Don Imus

[post-op lover]

I can't believe Don Imus hasn't got a thread yet.

Anyone want to bet that Obama's going to slip in the polls?

[vangough05]

WTF is a Don Imus?

[kahuna]

Kinda like cricket to us yanks...

[stogie bear]

He's a drawling radio personality who (until this week) had his radio show broad cast on TV! How fucking dull is that?

He's in troble with some amatuer basketball players because he called them 'nappy headed ho's!'

And it turns out that he was right because that's exaclty how they are acting!

Another example of the joke of free speech in the US of A!

[relpax]

not sure how the female college basketball players were acting like 'nappy headed ho's'. it seems to me that they have shown great restraint when responding to a crass, stupid radio personality who seems to spout off with toilet humor about things and people at random in a lame effort to be funny. from everything that has been published about these young ladies, they have been fine citizens and hard workers in school as well as on the court. ( ranging from being high school valedictorians to current honors students to future lawyers)


unlike what SB is claiming, this is an excellent example of free speech really WORKING the way it was intended in the US. free speech was never intended to be "free" to say and do anything you damn well please without consequences. it was the freedom to voice your displeasure with the government and state your opinions without government punishing you with personal injury, death or jail. the first admendment never said that one can say anything without consequences (ie you must be given air time and a job to spew spiteful things at will). Rather, there is no constitutional right to the public airwaves. no one individual has the right spew bullshit at will without being called on it. it seems to me that imus has been pushing his luck for years and finally he has pushed the wrong buttons and got fired.

mind you.... imus was totally free to be a jackass/idiot and say bullshit. similarly the student-athletes, protesters and politicians had an equally important freedom to voice their displeasure peacefully. just as MSNBC and CBS had the freedom and right (some might say the obligation) to fire his ass. it seems to me that his employers made a calculation and decided the heat he brought to them was not outweighed by the money he made them.

hhmmm it seems to me that free speech is alive and well in the usa.

[Guest]

(relpax @ Apr. 13 2007,15:22) hhmmm it seems to me that free speech is alive and well in the usa.

No no no no. Please relpax, you can´t seriously mean that. Money and the rightwing christians decide who and what you can say in the US.

[PigDogg]

I never understood why people thought Imus was funny.

On the other hand, Howard Stern is brilliant!

[kevin4252]

relpax, thats the biggest load of bullshit and mis
information I've ever seen on this board, valedictorians
and future lawyers, rigggggggght, take your next vacation to NJ and drink in their culture

[post-op lover]

(stogie bear @ Apr. 13 2007,11:39) He's a drawling radio personality who (until this week) had his radio show broad cast on TV! How fucking dull is that?

He's in troble with some amatuer basketball players because he called them 'nappy headed ho's!'

How is it that such news makes it to Margaritaville?

Relpax made some good points I'd not considered. Given the hypocrisy of so many involved in this, I thought it was disappointing that one guy was knocked out for it. In fact, they should take down a whole sorry lot of bad apples. I've also lost a great deal of respect for Jackson and Sharpton over the last decade, because of their desperate search for attention and "relevancy."

Well, one at a time. I'm wondering if that dimwit Ann Coulter has been thrown out with the trash.

I still think that many people who vote Democratic will side with Stogie and others here, and that that won't be good for Obama. The GOP candidates all said Imus did something stupid and apologized for it, and that everyone makes mistakes but should be allowed to earn redemption. I haven't heard of other past offenses by Imus, but Coulter will not be redeeming herself in this lifetime.

Best Coulter video ever: http://youtube.com/watch?v=KmLJDrsaJmk

POL

[katoeylover]

(rick @ Apr. 13 2007,09:06) No no no no. Please relpax, you can´t seriously mean that. Money and the rightwing christians decide who and what you can say in the US.

And that Prick Rush Limbaugh is their spokesman!!!

[post-op lover]

Ann had this to say. But, it might help to watch her earlier inept defense, on Youtube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q77BONfKOfA



HO HO HO, MERRY IMUS!
by Ann Coulter
April 11, 2007

The only person happier than Larry Birkhead about the big announcement that he is the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby is Don Imus. By the way, what's the word for a woman who gives birth to a child of uncertain paternity?

English speakers in America need a rule book to tell us what people can say what words when, and under which set of circumstances. The rule book will be longer than the Patriot Act and will require weekly updates as new words and circumstances are added. Perhaps a Nasdaq-style ticker would be more efficient.

Depending on which TV show you tune into, what Imus said was wrong because: (1) His show goes out on FCC-regulated airwaves; (2) he regularly interviews people like Sens. John Kerry, John McCain and Joe Biden; (3) he spoke at the White House Correspondents' Dinner a few years ago; or (4) he's not black.

Perhaps sensing that such constantly scrolling rules have a whiff of fascism about them, the scowling Miss Grundys of the world think they have hit on the perfect omnibus rule. They instruct us to "be nice." (There's a word for the grim Miss Grundys, but apparently I'm not allowed to use it. Sarah Silverman is. This will be all in the rule book.)

The requirement to always "be nice" would be the end of Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle, two of the funniest comedians in America. Let me rephrase that: It would be the end of all humor. Even Bob Hope cruelly implied that Democrats didn't support the troops when he joked to the troops in Vietnam: "The country is behind you 50 percent."

At least we'll still be able to watch the "Charlie Rose" show! Actually, for all anyone knows, Rose is calling women "nappy-headed hos" on TV every night since no one has ever seen his show.

In addition to ending all humor, we'll lose all political debate. For Americans over 4 years old, people in the public sphere are engaged in serious arguments €” over abortion, illegal immigration, how much money the government takes from you, and the pre-eminent battle of our time against Islamic fascists. The "be nice" admonition is the sort of thing stupid girls say when they can't think of anything substantive to say.

I, for one, promise to implement the "be nice" policy just as soon as the other side surrenders.

Say, does anyone remember if Winston Churchill was "nice" in his public pronouncements about Hitler? Was he even nice to his fellow countrymen with whom he disagreed?

No, I don't think he was! This is what Winston Churchill said about the Labor Party's Ramsay MacDonald:

"I remember when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum's Circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the program which I most desired to see was the one described as 'The Boneless Wonder.' My parents judged that the spectacle would be too demoralizing and revolting for my youthful eye, and I have waited 50 years to see The Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench."

And guess what public figure was constantly accused of making "outrageous" remarks, trading in "insults, trashings and character assassinations"? Of what public figure was it asked: "Who can examine this record of insults and say that here is a man of class?"

That's right: Ronald Reagan. Those particular quotes are from Washington Post columnists Richard Cohen and Colman McCarthy.

Was Reagan "nice" to the Soviets? They certainly didn't think so. The Soviets constantly denounced Reagan as "rude," and our dear friends at the BBC upbraided Reagan for his "rude attacks" on Fidel Castro, Nicaragua and the Soviet Union. Post columnist McCarthy indignantly charged that Reagan had "put down an entire nation €” the Soviet Union €” by calling it 'the focus of evil in the nuclear world.'"

Oh dear! Reagan wasn't "nice." No wonder he never accomplished anything.

One more item for the delusional Miss Grundys still obtusely citing Reagan as their model of "niceness": As governor of California, Reagan gave student protesters at Berkeley the finger. Remember that next time you ask yourself: "What would Reagan do?"

People who are afraid of ideas whitewash Reagan like they whitewash Jesus. Sorry to break it to you, but the Reagan era did not consist of eight years of Reagan joking about his naps.

The reason people don't like what Imus said was because the women on the Rutgers basketball team aren't engaged in public discourse. They're not public figures, they don't have a forum, they aren't trying to influence public policy.

They play basketball €” quite well, apparently €” and did nothing to bring on an attack on their looks or character. It's not the words Imus used: It would be just as bad if he had simply said the Rutgers women were ugly and loose.

People claim to object to the words alone, but that's because everyone is trying to fit this incident into a PC worldview. It's like girls who say, "It's not that you cheated on me; it's that you lied about it." No €” it's that you cheated.

If Imus had called me a "towheaded ho" or Al Sharpton a "nappy-headed ho," it would be what's known as "funny." (And if he called Anna Nicole Smith a "flaxen-headed ho," it would be "absolutely accurate.") But he attacked the looks and morals of utterly innocent women, who had done nothing to inject themselves into public debate.

Imus should apologize to the Rutgers women €” and those women alone €” send them flowers, and stop kissing Al Sharpton's ring.

This wasn't an insult to all mankind, and certainly not an insult to Al Sharpton. Now, if Imus had called the basketball players "fat, race-baiting black men with clownish hairstyles," well, then perhaps Sharpton would be owed an apology.

[smuttleydfs]

What Imus said was racist, ignorant and sick..........on the other hand is what he said any different then the lyrics in quite a bit of the gangsta rap music(??) out there.....actually no. Personally being a big NCAA basketball fan I was repulsed by his comments about a group of young ladies who were striving to achieve a dream that most had probably had since childhood. There were aspiring doctors and lawyers on this team who didn't deserve this sort of inflamatory diatribe. The coach of this team is one of the classiest and most dedicated in the NCAA womens basketball field today...........But Imus was well within his rights to make the ignorant statements and the sponsers of his show were also well within their rights to pull their advertising and MSNBC and CBS were well within their rights to pull his show and can his bigoted ass even though the firing was all due to the sponsers yanking their money.

We can only hope that some day soon someone will also slap Coultergeist's skanky ass down as well but until then she is simply an annoyance in the same vein that an enflamed pimple is on the crack of your ass.



 

[Guest]

if you look at the tape of the banter between imus and his fellow newscaster, it was the other person that said the rutgers ladies were hos.....
perhaps what was said was not "in the best of taste", but who cares. Imus has always been paid by the networks to be outrageous, and he just lived up to what was expected of him. personally i have never liked Imus, but am i going to be fired from my job for saying it? BS folks....Bs.

[kahuna]

(relpax @ Apr. 13 2007,15:22) hhmmm it seems to me that free speech is alive and well in the usa.

Thank you Doc...exactly the point I was trying to make on another thread, but unable to articulate...

[PigDogg]

The governor of New Jersey was critically injured in a car accident on a way to a meeting to mediate this dispute. Corzine, is no political hack, he used to run Goldman Sachs along with now Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.

Strange shit.