing more than what rappers (here, insert "black males") do when they who use the b-word and the h-word without criticism. To those I ask: where have you been? More than ten years ago the late C. Delores Tucker, as president of the National Congress of Black Women, challenged the music industry over the misogynist and violent and derogatory content of rap and rock recordings. In the early 1990s black ministers called for boycotts of hard-core rap and demanded that radio stations stop playing 2 Live Crew, Snoop Dogg, and Tupac Shakur. Writing in 1993 columnist William Raspberry asked, "What arrested emotional development has led so many young black men to feel this way? What self-contempt has led so many young black women to go along with it? What perversion of priorities has led the rest of us to ignore it for so long?" And let's not get it twisted: The denigration and objectification of women (and black women in particular) in music and in life has a long and sordid history and was not invented by rappers or hip-hop. Note that in "Brown Sugar" the Rolling Stones sing "she tastes so good . . . just like a black girl should."
Finally, focus on the good things Imus has done for a number of causes, including his ranch for kids with cancer, raising awareness about the rising rate of autism, raising money for the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, supporting Harold Ford in his unsuccessful bid to win a Senate seat in Tennessee (today Imus criticized Ford for not publicly supporting him), etc. As Imus has said repeatedly, "I'm a good person." But being a good person does not excuse and does not license what he said and what he did to the good persons and members of the Rutgers basketball team.
No comments:
Post a Comment