FOT Forum
FOT Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: John Junk on April 12, 2007, 01:21:46 PM
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Haven't been following this too closely, and I'm certainly not an Imus fan, but doesn't all this hubbub strike anyone as kind of disengenuous on the part of the media, sponsors, etc.? Not saying it's "okay" to be ignorant and racist, but isn't that the role of shock jocks, generally?
Conversely, it might be interesting to dispense with shock jocks entirely. I think it might force people to stop scapegoating the concept of political correctness for their racistness/prejudicedness (in all it's varying degress of severity) and they wouldn't have an entertainment that made light of it, so they'd have to actually deal with it on a day to day level with other people. Or maybe we'd just be in a fascist state. I don't know! :-\
Also, if there's a tacit agreement amongst the FOT to never bring this up on the forum, I apologize for the transgression. Feel free to dump this post.
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Haven't been following this too closely, and I'm certainly not an Imus fan, but doesn't all this hubbub strike anyone as kind of disengenuous on the part of the media, sponsors, etc.? Not saying it's "okay" to be ignorant and racist, but isn't that the role of shock jocks, generally?
Conversely, it might be interesting to dispense with shock jocks entirely. I think it might force people to stop scapegoating the concept of political correctness for their racistness/prejudicedness (in all it's varying degress of severity) and they wouldn't have an entertainment that made light of it, so they'd have to actually deal with it on a day to day level with other people. Or maybe we'd just be in a fascist state. I don't know! :-\
Also, if there's a tacit agreement amongst the FOT to never bring this up on the forum, I apologize for the transgression. Feel free to dump this post.
I think it's quite odd that Imus is considered a "shock jock" by anyone in 2007. The only "shock" merchant on that show is Bernard McGuirk, who chimes in with his far-right-leaning, often-racist/homophobic/sacreligious quips. In recent years, Imus is more likely to be talking about country music, interviewing politicians, or discussing his charities/his wife's environmental and health crusades. Plus, his co-host, Charles McCord, probably hasn't said anything remotely offensive for his entire tenure. If one only knew of the Imus program from media reports in the last two weeks, they'd likely assume the show was some kind of lunatic Zoo Crew. If one wanted to really sift through the archives of Zoo s hit, they'd discover that the "nappy-headed ho" remark was, unfunny and inappropriate obv., but fairly mild.
The show's main offense is being pretty boring. Imus should have one final fling with cocaine, come back the Monday after his two-week suspension, really let it rip, and then retire to his ranch in New Mexico.
I know that Tom is standing strong in support of his radio brother. I'm looking foward to Switchblade Sistas, Quentin Tarantino's forthcoming "grindhouse documentary" on the meeting of the I-Man and the Rutgers women's basketball team, which will reportedly take place at Stuff Yer Face.
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Where's the outrage about these dildos?
[youtube=425,350]6GpAafmhBHQ[/youtube]
[youtube=425,350]TpUxxls8iiE[/youtube]
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I have very mixed feelings. Imus is a complete and utter FWD and I hope his toes fall off. On the other hand I dislike the heavy handed enforcement of political correctness.
My free speech absolutism always makes me feel conflicted in situations like this,
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If one only knew of the Imus program from media reports in the last two weeks, they'd likely assume the show was some kind of lunatic Zoo Crew.
I'm glad you point that out, because that's pretty much the only way I know of the Imus program, outside of listening to it for ten minutes like 9 years ago, and it didn't seem too shock jock back then either. but yeah, I was just calling him a shock jock because I was assuming he was like some elder predecessor of stern and the other dudes, mostly from the Imus impersonator thing in "Private Parts".
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I'm not quite sold that it's a freedom of speech issue, but I do think it's ridikolous. Here's a good article from Jason Whitlock in Kansas City:
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 $50 million to make racially insensitive jokes about black and white people on TV. He was hailed as a genius. Black comedians routinely crack jokes about white and black people, and we all laugh out loud.
I'm no Don Imus apologist. He and his tiny companion Mike ****** blasted me after I fell out with ESPN. Imus is a hack.
But, in my view, he didn't do anything outside the norm for shock jocks and comedians. He also offered an apology. That should've been the end of this whole affair. Instead, it's only the beginning. It's an opportunity for Stringer, Jackson and Sharpton to step on victim platforms and elevate themselves and their agenda$.
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.
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holy crap ! cbs dropped him too.
will he go to Sirius? wfmu? :-) or is this the very end of i-mus in-the mor-ning...
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I have very mixed feelings. Imus is a complete and utter FWD and I hope his toes fall off. On the other hand I dislike the heavy handed enforcement of political correctness.
My free speech absolutism always makes me feel conflicted in situations like this,
I pretty much have the exact same feelings on this matter.
Imus is a jerk and if I never have hear his stupid voice again I'll be thankful. (He's on the same station here in NYC as the one that broadcasts Mets games, so I'll occasionally get in my car in the morning after having listened to a game the previous night and having left the radio on the same station I'll hear him for 5 seconds before I'm forced to punch my radio in panic and disgust.) That being said, what he said was obviously a joke. A poor, unfunny, tasteless, offensive joke but a joke nonetheless. Perhaps Imus is a victim of his own drift towards "relevance." If he said his comment in more of a conventional "shock jock" context, it's probable that it would've went unnoticed. Since he feels the need to mix it up with politicians and elevate his social importance, he's going to have to pay for his stupid remark.
Maybe he'll make a comeback as a Jazzman character.
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Don Imus was not free-form radio. Many morning commuters connected to him, and the advertisers came running. But saying what he said doesn't have anything to do with a PC breach. It's the scourge of vanity. The day in, day out drone of a top-ranked radio show. I'm so popular, I wear shorts all the time, because I have "access to a limo." So he putters along doing his usual schtick. And then one day, like the alcoholic that reaches a new plateau of tolerance, his taste buds aren't registering anything new. So he spins the spice carousel and grabs the WD40 that somebody put there by mistake.
So, Don Imus, enjoy your retirement. If you feel guilty for what you have done, launch a free-form station with your own (considerable) money and make explicitly known that you went too far.
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What did he say, anyway? I'm too lazy to look it up.
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What did he say, anyway? I'm too lazy to look it up.
(http://drudgereport.com/nh.jpg)
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Ah.
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I enjoyed this guy's take:
http://jasonekirk.blogspot.com/2007/04/don-imus-they-wouldnt-boycott-howard.html
I also just realized that "take," when used in place of "opinion," is a Word I Dislike.
~EmD
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Bernard McGuirk (the producer) also referred to the team as "jigaboos."
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The "c" word that that guy used to describe ann coulter, and which that director used to describe Lily Tomlin, is a word I dislike. Here's a gay man's response to Ann Coulter's evil shenanigans that at least doesn't sink to her level: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/03/faggots.html
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Speaking of faggots, I don't much like it when some (our fearless leader included) use "girl" or "little girl" to insult boys/men, even in a joking way. (I believe I commented on this on the old board.) Clearly, people's using it isn't enough to make me boycott their work, but it saddens me.
On the other hand, I engage in this kind of behavior, too: I will chastise both women and men by telling them they're acting like boys. I do this only when the objects of my scorn are engaging in what I consider boylike behavior, but I'm stereotyping even so and grieve at this evidence that I am not yet perfect.
Do I overthink? Yes indeed. Am I sometimes too earnest? Guilty.
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The "c" word that that guy used to describe ann coulter, and which that director used to describe Lily Tomlin, is a word I dislike. Here's a gay man's response to Ann Coulter's evil shenanigans that at least doesn't sink to her level: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/03/faggots.html
Here is another NOT AT ALL safe for work response to Ann Coulter's evil shenanigans that hits (you be the judge of whether it sinks or rises) some, ah, amazing levels: http://ifuckedanncoulterintheasshard.blogspot.com (http://ifuckedanncoulterintheasshard.blogspot.com).* Two words: yogurt cannon. Filthy Laurie, I await your gleeful analysis...
*Editing note re. the toilet talk displayed here: I tried to bury the explicit terms exhibited above in html, but it didn't work. Jason, is there any way that some kind of magic could be worked in this department for links that happen to contain f-bombs and the like? I don't want to see Tom lose his Mennen sponsorship, you know?
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The "c" word that that guy used to describe ann coulter, and which that director used to describe Lily Tomlin, is a word I dislike. Here's a gay man's response to Ann Coulter's evil shenanigans that at least doesn't sink to her level: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/03/faggots.html
Context, my friend. I was more offended by Sullivan's pro-war pep talks in '03 than by that Huckabee's asshole using the "c" word.
~EmD
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I wasn't offended by the c-word in the Huckabees clip, and I actually like the Huckabees guy as a director. I just dislike the word. It is a word I dislike. Maybe I should've saved it for the "Words I dislike" thread.
My point is that it's pretty much impossible for someone to effectively castigate someone else for use of the term "faggot" when, in the same blog, you're unnecessarily calling that person a "cunt". I mean that's just bush league.
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{url=http://ifuckedanncoulterintheasshard.blogspot.com/}Ifuckedinsectoidnutjob{/url}
That's how you link with the offensive word removed, the {}s should of course be replaced with []s.
Also I'm a huge fan of cunt, particulalrly as a word, as was Chaucer the father of English literature.
"For certeyn, olde dotard, by your leave,
You shall have queynte right enough at eve"
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Just because you're a fan of a word doesn't mean it's not offensive. Especially when you call me one.
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Oddly enough, I don't care when my Canadian friends call me a cunthead, even though it would hurt my feelings if they (or anyone else) called me a cunt. This is because Canadians (perhaps only New Brunswickers; I'm not sure) use "cunthead" much the way Brits use "cunt": as a generic term of abuse, rather than as an insult specific to women. Oh, one can still fuss about a term for female genitalia being used to denote someone who's a jerk, but when it's applied equally to both sexes, some of the sting disappears, I find.
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Would anyone agree that by considering certain words offensive then that person chooses to be offended?
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I would say that if someone cannot see the offensiveness in the words they CHOOSE to use, then they are lacking in empathy, it doesn't make the word less offensive. Also, when the words they CHOOSE to use are clearly meant to offend, then it's not a matter of anyone choosing to be offended, they are merely picking up on the offense the speaker means to convey. Another example, calling someone's mother a "fat lump" is clearly offensive when the intent of the speaker is, precisely, to offend.
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Jason, you really ought to respect your mother-in-law! For shame, young man.
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Yeah, what kind of cunthead are you, Jason?
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I would say that if someone cannot see the offensiveness in the words they CHOOSE to use, then they are lacking in empathy, it doesn't make the word less offensive. Also, when the words they CHOOSE to use are clearly meant to offend, then it's not a matter of anyone choosing to be offended, they are merely picking up on the offense the speaker means to convey. Another example, calling someone's mother a "fat lump" is clearly offensive when the intent of the speaker is, precisely, to offend.
Thank you for illustrating my point so well. There is a difference between what is said, what is intending to be conveyed and what the person who hears what is said understands it to mean. I don't think it is either possible or reasonable to expect somebody who is speaking to take into account the personal linguistic propriety or neurotic foibles of everyone they speak to.
I understand it's a powerful word, there are people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cunt_%28novel%29) who use it merely because it is offensive, but you can't just automatically be offended by it anymore than you can automatically accept it based on the speakers gender or nationality.
Coda
The week before last I met my father in NYC. We drank beer and told each other stories, at one point in the midst of laughter he called me a cunt Looking back it makes me feel warm and symbolizes how our familial relationship has developed into a loving friendship, yet two decades earlier, in the throes of hormone fuelled rebellion, I'd use the very same word to describe my utter hatred of him.
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Jason, that book you linked to in your last post... Is it worse than this one (http://www.bookslut.com/propaganda/2002_09_000068.php)? Are all books with "cunt" in the title destined to suck?
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(http://www.arcuradio.com/franklin-imus.jpg)