Posts at www.agonist.org and by Tony Hendra at www.huffingtonpost.com compel the following:
1.Would you walk up to a black woman colleague at work, or better yet at a staff meeting, and call her a “nappy headed ho” and a “jigaboo” ? Didn’t think so. Why wouldn’t you ? If you are a guy, do you regularly call your wife a no good slut at family meals, with the kids and her parents all at the table? Didn’t think so. Would your wife be any less displeased after you called her a whore and a no good slut if you informed her that some “black rappers” have used these words on audio recordings ? Didn’t think so.
- The basic rule in life is that you don’t say something about someone that you wouldn’t feel comfortable saying to their face. Would Don Imus and Bernard McGuirk have called the Rutgers womens basketball team “jiggaboos” and “nappy headed hos” to their face ? Did Imus call them that to their face when he met them in person? Then he’s a bigot wimp. The fact that Imus would never say this stuff to these women to their face proves he knew all along this talk is deeply hurtful and wrong. If not, he would have said it to their face when they recently met.
- Imus wasn’t fired for “three words.” He was fired for the entire discussion of the Rutgers team — and the fact that he and McGuirk have a long long history of this stuff. See www.mediamatters.org for the whole spiel. Far too many commentators have already tried to switch the goal posts by misstating the reason I-man was fired. It wasn’t for the “three words.” I-man was fired in a classic civil action type framework for demonstrating a long-term, repetitive and consistent use of racist language on his live, nationally syndicated radio show. The last outburst was simply the last straw.
- What Imus and McGuirk said, if said in a corporate office in front of black women, would result in immediate suspension or dismissal, especially because it was part of a long and well documented pattern of behavior.
- Any sportscaster who said this stuff on the air would be fired before they left the office that day. Why should I-man and McGuirk be held to a lower standard of behavior on CBS Radio than on ESPN ? Does anyone think an ESPN on-air person would last 10 minutes after saying this stuff during coverage of NCAA womens’ basketball? How’s that crack habit coming along ?
- This has nothing to do with “free speech.” Imus is a contract employee of CBS Radio, who owns the microphone he and McGuirk talk into. You can’t demand “free speech” using somebody else’s microphone, someone else’s transmitter, someone else’s station. CBS Radio gets to determine what is said and not said on their radio stations and equipment. Remember Reagan in NH: “I paid for this microphone.” Well, CBS Radio pays for Iman’s microphone, so CBS gets to decide what Iman says into it. If I-man don’t like it, he can do a Howard Stern.
- This has got nothing to do with “creeping authoritarianism.” Very good radio and TV shows get cancelled all the time for no other reason than they don’t attract listeners, don’t sell enough ads or do not attract the desired demographic. People lose their jobs in TV and radio all the time regardless of the quality of their work. I-man lost his job because advertisers declined to pay to be on his program. This happens EVERY DAY in radio and TV and print. Why should I-man get special treatment for abusing and insulting 12 innocent kids ?
- The ol’ Black Rappers. It is amazing to see so many otherwise intelligent people deploy this idiotic canard. How many black rappers have daily, nationally syndicated radio shows with a simulcast on MSNBC ? Here’s the deal:
Imus got fired precisely because of the show he has and what he and McGuirk said on it — not the show he doesn’t have and what someone else said somewhere else or what Jesse Jackson said in 1985.
[insert pithy wrap-up of your own here …]