Prometheus 6

Folks should not be urged to boycott Imus' show. They should boycott the products and services that the sponsors of Imus' show produce. They should also boycott the sponsors of any programming offered by MSNBC. Several days ago I sent my cordial and politie email to Keith Olberman's show informing whoever actually looks at the email that I will no longer watch his program until MSNBC removes Imus or Olberman's program is moved to another network.

Almost every year Imus holds a fundraiser for his ranch for sick children.  People should be urged to disrupt these events and not contribute to his charities.  He also has his own line of cleaning products which are supposedly designed to be safer than regular household cleaning products that cause autism.  People should be urged to boycott these products as well.  I would also like to see the distinguised guests who regularly appear on his show like Tom Brokaw, Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, Andrea Mitchell, Douglas Brinkley, and a countless number of other big names and power brokers take action and refuse to talk with him on air out of principle or at least reprimand him for his racist content.  There are plenty who won't care and will go on appearing on his show out of personal loyalty because Imus is a grad-A ass kisser.  Hopefully some will act out of conscious and make their opinions and feelings know in such a way as to deprive the show of its access to A-list celebrities.  One of the biggest assets of the show is the wide variety of news pundits and celebrities who candidly talk with Imus on a regular basis.           

the only black folks that listen to Imus are Clarensonian, Thomas-esque, Sowell-phonic types predisposed to the garb, mores and psychoses of their masters. They are beyond NABJ earshot - except as reactionary foot soldiers. PT is right on with this one.

I like how you rearranged the furniture.

I like how you rearranged the furniture.

Thanks. I still got some details to iron out, but "this, tho obscured, is the form of he promised land." At least for a year or so.

Meanwhile, looks like I have to expand on this one based on you guys' ideas here. 

rev. Al is going to exact his pound of flesh from the i-man this afternoon on his very own radio talk show. sure to be most entertaining moment in talk and egocentrism, if not particularly useful or edifying....,

wheel house...3-0 pitch, bases loaded, no outs. smack!!!

50 minutes into the game and the batman is swinging a bit more like larryking from where I sit - even though he continues to insist on a beheading. bottomline, imus is simply not as bad as he's been made out to be - and in the light of def comedy, hbo comedy, bet comedy, and a host of others, has NOT committed an unpardonable infraction.

imus will make bernard cool his jets and continue cracking on everybody...,

imus is simply not as bad as he's been made out to be

Sure he is.

Cnulan, Imus has a history of anti-black comments. I don't listen to his show because of the more well known incidents, but every once in a while flip onto his show. More often than not, he or his guest makes some racial comment that disgusts me.

The danger is that his show promulgates intolerance in mainstream media. The shows you mentioned above don't have senators, congress people, and other folks of power and influence making guest spots. I think the situation is dire enough without another racist spigot.

I listen to 20-30 minutes of imus many days because he comes on at 4:30am and is the first burst of digested news of the day. I've listened to a little imus regularly for the past several years and in context, I don't see the big deal AT ALL. imus entire schtick is to make folks jaws drop and he's equitable as hell with the smackdowns.

Frankly, Bernard McGuirk needs to go, cause he's a dubious stick of shit to be sure, kind of like that stankass racist comedienne some folks thought mildly amusing here a few weeks ago.

Bernard started this specific bit and imus got caught up...,

...and "nappy headed ho's" came out of Imus' putrid maw.

imus is simply not as bad as he's been made out to be

The issue is not about whether he is, at bottom, a good or bad person. That is largely irrelevant and beside the point. There is no justifiable excuse for singling out and publicly ridiculing 17, 18 and 19 year old college students who are not appearing in "Girls Gone Wild" videos or have not been arrested or charged with any crime.

In fact, these young people did not do a damn thing to draw attention to themselves except play for the national championship. And for this transgression they deserve to be called "nappy headed hos" on a nationally syndicated radio and television show?

Let's be for real here. Even the most foul mouthed comedian on Def Comedy Jam would know not to go where Imus went and certainly not on these teenagers.

i said that on his show, his entire schtick centers around jaw-dropping derogation of everybody and that in that context, i plainly and simply don't see the big deal. fact of the matter is that i've heard VASTLY worse things out of the mouths of certain generations of Black folks about other Black folks - and as a matter of coarse. (pun intended)

now maybe your virgin ears have never heard folks cut loose when they're caught up talking shit - out here in the sticks, that type of commentary is simply not that extraordinary - and given the generalized coarseness of contemporary comedy - it's pretty much par for the course.

now maybe your virgin ears have never heard folks cut loose when they're caught up talking shit - out here in the sticks, that type of commentary is simply not that extraordinary

I have heard people talk more shit than the law allows and that is a lot of shit. Real folks talk plenty shit about folks who either deserve to have shit said about them or who have gotten big enough in the behind to weather a few swift kicks. Real folks don't talk shit about other people's teenage children who have not placed themselves in a position to be cracked on.

You are defending the indefensible.

I blockquoted the text you quoted above. I have no idea why the formatting on the bit you quoted won't stick, but I wanted the discussion clear.

Real folks don't talk shit about other people's teenage children who have not placed themselves in a position to be cracked on. You are defending the indefensible.

"other people's teenage children ho have not placed themselves in a position to be cracked on"

WTF?

We talking about a national college basketball championship game here, right?

The buzzard looked the monkey right dead in the eye and said "your story's so touching....,"

I'm not a big fan of sports in general outside of womens' tennis and mixed martial arts - and the level of shit talking in both those contexts is relatively subdued..., I'm simply going to take for granted that you've been exposed to the cracking that goes on around and about college basketball as a general rule, not excluding womens college basketball, and even more specifically in the context of a hotly contested championship game - and let it go at that.

I'm not defending anything, but I'm damn sure not going to support in any manner, form, or fashion rev. al's impotent hystrionics. If he was about doing something, then this trifling bullshit would be precisely that, and it wouldn't even make the radar..., sorry

How would you react if Sharpton wasn't involved? Would you reject Imus then? Or would you still see it as a non-issue?

I should warn you: if you still see it as a non-issue, your statement that you're not joining Al is...questionable. And if you see it as an issue you won't support ONLY because Al is talking you're trading your ethics for politics.

Not good, either way.

while I don't see this as a moral issue, per se, the question of audience rises to the fore for me.  why?  a black comic (and Imus is no longer really a comic - he is an on-air personality with a comical/satirical show - there is a difference) and his audience would have an organic relationship to these girls - that would not spare them from ridicule if the situation warranted - but their appearance would not be a source of humor for most black folk with respect to hair...there was plenty o' perms and braids in the mix - and so from a joke standpoint - it doesn't work.

now, if you wanted to go at the anti-African, anti-melanin approach of black comics, you'd have hit the nail on the head because that is entirely problematic.  and i'd argue that it's more painful for youth to be berated and attacked internally (by the fam) vs. externally.  i say that because i tend not to give two shits about what white folks have to say about much of anything relating to us (hence my emphasis on old Don's byatch-ass apology betraying his impotent, anger-oriented audience).  i also say that understanding the psychological damage done to each african collective residing in a white supremacist society - not just this one.

imus' history is not defensible and it's not a good thing if you believe that reconciliation across "racial" barriers is achievable in the US - unless he's used explicitly for that purpose.  the default setting for most listeners to his show is reinforcing ignant shit.   and if you don't believe that reconciliation is possible, then that muhphukka really needs to go simply because he needs to go - and you don't need folks undermining your humanity for shits and giggles.

ROTFLMBAO!!!!!

Your peerless method of rhetorical non-evasion has achieved a whole nother level...., thanks for the belly laugh, you done straight slayed me up in here.

Here's my full and complete take on the matter. I've watched and listened to Imus in the morning for more than a decade and I don't consider him a racist. He's the ringmaster in the middle of a collection of extreme personalities. As a matter of fact, he typically moderates and puts on a lid on the more extreme voices in his crew. Bernard is the most extreme one of these voices. He's a fucking bensonhurst/southie type piece of shit and should be taken out and shot with the quickness. Bernard took him down this path last week, and it got a little out of hand. Frankly, it's not to Imus's credit that he keeps that type of element around. It's part of his act, however, because I'm familiar with the general flow of the Imus circus, I view this as an instance of Imus losing control of one of the acts in his circus.

In my own life, I know and associate with some Black Bernard McGuirks. I have regular and recurring shadetree dialogue with more than a few, and I don't judge them, but instead just listen to whatever angry conspiratorial madness they're pitching. On occasion, one or another of them will channel Khalid Muhammad and I know I ought to back the hell up out of there, but sometimes, it's just too entertaining to stifle. Would I ever allow one of these characters in front of one of my classes full of children, of course not. That would be an abrogation of my adult responsibility to those children.

Imus is not leading a classroom full of children, he's putting on an acerbic three-ring circus of derogatory commentary intended for insomniac early rising oldheads. One of his acts got out of control and he didn't put that shit immediately in check. He fucked up, he has apologized, and I think he probably ought to think long and hard about removing Bernard from the roster. Can he fire Bernard in the present context without looking like an utter punk who folded in the face of media histrionics from rev. al? No.

Will anything change as a result of this exagerated confrontation, no. Imus is NOT going to resign or get fired, and frankly, all the hoopla has made it really hard to deal contextually intelligently with the situation so as to achieve the optimal outcome. So from where I sit, it remains a non-issue. Sharpton hasn't added constructively at all to the situation.

I see. You misunderstand his influence. Let's see if we can correct that. May wind up correcting your perception that he's not a racist too.

I've watched and listened to Imus in the morning for more than a decade and I don't consider him a racist.

I don't know or care whether he is a racist or not. What you need to explain to me since you and I are both fathers is why do you believe that it was okay for him to single out these teenagers for that kind of abuse?

I did not read or view anything about the Rutgers team before, during or after the game that would lead me to believe that they had suddenly become fair game for a wealthy white man in the seventh decade of his life to call them "nappy headed ho's."

What did these girls do to deserve the jaundiced spite of an entertainer who presides over a satirical-comedy show? On what basis do you defend singling out the powerless and defending attacks on them by people with power?

See, one of the things nobody in the MSM is talking about is that the behavior and remarks of Imus and Bernard and their defenders and enablers is really rooted in their sexual obsessions and fantasies about women and especially black women. I like looking at women probably as much as any other man but I don't leer or make suggestive remarks or lewd gestures. I also don't believe that a woman's primary role or principal attribute should be based on her physical appearance.

What really disturbed Imus and Bernard is that they did not find these young women on the Rutgers team sexually attractive. (Imus actually said that he thought the "girls" on the Tennessee team looked good.) I suspect that they really didn't tune in to watch a basketball game as much as they tuned in to fantasize about screwing young girls and watching their butts and breasts jiggle and wiggle as they ran up and down the court. (Imus and Bernard clearly got their rocks off watching Tennessee's All-American forward Candace Parker.)

Consequently, Imus and Bernard were a little bit angry when they went on the air because Rutgers and its coach did not put on a little Bada Bing show on the hardwood last Tuesday. Imus and Bernard and their friends and defenders can lie and bullshit each other all they want about what they did and the reasons they did it but they can't fool me. They were angry because the Rutgers team, including the two white girls on the team, did not fulfill their sexual fantasies.

So instead of these two perverts (and they are perverts) looking deep within themselves and checking their own shit they engaged in a classic form of projection and lashed out at these young women and ridiculed them. They are perverted becase they are being dishonest about their feelings. They are patently dishonest and you should know better than to defend creeps like them. You are much better than they are even on your worse day.

What did these girls do to deserve the jaundiced spite of an entertainer who presides over a satirical-comedy show? On what basis do you defend singling out the powerless and defending attacks on them by people with power?

PT, my wife played college ball and continued playing ball long after - in a route 128 womens basketball league.

Right off the top, there were a few big rough women on her team who were nakedly resentful concerning our relationship. At least a couple thought they might be able to whoop my behind.  So I'm not really too terribly concerned about the delicacy of grown-assed women ballers.  Big strapping ones with tattoos and other indications of fin d'siecle roughneckery get no sissy pass from me.

As for Imus being a power holder, please, he's a news entertainer. I'm sincerely doubting that a single one of you has listened to more than a couple hours of Imus in the morning - and if that - it was since last wednesday when he went and phukked up.

My 12 year old plays basketball, and she's run up against obviously partisan referees.  It's all part of the game.  If you wanna play team sports, then you learn to adapt to the micro-politics of the game you intend to play.  I'm all about the individual achievement sports personally, where you compete against yourself and occasionally go and take the measure of that against others.

why do you believe that it was okay for him to single out these teenagers for that kind of abuse?

Uh, I've witnessed parents lose their minds and act more flagrantly inappropriately toward individual children competing in team sports than anything Imus could even have imagined doing.  I'm all about knucking up right then and there when somebody acts a fool toward a child of mine.

Are you telling me that one of these big women is named Sharpton? I wasn't aware of that fact.

So instead of these two perverts (and they are perverts) looking deep within themselves and checking their own shit they engaged in a classic form of projection and lashed out at these young women and ridiculed them. They are perverted becase they are being dishonest about their feelings. They are patently dishonest and you should know better than to defend creeps like them. You are much better than they are even on your worse day.

wtf dood?????? Much too much information. 

Like I said, I don't watch women's basketball, but now that I've pulled up an image of Candace Parker I can see taking the time to watch an occasional Tennessee game. 

Lest I stand accused of any sexist oinkery, I remember the first mens college basketball game I ever attended and observed the unadulterated lust etched on the faces of the women gathered together at that spectacle.  Until that time, I had never appreciated the sexual dimension of athletic bread and circus.....,

I tell you what homey, I'm shamelessly watching Laila Ali on Dancing with the Stars and if you're missing out on that, then you're really and truly missing out.

My 12 year old plays basketball, and she's run up against obviously partisan referees.  It's all part of the game.  If you wanna play team sports, then you learn to adapt to the micro-politics of the game you intend to play.  I'm all about the individual achievement sports personally, where you compete against yourself and occasionally go and take the measure of that against others.

Irrelevant. Imus wasn't balling. In addition his attacks were personal, yet did not deal with them as individuals.

why do you believe that it was okay for him to single out these teenagers for that kind of abuse?

Uh, I've witnessed parents lose their minds and act more flagrantly inappropriately toward individual children competing in team sports than anything Imus could even have imagined doing.

Are any of them okay? And only parents can defend?

neither one of you has watched a lick of imus in the morning, but you've got your minds made up and no amount of contextualizing is going to make a whit of difference, from where I sit, you're squandering cycles and social capital on a nothing infraction...,

you've got your minds made up and no amount of contextualizing is going to make a whit of difference

Yup. 

I will say this about Imus... his unique rapport with big names in news and media (almost all of whom are white) provided an interesting format for different perspectives to be heard with out all the formality of other news shows.  After a while, however, the racist and slanderous jokes past between him and Bernard became repetitive and irksome and I completely lost interest in watching the show.  I think Gwen Ifill did a magnificent job of addressing the whole controversy in an op-ed piece in the New York Times this morning.  If Imus had any class, he would have invited people like Ifill, and Maya Angelou, and all the other black people he and Bernard denigrated over the years onto his show.  Now he wants the people he has offended for thirty to years to forgive him in time to save his career.  It's not gonna happen on his watch.          

Right off the top, there were a few big rough women on her team who were nakedly resentful concerning our relationship. At least a couple thought they might be able to whoop my behind.

And what does any of the above have to do with what Imus said about the young women on the Rutgers team. None of them, as far as I could tell, were trying to cop a feel on Candace Parker's behind. 

So I'm not really too terribly concerned about the delicacy of grown-assed women ballers. Big strapping ones with tattoos and other indications of fin d'siecle roughneckery get no sissy pass from me.

Who these teenagers on the Rutgers team might become is a whole 'nother question. Again, what did they do to deserve being called "nappy headed ho's'?

As for Imus being a power holder, please, he's a news entertainer. I'm sincerely doubting that a single one of you has listened to more than a couple hours of Imus in the morning - and if that - it was since last wednesday when he went and phukked up.

In our celebrity drenched culture people like Don Imus have the power to determine how the media looks at you and how your image is presented to the world. Again, what did these young women do to deserve being called "nappy headed ho's"? Most of them just graduated from high school within the past two years. What could they have done?

My 12 year old plays basketball, and she's run up against obviously partisan referees. It's all part of the game.

I watched the Rutgers-Tennessee game. I knew that Rutgers couldn't win with five minutes left in the first half because they weren't getting any defensive rebounds and they couldn't hit their outside shots. I don't recall any of them whining and making excuses at the end of the game or trash talking about the referees.

If you wanna play team sports, then you learn to adapt to the micro-politics of the game you intend to play.

You mean that C. Vivian Stringer should get a face lift like Pat Summit, Tennessee's coach, and only recruit female players who look like Candace Parker? Are you arguing that Rutgers lost because they couldn't have won the swim suit competition? I thought they lost because they got beat by a better team that night.

and damn!!

and I'll say it again...pt cruiser is right on on this one. it's fundamental.

I think you and P6 have made a mountain out of a molehill carrying water with rev. al

The upshot of it is threefold;

1. Imus is not going to be fired

2. NBC/CBS and the advertisers they flack are not going to be boycotted

3. Collective understanding of genuine racist malfeasance has been further obscured

You can post-mortem this shit into how many angels dance on the head of a pin for all I care, but horse-pounding post hoc rationalizations of poor judgement - (take Cobb on S. Cotton as an illustration) - reflect a deep egoic investment in wanting to be right - rather than in objectively being so.

The inability to pull up and take note of proportionality and what makes sense is a tactical and moral blunder - and a sure sign of weakness and decay. As far as I'm concerned, Black partisan moral rhetoric has suffered a significant self-inflicted defeat phukkin around with rev. al - analogous in many regards to the parable of the boy who cried wolf.

I think you and P6 have made a mountain out of a molehill carrying water with rev. al

YOU raised Rev. Al. You have a fixation on him I think is a little unhealthy.

my refusal to share your overwrought identification with a womens college basketball team dissed by a bad comedian isn't bullshit, it's pragmatism.

face it, you don't know what to do about Imus, don't have the means to do anything about Imus, and you've shot your wad in misplaced, self-righteous indignation signifying nothing about Imus. perhaps the aftermath of furious impotence on the part of folks amassed on the wrong side of this trifling shit - will turn out to have teaching utility after all.

YOU raised Rev. Al. You have a fixation on him I think is a little unhealthy.

Green Acres is the place to be,

fa-arm livin is the life for me

Land spreadin out so far and wide

Keep Manhattan just give me that countryside...,

P6, you oughta be ashamed of yourself blowing straw like this. Between you fanboying for the batman and PT fuming around like a medieval knight errant defending the flower of female racial virtue, one a y'all typically sage pundits will eventually have to concede that the outcome of this little ill-considered and wholly unnecessary skirmish has already been determined - and your side will not prove victorious in this engagement.

We got principles. What can I tell you?

your side will not prove victorious in this engagement.

And your side will.

Which begs the question...

Listen, since you say you gave up, why don't you stop? Just askin', not a suggestion or anything.

There is nothing that I want to do with Imus or about Imus. My remarks are intended to stand in solidarity with those young women, their coach and their families.

I don't feel impotent in the least regarding this controversy. 

Your pedagogical impulses are entirely misplaced in this situation. You have written yourself into a corner and cannot get out. Worse, you want me and others to join you but our refusal to do so is only causing you to up the rhetorical ante.

You need to direct your ire toward Imus and his enablers. Not toward folks who believe that teenagers should not be called "nappy headed ho's". BTW, you need to check your own homophobia as well.   

PT fuming around like a medieval knight errant defending the flower of female racial virtue,

There is no such thing as female racial virtue. Why do you need to defend people who publicly call female black teenagers "nappy headed ho's" because they don't look like the kind of girls these men want to fantasize about having sex with.

Y'know that what's going on here, bro. Why are you publicly defending their right to beat on their puds in public and try to call it something else? 

You need to check yourself out too. 

everytime I try to get out, you pull me back...,

And your side will.

Which begs the question...

nice one P6...,

Listen, since you say you gave up, why don't you stop? Just askin', not a suggestion or anything.

I hate to see my putative elders and betters get drawn into futile and non-productive skirmishes that don't profit the strategic business at hand...,

I thought you were trying to force a negative opinion of Sharpton. You brought him up and stay on him, even though all our responses were about Imus, or a response to you.

He's not really important; his positions just happens to coincide with mine more often than any conservative you could name.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same

I NEVER need to refer to him to inform my opinion, and I never need to defend his to defend mine. Keep that in mind the next time you bring him up.

Y'know that what's going on here, bro. Why are you publicly defending their right to beat on their puds in public and try to call it something else?

Call me desensitized to exceptional righteous indignation. Had I not seen and heard a thousand such derogations over the last 16 years, perhaps I could muster a bit of moral outrage. But this specific example is old as hell, seminal and just a harbinger of what has come since it was recorded lo these many years ago.

BTW, you need to check your own homophobia as well.

oh puh-leez....,

You have written yourself into a corner and cannot get out. Worse, you want me and others to join you but our refusal to do so is only causing you to up the rhetorical ante.

dood, i haven't written myself into anything other than tactical disagreement with y'all. (i'm not the excited one on this issue.) I'm merely observing and calling attention to cultural baselines that Imus didn't set, but that he tread upon and is now being excoriated for. in the cultural climate in which we're embedded, I simply find it ludicrous to make this much ado about what came out of his mouth in the context in which it came out of his mouth.

my ox didn't get gored here...., and I don't believe yours did either - despite your impassioned protests to the contrary. {oh, and don't get it twisted PT, I'm not presuming to tell you what you feel, I'm simply telling you what I think about the entire situation as seen from my own perspective}

I'm merely observing and calling attention to cultural baselines that Imus didn't set, but that he tread upon and is now being excoriated for.

He did indeed tread upon it, and all such treaders get excoriated.

But he did set the baseline.

Pull his ass in, and the boundaries are officially reset.

"Pull his ass in, and the boundaries are officially reset. "

 I think the public denigration of our people on the airwaves goes way beyond Imus, past and present. I see this episode as one small battle in a campaign to set mainstream discourse re blacks to pre-Katrina levels. Dismiss Sharpton and Imus, and their ilk, but what gets broadcasted to millions does matter. People frequently act out on what they are fed via TV and radio. So, while I myself don't need a white guy's nod for self-affirmation, I do realize that in the big scheme of things, perception feeds action. And actions are what matter; especially those actions that we can't observe.

 We need to be as vigilant as the Isreali's when it comes to our public image. Because our polity is informed solely via the MSM. People vote based on what these fools say, right or wrong. More importantly, social behavior that in aggregate forms racism statistics is justified with the sophistry spewed by people with large audiences.

You know, this is making me confront/rethink my position on shock jocks in general. Let them all burn if they transgress, even if the treatment is even-steven, and the intent is "harmless".

tactical disagreement with y'all.

I'm not at war with Imus but I will not let him, you or other folks slide after calling a group of teenagers "nappy headed ho's".

You can keep revising and ducking and dodging and impugning my motives to whatever degree suits your fancy. It makes me no nevers at all.

If at this point all that we have is a tactical disagreement then why does it matter so much to you. This is a minor skirmish on a long front in an old, old war.  

You know, this is making me confront/rethink my position on shock jocks in general. Let them all burn if they transgress, even if the treatment is even-steven, and the intent is "harmless".

Yes.

Somehow people have come to believe that everything that is equal is fair. Equal offense is equally unfair. 

I think the public denigration of our people on the airwaves goes way beyond Imus, past and present. I see this episode as one small battle in a campaign to set mainstream discourse re blacks to pre-Katrina levels

You mean to where our issues were ignorable?

Can't let that happen.  

to a classic track for a couple of reasons:

1) The Nappy Dugout, as you know, does not refer to top-o'-the-dome hair.

2) This was Cube's album which explicitly framed a "Death" side - and a "Life" side...and this song is on the DEATH side.

This may not be the best example, but I agree, there are THOUSANDS more...

and the proper juxtaposition is all about how much interpersonal communion could have been achieved without all the haterade in the music and elsewhere.

having formatting trouble...i'm off the edge and off the hook...DAMN!!