Imus Fired

[SEVERUSMAX]

Well, one thing at a time, pure. The Imus thing is more important than it looks. I'd like to see the 700 Club go next. We tolerate all this twenty-four hour a day hate speech at considerable peril. In case no one's noticed, there's quite a large fascist movement in this country.

Shades of Martin Niemoller, "At first, they came for the Fascists, and I didn't stand up, because I wasn't a Fascist...."

Look, I despise Robertson as much as the next guy. Hell, I call him "Ayatollah" Robertson half of the time. He's an anti-Masonic, anti-Semitic conspiracy nut who wants to blow up the State Department and thinks that Charles Taylor was a "good warlord" because he was Christian.

On the other hand, he owns his own network. Legally, you can't shut him down short of depriving him of sponsors. And even that won't work, because he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth (the son of a US Senator from Virginia) and hasn't gotten any poorer (quite the contrary, between his network and his books) since then.

It's not like Imus, who had an employer and could be fired at will (by that great humanitarian and paragon of racial tolerance, Michael Savage ). The whole thing smacks of hypocrisy, for one bigot to fire another. But in Robertson's case, he's more like Mr. Savage (maybe they are good friends by now)- they both control networks. Firing the boss man isn't the same man as firing a shock jock.

The only other choice is government censorship, and then we become the Fascists ourselves.

 

[cloudy]

Maya Angelou speaks on the issue

Worth a listen. She embodies class and old-fashioned politeness.

 

[shereads]

She embodies class and old-fashioned politeness.

What are those?






It's not Imus' firing that bothers me. It's the free publicity. It's a rare celebrity whose handlers can't find a way to use something like this to their advantage.

A week ago, millions of us knew Imus only as a vaguely familiar name. (Am I the only one who thought he worked with puppets?) Yesterday he was the lead story in the Miami Herald, complete with photo. That doesn't put him in Elian Gonzalez territory, but it's bizarre, nonetheless.

For every person who wonders why he lasted this long, you can bet there's someone thinking, "This Imus guy got a bum deal. I'm going to download the incriminating joke on my iPod, right after I check ebay to see if O.J.'s manuscript is up for auction yet."

Temporary unemployment may turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to this schmuck.

 

[cantdog]

Shades of Martin Niemoller, "At first, they came for the Fascists, and I didn't stand up, because I wasn't a Fascist...."

Look, I despise Robertson as much as the next guy. Hell, I call him "Ayatollah" Robertson half of the time. He's an anti-Masonic, anti-Semitic conspiracy nut who wants to blow up the State Department and thinks that Charles Taylor was a "good warlord" because he was Christian.

On the other hand, he owns his own network. Legally, you can't shut him down short of depriving him of sponsors. And even that won't work, because he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth (the son of a US Senator from Virginia) and hasn't gotten any poorer (quite the contrary, between his network and his books) since then.

It's not like Imus, who had an employer and could be fired at will (by that great humanitarian and paragon of racial tolerance, Michael Savage ). The whole thing smacks of hypocrisy, for one bigot to fire another. But in Robertson's case, he's more like Mr. Savage (maybe they are good friends by now)- they both control networks. Firing the boss man isn't the same man as firing a shock jock.

The only other choice is government censorship, and then we become the Fascists ourselves.

There are plenty of precedents for hate-speech legislation. People should not be able to advocate murder with impunity. Robertson and Wildmon and those fellows do it constantly. "Take out Chavez," he said, quite recently. Which might not matter much, in a context of reason.

I, too, am leery of hate-speech legislation, but I think we may have a real difficulty here, with these megachurchers. If they speak, and one can meet them with argument, and I don't necessarily mean rational argument, because emotional arguments work too, then fine. But they do not engage in argument. We have an insulated group here.

People who are seeing their family fall inexorably out of the middle class in the rust belt, for instance, not only have their circumstances reduced, but both spouses must work, and very often now without benefits. They know their children have lost the likelihood of doing better than their parents did. Check out the demographics on who supports these people. The dispossessed, the Rust Belt, and those soulless exurbs like Orange County, with no community center, no neighbor structures for support, often no sidewalks, just a palladium-windowed place in which to wake up, drive the distance to LA, and then come home to. People without community. The destruction of community, and also the erosion of hope-- and no community support, no state support, no help at all.

And it isn't only despair and hopelessness they feel, but rage. Listen to the tv preachers, and the talk radio, and you will hear the rage. And further than that, they are told who the culprits are; fascists never lack for scapegoats. "Its the gays, the immigrants, the liberals, who have done this to us, and we are going to take our country back from them."

Again, it might not make a lot of difference if you could engage them in argument, but you cannot, any more. We have allowed this gigantic echo chamber to develop. Their reality is less and less useful to them, but these speakers invite them into a world of magic. They are told who to blame, they are given a community, God cares about them, Jesus intervenes in their lives several times a day, they are informed what's right and wrong, what to do, and their rage is shared and validated. The message is as all fascist messages are, that you are with us, and those who are against us deserve nothing. It is, in fact, okay to kill them.

They can easily manage, now, to hear this message all day long every day. When they work, when they sit at home, when they catch the news, when they receive health and beauty tips, all the time. They never have to step out of the magic and comforting reality-free world. And once they are in it, and find out that argument and reason about these messages is dangerous and an attempt to trick them by people who don't know, who don't get it, who don't believe, they become unreachable.

It only takes ten percent to pull off a revolution. Niemoller is a good example, if you've read him, or Arendt. The fascists there taught that the response to argument was fists or pistols, and ours are little better. Tolerating the intolerant sounds like a nice, tolerant thing to do, but if argument and social pressure are ruled out, tolerance of the hate has been shown already to result in the destruction of the tolerant.

Since we wish to preserve a tolerant, free, open society, we must be able to arrest this phenomenon. Britain and other places have hate crime and hate speech legislation, and it has some difficulties, but we can learn from those. Advocating intimidation, advocating rape, advocating murder-- these things are stepping over the line.

The technical term for the megachurch thing is dominionists. They have a couple of verses from Genesis which they interpret to mean that Christians are directed by God to run the joint. On the other hand, they have little truck with the Sermon on the Mount. By me, that makes them not Christians. But they've come a long fuckin way in twenty-five years. They were around, then, but they were on the very fringe of America. Even America, a priest-ridden and over-religious place, largely considered them buffoonish. I don't think we have that luxury any more.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

In case you don't know, Jason Whitlock is a black man and a long-time civil rights activist. It's about time someone from the black community came out and said the same things I've thought all along - What Imus did was wrong. Even he admits it. But Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson were even more wrong for blowing this out of proportion and orchestrating this mess, even to the point of scripting the comments of the women's basketball team on Operah and the after-meeting news conference yesterday. They have their own adjunda that has nothing to do with improving the lot of the black community, Imus or these women. What it does have to do with is furthering their own Radio and Political careers.

http://www.kansascity.com/182/story/66339.html

Imus isn’t the real bad guy
Instead of wasting time on irrelevant shock jock, black leaders need to be fighting a growing gangster culture.

By JASON WHITLOCK - Columnist

Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.

You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.

You’ve given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor.

Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.

The bigots win again.

While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’s or Young Jeezy’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos.

I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don’t have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.

It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.

Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and wait for someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves.

It’s embarrassing. Dave Chappelle was offered $50 million to make racially insensitive jokes about black and white people on TV. He was hailed as a genius. Black comedians routinely crack jokes about white and black people, and we all laugh out loud.

I’m no Don Imus apologist. He and his tiny companion Mike Lupica blasted me after I fell out with ESPN. Imus is a hack.

But, in my view, he didn’t do anything outside the norm for shock jocks and comedians. He also offered an apology. That should’ve been the end of this whole affair. Instead, it’s only the beginning. It’s an opportunity for Stringer, Jackson and Sharpton to step on victim platforms and elevate themselves and their agenda.

I watched the Rutgers news conference and was ashamed.

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for eight minutes in 1963 at the March on Washington. At the time, black people could be lynched and denied fundamental rights with little thought. With the comments of a talk-show host most of her players had never heard of before last week serving as her excuse, Vivian Stringer rambled on for 30 minutes about the amazing season her team had.

Somehow, we’re supposed to believe that the comments of a man with virtually no connection to the sports world ruined Rutgers’ wonderful season. Had a broadcaster with credibility and a platform in the sports world uttered the words Imus did, I could understand a level of outrage.

But an hourlong press conference over a man who has already apologized, already been suspended and is already insignificant is just plain intellectually dishonest. This is opportunism. This is a distraction.

In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no threat to black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so destructive and must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about the idiot rappers on BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the country who use words much more powerful and much more destructive?

I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?

When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim.

No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.

 

[hmmnmm]

I dunno, that part about Hillary was pretty funny.
I bet she had something to do with it.
Pretty much, nothing but the most sanitized humor is tolerated anymore.
We've become a bunch of pussies.
And hos.

 

[ChristopherMaxwell]

There are plenty of precedents for hate-speech legislation. People should not be able to advocate murder with impunity. Robertson and Wildmon and those fellows do it constantly. "Take out Chavez," he said, quite recently. Which might not matter much, in a context of reason.

I, too, am leery of hate-speech legislation, but I think we may have a real difficulty here, with these megachurchers. If they speak, and one can meet them with argument, and I don't necessarily mean rational argument, because emotional arguments work too, then fine. But they do not engage in argument. We have an insulated group here.

People who are seeing their family fall inexorably out of the middle class in the rust belt, for instance, not only have their circumstances reduced, but both spouses must work, and very often now without benefits. They know their children have lost the likelihood of doing better than their parents did. Check out the demographics on who supports these people. The dispossessed, the Rust Belt, and those soulless exurbs like Orange County, with no community center, no neighbor structures for support, often no sidewalks, just a palladium-windowed place in which to wake up, drive the distance to LA, and then come home to. People without community. The destruction of community, and also the erosion of hope-- and no community support, no state support, no help at all.

And it isn't only despair and hopelessness they feel, but rage. Listen to the tv preachers, and the talk radio, and you will hear the rage. And further than that, they are told who the culprits are; fascists never lack for scapegoats. "Its the gays, the immigrants, the liberals, who have done this to us, and we are going to take our country back from them."

Again, it might not make a lot of difference if you could engage them in argument, but you cannot, any more. We have allowed this gigantic echo chamber to develop. Their reality is less and less useful to them, but these speakers invite them into a world of magic. They are told who to blame, they are given a community, God cares about them, Jesus intervenes in their lives several times a day, they are informed what's right and wrong, what to do, and their rage is shared and validated. The message is as all fascist messages are, that you are with us, and those who are against us deserve nothing. It is, in fact, okay to kill them.

They can easily manage, now, to hear this message all day long every day. When they work, when they sit at home, when they catch the news, when they receive health and beauty tips, all the time. They never have to step out of the magic and comforting reality-free world. And once they are in it, and find out that argument and reason about these messages is dangerous and an attempt to trick them by people who don't know, who don't get it, who don't believe, they become unreachable.

It only takes ten percent to pull off a revolution. Niemoller is a good example, if you've read him, or Arendt. The fascists there taught that the response to argument was fists or pistols, and ours are little better. Tolerating the intolerant sounds like a nice, tolerant thing to do, but if argument and social pressure are ruled out, tolerance of the hate has been shown already to result in the destruction of the tolerant.

Since we wish to preserve a tolerant, free, open society, we must be able to arrest this phenomenon. Britain and other places have hate crime and hate speech legislation, and it has some difficulties, but we can learn from those. Advocating intimidation, advocating rape, advocating murder-- these things are stepping over the line.

The technical term for the megachurch thing is dominionists. They have a couple of verses from Genesis which they interpret to mean that Christians are directed by God to run the joint. On the other hand, they have little truck with the Sermon on the Mount. By me, that makes them not Christians. But they've come a long fuckin way in twenty-five years. They were around, then, but they were on the very fringe of America. Even America, a priest-ridden and over-religious place, largely considered them buffoonish. I don't think we have that luxury any more.

Enoch Powell was a real threat, too, but it all depends.....it's a very careful line between anti-Fascism and countre-Fascism.

Banning Sinn Fein makes sense......they're still armed, the bastards. Demilitarisation was a load of bloody claptrap. Banning the Nazis would have made sense, since they had actively tried to oust the government before (Beer Hall Putsch, anyone?). Same thing with Il Duce- instead of making him Premier, the King should have put him in front of a firing squad with a blindfold and a fag.

It all depends. Most Communists technically preach hate- hate for the rich. Should we ban them, too? Because in some cases, it's not all just words. Nor does banning always work. Rhodesia is presently ruled by a thug whose party was once banned, and then grew stronger than ever through force of arms. Sometimes, a ban drives people underground and makes them even more dangerous. It's when they're already paramilitarised that banning them makes sense, as they are an active threat to the free institutions of a civil society. And then quash the bastards, landing on them with both feet.

Even then, however, it doesn't always work. You doubt me, bear in mind that the Tamil Tigers were supposed to be illegal, and before them, the People's Liberation Front....both of them gave the government a run for its money in Sri Lanka, however.

 

[cantdog]

Not at all, hmmnmm. Altogether too much is tolerated. Cheney is tolerated. Torture is tolerated. Warrantless searches, checks with the library about what you read, unreasonable searches, profiling, massacre, deathsquads, and the gutless so called oppositon party looking for excuses not to change it-- we tolerate all that shit, right along with fundie hatemongers. I don't know how you can characterize this as an over-sanitized world.

 

[ChristopherMaxwell]

Not at all, hmmnmm. Altogether too much is tolerated. Cheney is tolerated. Torture is tolerated. Warrantless searches, checks with the library about what you read, unreasonable searches, profiling, massacre, deathsquads, and the gutless so called oppositon party looking for excuses not to change it-- we tolerate all that shit, right along with fundie hatemongers. I don't know how you can characterize this as an over-sanitized world.

Trouble is with the precedent set here. If you think that the State is Orwellian now, imagine when the Right and Left take turns repressing each other, in a tit for tat, every chance they get, until it breaks out into open civil war.....what then? One side wins and becomes a new tyranny, while the other goes into terrorism.

If you doubt me, just consider the history of the English Civil War, the French Revolution, the Russian Civil War, and the Spanish Civil War. No matter who won, there would have been tyranny for a long time to come.

 

[hmmnmm]

Terrorists on the right, hate-speech legislation on the left.

Nice things to think about on such a sunny April day here in the Rocky Mountains.

Christ, I was going to practice the guitar today, yesterday swearing off all things political, just like each new day I vow to quit smoking, really, this time.
Now, several thoughts zigzag and I can't grab even one, mainly because my hands are busy with Marlboro and matches.

One of those thoughts was a reenactment of the Imus/ Rutgers bout. If we could go back and replay it, solve the problem, make the news media work for their paychecks.
Another had to do with the many insults I received over the years, for many outstanding attributes that gave ample encouragment to so many budding humorists. Wonder if the same were to happen today, if I could have people fired, sue a few, leave these days of poverty far behind.
Yet another comes in the form of a real-life parable that was just updated a few minutes ago (though I didn't see what really happened).

Which one... which one?

 

[cloudy]

In case you don't know, Jason Whitlock is a black man and a long-time civil rights activist. It's about time someone from the black community came out and said the same things I've thought all along - What Imus did was wrong. Even he admits it. But Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson were even more wrong for blowing this out of proportion and orchestrating this mess, even to the point of scripting the comments of the women's basketball team on Operah and the after-meeting news conference yesterday. They have their own adjunda that has nothing to do with improving the lot of the black community, Imus or these women. What it does have to do with is furthering their own Radio and Political careers.

Does that in any way justify the horribly racist things you've said in this thread and in the past, Jenny?

Of course it doesn't.

btw: please show me your evidence that the Rutgers team's/coach's comments on Oprah were scripted by Sharpton. They were eloquent and classy, everything Sharpton is not.

ps "Oprah" is spelled this way.

pss there is no such thing as an "adjunda."

 

[Liar]

Does that in any way justify the horribly racist things you've said in this thread and in the past, Jenny?

Of course it doesn't.

Well then, the debate is over, isn't it? Jenny is a "horrible racist" and any and all points she might bring up in this thread from here on will be dismissed because of that.

With running the risk of being branded something or the other along with her... Isn't that a little bit Sharpton-esque of you?

Just sayin'.

 

[cloudy]

Well then, the debate is over, isn't it? Jenny is a "horrible racist" and any and all points she might bring up in this thread from here on will be dismissed because of that.

With running the risk of being branded something or the other along with her... Isn't that a little bit Sharpton-esque of you?

Just sayin'.

No, I said she had posted some horribly racist things (not that she was a "horrible racist"), and if you'll look, Liar, she did. I remember her posting not too long ago that "the only thing black guys have going for them is the size of their cocks."

What she apparently doesn't realize is that the article she posted comes very close to blasting everything she posted in her rant out of the water.

I've said, more than once, in just this thread, that racism is ugly, no matter who it comes from. I can't stand Sharpton, think Jesse Jackson is a moron, etc., but that still doesn't make what Imus said, or what Jenny said, for that matter, morally right.

If we overlook it, and say, "oh, he's just a shock jock," we're passing on the message that it's okay to speak of others that way.

Imus isn't the problem; he's just a symptom of something much bigger and much deeper. Until everyone is prepared to stand up and say, "hey, this is just wrong, no matter who you are," then the problem will continue to exist.

It's too late to change Imus, and Sharpton, and Jackson, and Jenny. It's not too late for those that are younger.

 

[Kintrub]

(btw: you're way behind the times. That argument was old ten years ago)

Says you. I was recently up against the old "No such thing as black racism" argument on another thread on Lit - less than a week ago.

Maya Angelou rocks. I hate Imus and his lame-ass remarks. But my point is how there is a double standard. I am father of 2 girls. I am forced to accept current pop music proliferating use of the words "Bitches" and "Hoes", bercause of WHO is using this language.

"It includes rappers and hip hoppers as well" - Maya Angelou.

 

[cloudy]

Says you. I was recently up against the old "No such thing as black racism" argument on another thread on Lit - less than a week ago.

Maya Angelou rocks. I hate Imus and his lame-ass remarks. But my point is how there is a double standard. I am father of 2 girls. I am forced to accept current pop music proliferating use of the words "Bitches" and "Hoes", bercause of WHO is using this language.

"It includes rappers and hip hoppers as well" - Maya Angelou.

Exactly. You won't find me excusing them from my condemnation.

No one forces you to accept it. If you do, that's your deal.

But, I see what you want, so I can play: Am not.

 

[Kintrub]

Cool, then we agree, you and I, Cloudy.

 

[hmmnmm]

Every single guitar-player should rise up and demand the head of any smartass unfunny standup comic who makes jokes about Mississippii and Mississippians. Because they insult all those great blues guitarists who made such the indelible impact on almost every style of music worldwide, therefore they insult guitarists, if for no other reason than they have a harder time enjoying the notes and chords, the pleasure.

Right?

And I said the humor is becoming more and more sanitized, not the world nor the horrific existent conditions.

Hell, even South Park has tamed down. And they were the last hope.

 

[cloudy]

Every single guitar-player should rise up and demand the head of any smartass unfunny standup comic who makes jokes about Mississippii and Mississippians. Because they insult all those great blues guitarists who made such the indelible impact on almost every style of music worldwide, therefore they insult guitarists, if for no other reason than they have a harder time enjoying the notes and chords, the pleasure.

Right?

And I said the humor is becoming more and more sanitized, not the world nor the horrific existent conditions.

Hell, even South Park has tamed down. And they were the last hope.

Humor doesn't have to be racist.

 

[Grushenka]

Imus isn't the problem; he's just a symptom of something much bigger and much deeper.

Nail on head again. (I.e., institutional racism)

I'm not arguing further. The harping on racism against whites (give me a fucking break, try racism without colorization; e.g., Jews, early Irish immigrants, so-called godless peoples), mostly by whites, is indicative of the problem. Reread your own posts (if you know who you are) and try deconstructing the inherent self-righteous attitudes therein.

Dosvedanya.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Does that in any way justify the horribly racist things you've said in this thread and in the past, Jenny?

Of course it doesn't.

btw: please show me your evidence that the Rutgers team's/coach's comments on Oprah were scripted by Sharpton. They were eloquent and classy, everything Sharpton is not.

ps "Oprah" is spelled this way.

pss there is no such thing as an "adjunda."

If you listened to the broadcasts or read the transcripts, the Rutgers Team and Coach's comments were word for word what Sharpton said in his "Victory Comments" to the press on CNN, ABC, CBS and MSNBC. That's Scripted, Cloudy.

But then, in YOUR EYES, since Jason Whitlock is a black man and I am white, I am bigoted while he is not. A two-hour long humiliation session where Sharpton called Imus a "Cracker" is not bigoted, while my mention of it is.

Nowhere did I ever say Imus was right in what he said. It wasn't. Even Imus said it was wrong. What I did say was Sharpton and Jackson showed their true colors in making a major mess out of Imus' remarks after he had already appologized, been suspended and was looking at losing his show anyway because his sponsors were abandoning him. What was their agenda? Getting rid of Imus? He was already gone. Helping the Rutgers Women's Basketball team after their self-humiliating performance in the AAA finals? Too late - they lost. It happens. I played college ball. I have been in the same position as these women. We were dised with words far more foul. Was my world destroyed? Not really. What did the women of the Rutgers team get out of it? The exact same personal appology that Imus had already offered.

Imus called them "hos". The blacks refer to themselves as hos. "Nappy-Headed". Damn few of Imus listeners would even know what the word Nappy means. I had to look up Nappy to be sure. It mean "kinky" which happens to be a genetic, black trait. In my mind that's a null comment because most of America didn't even understand it.

Obviously you support the double standard, while I don't and what Whitlock's article is really about. Isn't that what's been wrong with the black struggle since the days of Martin Luther King ended?

As far as Oprah, Imus made the rounds of all the daytime talk shows looking for a forum to appologize again and again. Why was he not on Oprah's? There was a woman from the Rutgers team spewing the exact words I heard later in the day from Al Sharpton. I guess Oprah saw that as "fair and balanced?" Not in my eyes. This whole thing stunk to high heaven on both sides.

Now if you were offended by my comments, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Call Revs Sharpton and Jackon and complain to them. I could care less. They will ignore you because it won't put one thin dime in their personal, bigoted pockets.

As a side note, I notice that Jackson ran away from the whole mess before Imus was on Sharpton's radio show. At least he showed some small bit of integrety, even though he wasn't man enough to own up to it like Imus did.

 

[ChristopherMaxwell]

Nail on head again. (I.e., institutional racism)

I'm not arguing further. The harping on racism against whites (give me a fucking break, try racism without colorization; e.g., Jews, early Irish immigrants, so-called godless peoples), mostly by whites, is indicative of the problem. Reread your own posts (if you know who you are) and try deconstructing the inherent self-righteous attitudes therein.

Dosvedanya.

Never been to Rhodesia, have you, mate?

 

[cloudy]

If you listened to the broadcasts or read the transcripts, the Rutgers Team and Coach's comments were word for word what Sharpton said in his "Victory Comments" to the press on CNN, ABC, CBS and MSNBC. That's Scripted, Cloudy.

But then, in YOUR EYES, since Jason Whitlock is a black man and I am white, I am bigoted while he is not. A two-hour long humiliation session where Sharpton called Imus a "Cracker" is not bigoted, while my mention of it is.

Nowhere did I ever say Imus was right in what he said. It wasn't. Even Imus said it was wrong. What I did say was Sharpton and Jackson showed their true colors in making a major mess out of Imus' remarks after he had already appologized, been suspended and was looking at losing his show anyway because his sponsors were abandoning him. What was their agenda? Getting rid of Imus? He was already gone. Helping the Rutgers Women's Basketball team after their self-humiliating performance in the AAA finals? Too late - they lost. It happens. I played college ball. I have been in the same position as these women. We were dised with words far more foul. Was my world destroyed? Not really. What did the womeon of the Rutgers team get out of it? The exact same personal appology that Imus had already offered.

Imus called them "hos". The blacks refer to themselves as hos. "Nappy-Headed". Damn few of Imus listeners would even know what the word Nappy means. I had to look it up Nappy to be sure. It mean "kinky" which happens to be a genetic, black trait. In my mind that's a null comment because most of America didn't even understand it.

Obviously you support the double standard, while I don't and what Whitlock's article is really about. Isn't that what's been wrong with the black struggle since the days of Martin Luther King ended?

As far as Oprah, Imus made the rounds of all the daytime talk shows looking for a forum to appologize again and again. Why was he not on Oprah's? There was a woman from the Rutgers team spewing the exact words I heard later in the day from Al Sharpton. I guess Oprah saw that as "fair and balanced?" Not in my eyes. This whole thing stunk to high heaven on both sides.

Now if you were offended by my comments, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Call Revs Sharpton and Jackon and complain to them. I could care less. They will ignore you because it won't put one thin dime in their personal, bigoted pockets.

As a side note, I notice that Jackson ran away from the whole mess before Imus was on Sharpton's radio show. At least he showed some small bit of integrety, even though he wasn't man enough to own up to it like Imus did.

and you repeatedly harp on Jackson and Sharpton, making it painfully obvious that you didn't read a fucking word I said. So...you're still embarassing yourself.

I could copy & paste, too. I prefer to do my own thinking, thank you very much.

But then, in YOUR EYES, since Jason Whitlock is a black man and I am white, I am bigoted while he is not. A two-hour long humiliation session where Sharpton called Imus a "Cracker" is not bigoted, while my mention of it is.

Don't put words in my mouth, but instead, LEARN TO READ. I said you were bigoted based on current and past comments. I've said Sharpton and Jackson are morons. Over and over and over.

And guess what? I can still spell.

 

[Grushenka]

Never been to Rhodesia, have you, mate?

I don't understand your point. I have close friends from there and have read much of South Africa's history and literature. My post had to do with racism in the U.S. if that helps. Don't want to argue, just don't get your response.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

and you repeatedly harp on Jackson and Sharpton, making it painfully obvious that you didn't read a fucking word I said. So...you're still embarassing yourself.

I could copy & paste, too. I prefer to do my own thinking, thank you very much.



Don't put words in my mouth, but instead, LEARN TO READ. I said you were bigoted based on current and past comments. I've said Sharpton and Jackson are morons. Over and over and over.

And guess what? I can still spell.

They are morons. More than that, they are dangerous morons, Cloudy. Unfortunately, this mess gave them a platform to divide and bring out the worst in everyone. No, I'm not bigoted, just mad that this got to the point where it overshadowed the real news of the day - like 18 year-old, American kids being killed in Iraq for no good reason while a blind and insensitive Administration screams, "Damn the torpedos! Full steam ahead!"

We actually have more in common on this issue than it seems. Sorry, if I pissed anyone off.

 

[cantdog]

Enoch Powell was a real threat, too, but it all depends.....it's a very careful line between anti-Fascism and countre-Fascism.

Banning Sinn Fein makes sense......they're still armed, the bastards. Demilitarisation was a load of bloody claptrap. Banning the Nazis would have made sense, since they had actively tried to oust the government before (Beer Hall Putsch, anyone?). Same thing with Il Duce- instead of making him Premier, the King should have put him in front of a firing squad with a blindfold and a fag.

It all depends. Most Communists technically preach hate- hate for the rich. Should we ban them, too? Because in some cases, it's not all just words. Nor does banning always work. Rhodesia is presently ruled by a thug whose party was once banned, and then grew stronger than ever through force of arms. Sometimes, a ban drives people underground and makes them even more dangerous. It's when they're already paramilitarised that banning them makes sense, as they are an active threat to the free institutions of a civil society. And then quash the bastards, landing on them with both feet.

Even then, however, it doesn't always work. You doubt me, bear in mind that the Tamil Tigers were supposed to be illegal, and before them, the People's Liberation Front....both of them gave the government a run for its money in Sri Lanka, however.

Banning them is most unwise.

And something as mild as hate-speech legislation, that's no doubt too little, too late. There may be, at this point, not much we can really do, aside from alert the ones outside the magic bubble to what is going on. Not if we are sensible enough not to want to escalate the madness.

But suppose we are able to call Robertson on it, the next time he calls to an audience of millions to kill someone? Suddenly, to defend itself, the organism will have to leave the magic bubble. Because in a court of law, it really is argument that is used, not magic.

We then can let people continue to pray by the busload on the courthouse steps at the next Schiavo thing, while beginning to place a check on how far these Christo-fascists can go, at least in the arena of advocating murder in the name of the movement.

There are already laws about advocating armed rebellion against the United States, and they even enforce them, occasionally. This sort of legislation needn't be much different.

What's happened in this country—and this has unfortunately been mainstreamed for us by the Christian right— is that we speak about Muslims in a way that I think we could not speak about any other minority or ethnic group in this country. The Muslim world constitutes one-fifth of the world's population, most of whom, by the way, are not Arab. The statements of ignorance and racism that are routinely put out against Muslims are ones that I think are very much fueled by the Christian right, which has demonized Islam, and to our own detriment.

What radical Christian movements do, just as radical Islamists do, is destroy the moderate center of their own societies. The Christian right is working as hard to destroy the moderate center of our society as Islamic radicals are working to destroy the moderate center of their society. Which is the majority, by the way, the vast majority.

What you're left with, which is what happened in the Balkans, are these two apocalyptic extremes, who need each other. Milosevic needed Tudjman, Tudjman needed Milosevic.

One of the most interesting and disturbing things that we saw when we covered the Balkan conflicts when they began is that the first people to be killed were not the radical members of the opposing ethnic group, because they need them. They need them to instill fear within their own ethnic group. It was the members within their own ethnic group who still reached out to the Muslims in the community, who still went over and had coffee with them, who still would visit the imam in the mosque. They were the first to end up with a bullet in the head in the ditch, because they showed people another way to be, another way to speak, and another way to act, a way to hold together a community. Those are the first people to get destroyed, and they get destroyed by their own.