comment #1

rocco says ...

Disgraceful. I actually heard someone refer to this as a "watershed moment in American history". If 9/11 couldn't make us civil, a crusty old white man's firing sure as hell won't change our small, angry, debauched ways. Jimmy the Greek, anyone? Nothing new.

While Imus is certainly more devastated by the cowards who he once called friends, the hypocrisy here is disgusting.

This is barely newsworthy...why don't the backpeddling, warmongering media acolytes who spend as much time profiling our dead soldiers instead of peddling such petty shit? As smart people are concluding, because this sells and dead soldiers do not...and that is the core of what makes this all so offensive.

Blah blah blah, I'm just adding to the static...

comment #2

rocco says ...

ugh...take out the "who" between acolytes and spend...

comment #3

Griff says ...

Sharpton will be remembered long after Imus is gone. Sadly, he'll be remembered as a hypocritical race hustler who libeled an innocent man (accusing him of being one of the rapists of Twanna Brawley, when in fact, much like the Duke Lacrosse case, no rape had taken place), who incited riots that ended in the deaths of innocent people. Yeah, he's a real moral paragon all right.

comment #4

christian says ...

pretty pathetic in light of racists like rush limbaugh who gets attention from prez bush and vp dick and glenn beck on cnn...

sharpton is slime. i hope somebody brings out the barbet schroder footage of him defending mike tyson's rape of a young black woman....

comment #5

Josh Massey says ...

"Sadly, he'll be remembered as a hypocritical race hustler..."

Actually, the sad thing is he won't be remembered as that. When he eventually passes, there will be loving tributes on every network, schools naming themselves Al Sharpton Junior High, grand speeches about the great things he did, etc.

comment #6

Wrecktum says ...

Until a few days ago 90% of the country had never even heard of Don Imus. A man long loved and admired by the political elite in NY and DC but nowhere else, Imus will leave a legacy of absolutely zilch upon his departure.

The has-been Sharpton (who is not nappy-headed but is a ho) has scored the kind of political victory that he hasn't touched since the heady days of Tawana. Alas, he's wasted it on a small-minded man. One wonders why he didn't ramp up the pressure last month on Ann Coulter, who's John Edwards "faggot" smear was a billion times worse than Imus' drawling nonsense. Or on hate-spewing radio devils like Michael Savage or bombastic Rush Limbaugh? Very typical and very sad.

comment #7

dre says ...

This guy's going to be bummed ...

http://andrerivas.blogspot.com/2007/04/another-point-of-view-regarding-imus.html

comment #8

in SAT iable says ...

It's discusting how you guys have learned that this language is hurtful to many and you still continue to use it. Shame on you!

comment #9

echoes14 says ...

The coach had the audacity to say that the girls were displaying a ton of maturity in the way this was being handled. I thought part of maturity was being able to take a joke. Or they could have displayed a sense of humor by just issuing a statement calling Imus a phony cowboy, 10 gallon hat, 10mm dick-wielding asswad and that his salsa sucks. But NOOOOOOOOO, let's teach these college brats to run for a press conference every time someone says something they don't like.

And to top it off, Jesse Jackson stated that he won't apologize for the comments he made about the wrongfully-accused Duke U Lacrosse players. Jackson and Sharpton are GREAT role-models for the African-American community, aren't they?

comment #10

EOTW says ...

Fuck Al Sharpton. Fuck Jesse Jackson. Those guys are the lowest form of hypocrites, especially in this case. Imus will be back when he wants to be back, and I'm not even a fan. expect a big book deal to follow within a year. Also, has Howard Stern been gloating over this whole thing? I should think he's loving it but I don't listen to him. Maybe I should DL a show and check it out!

comment #11

Mr. Muckle says ...

You guys gotta be kidding me. Arrested adolescent development? Is that what's going on here? Y'all object to growing up?

If Jeff here slagged some group of innocent kids off so badly to make a joke, he'd be roundly and rightly whacked on the metaphorical ass in these comments. It happens even when he's relatively benign.

If the brouhaha got so big that advertisers, well within their rights, pulled back and Jeff could not pay his server bills, he'd be out of a blog.

This is all very straightforward, no one had his rights trampled, some good kids were insulted, people who write the paychecks decided they did not want to be associated with it, and the prick Imus can ride his horse back to cow country.

comment #12

christian says ...

i agree with the sentiment, but there was something more ugly about this, mainly because fools like sharpton or snoop dog (who paid off a woman raped by his crew) get to be self-righteous about disrespecting black women.

and when people like glenn beck gets on cnn to call muslims "ragpickers" and rush limbaugh calls obama "the magic negro" and the networks kep booking annn coulter...

for once rosie o'donnell is right: the thought police are coming.

comment #13

CarsonDyle says ...

So now the Rutgers ballplayers are “brats” who “can’t take a joke?” I assume whoever made the comment doesn’t have daughters.

What upsets me is never so much the inevitable “joke” that gets people in a lather, but the people who dismiss the offense taken by others. Let me help you out… My kid works hard, gets into a good school, plays on a championship basketball team and is dismissed as a black whore. Because that’s essentially what Imus said.

Yes, there are a lot worse things he could have called them, but the sin that got Imus fired wasn’t the insult, but the choice of targets. We wouldn’t even be having this discussion if he made the comment about welfare mothers. Remember that old Chris Rock routine? N***ers vs. Black people. Imus insulted Black people. And middle class black people, who play by the rules didn’t like hearing their hard-working, talented daughters being called n***ers. It wasn’t Al Sharpton who got Imus fired, it was Al Roker.

(And if one more person uses the excuse that the use of derogatory language by minstrels -- I mean rappers – makes it okay for others, I’m going to scream. If you want to demean somebody because of their race or sex or whatever, just own it. Don’t tell me Snoop gave you permission.)

comment #14

Paul8148 says ...

I don't know anyone who thinks Imus should be fired. It funny that all the elite in DC and NY that went on their show are the ones in a uproar. It is almost like they cleansing themselves for ever showing up on the show. Of course Viacom owning MTV and the rest and worried about the culture is a joke.

What was the story of Charles Helton showing up at a time warner stockholder meeting one time and read the lynics to a rap alumn that made the board room brush into embressment.

comment #15

rocco says ...

Muckle, that's a very reasonable alternative...if only it was so simple. IF ONLY it was a matter of some unsuspecting kids being bashed.

And everyone here--everyone--sits idly by when Jeff disparages Italians, and most remain silent as he continues to beat the dead Christian horse...no one ever smacks Jeff down for being the fucking bigot that he is. My idea of a fun afternoon would not be watching 'The Last Temptation of Christ' with an evangelist, but I don't view these people as sub-human either. They are no less tolerant of differing views than our curmudgeonly, relentless host. He's said far more offensive things than Imus, and no one bats an eye.

comment #16

echoes14 says ...

christian......

Yes, i have a daughter. I've taught both her and my son that the only power that words have over them is the power that THEY give them. We live in America. People can say what they want to say, but only we choose how they affect us.

The thing that bothers me about the situation is the target, also. What would happen if there were this much outcry every time there was a joke about a "stupid southern redneck?" I grew up and lived in the south until two years ago, when i moved to Minnesota. You wouldn't imagine the things said about people with my accent around here...... and i'm in the midwest! I can't even imagine what it would be like in the northeast or even (GASP!) New York City. I mean, just look at how Jeff talks about the fly-over states in his posts.

And i won't even go into how middle-class white men are portrayed on sit-coms these days. Try to name 10 characters from that demographic on shows who aren't portrayed as ignorant buffoons, the butt of all the jokes.

The thing about rappers...... i'm not going to say rappers using those terms is an excuse for anyone else using them. I AM going to say that if Jackson, Sharpton, the coach, et al. wanted to REALLY make a difference, then they now HAVE to go after that material as well. If not, then they are hypocrites, and no better than Imus.

comment #17

Craig Kennedy says ...

I'm not batting an eye over Imus, either. What would you propose Delbomber? That we legislate brotherly love?

The world would be great if everyone liked each other, but that's never going to happen. I do like to believe we live in an enlightened enough time that we can be unafraid of bigoted speech as long as it's not carried forward in racist action. And I do believe there is a huge difference.

As for Wells' bigotry, it's his problem. I can come and go anytime I want, but he has to live with it.

comment #18

MovieBob says ...

Imus is "done" my ass. For better or for worse, the fact is he's going to walk RIGHT ACROSS THE DAMN STREET to someone else and get back on the air probably in less than a few months. It'll probably be Fox News, who'll jump at the chance to "revive" Imus as a symbol of someone who was taken-out by the "liberal media" boogeyman. And the worst, most awful part of all is that THIS TIME Fox will be right.

comment #19

rocco says ...

cj, it would be enough to simply shame Wells into realizing the error of his ways...he has no national presence so nothing like this would ever come down on his head, but he IS a bigot and it would be comforting to know that more than a handful of us recognize bigotry when it's directed at people other than blacks and jews. Legislate brotherly love? If it brings more tourists to Philly and lowers my wage tax, game on, otherwise I'm the conservative here who's constantly being labeled a republican bootlicker, remember? Small government, please...

...but I give up...as we're constantly reminded, Wells is a flat-stomached, hip, with-it geriatric, and comments that feed his hit count aren't going to change his mind now...as he walked around holding a Jack Kerouac book in front of his darting, steely blue eyes, oblivious to the world around him, he was probably a prime target for the local dago bully, and was likely beaten up on more than one occasion...maybe I'd be bitter for a while too...hopefully wouldn't still be holding on to that hate into my (near) 60s though...

comment #20

Mr. Muckle says ...

delbomber wrote: "And everyone here--everyone--sits idly by when Jeff disparages Italians, and most remain silent as he continues to beat the dead Christian horse...no one ever smacks Jeff down for being the fucking bigot that he is. He's said far more offensive things than Imus, and no one bats an eye."

Hey, delbomber. I guess I haven't been around here long enough to have heard some of that stuff, so I don't know. But I don't think it's true that no one smacks Jeff for anything. You're doing it now, for example.

I don't know if Imus is a bigot, or if Jeff is, not having had personal contact with either of them. I guess I don't care what people think or believe, I care how they behave. That's what affects me. And speech is behavior. OK, I see that you can make inferences as to character based on behavior.

George Bush, the president, for example, is a mass murdering criminal in my opinion. I guess I could infer from that behavior that he's a degenerate sociopath, but the label isn't really going to help. The best thing is if he could somehow be prevented from acting out in that way. Take away his office, impeach him, perhaps try him for war crimes. But really I could not care less about the label.

comment #21

Craig Kennedy says ...

I'll agree with you Delbomber that Jeff is frequently a narrow minded crank who likes to paint whole categories of people with the same brush, but I've never seen a single post of his where he's gotten away with it.

I think for the most part we're not disagreeing here, it's just that different things irritate us to different degrees.

If he took a shot at a group I belonged to, I'd probably change my tune, but for now I agree with Mr. Muckle that I'm more worried about people's actions than their words.

comment #22

Krazy Eyes says ...

The girls in this case have been double victimized. Once by Imus and second (worse IMO) by being used as politcal stooges by Jackson and Sharpton. Everyone's a loser here.

comment #23

George Prager says ...

Hypocrisy, hypocrites? I guess people learn the meaing of this word in the fifth grade and spend the rest of their lives throwing it around to make themselves think that they are intelligent. They fired Imus from his show. You can't fire a rapper. You can't fire Al Sharpton. You losers are talking about his like he's a supervillian, like Mr. Glass.

White men have nothing to complain about in this society except for how they are portrayed in sitcoms and cartoons. (Barney Rubble--what a jackass!). Hopefully a white man's Martin Luther King Jr. will come out of the slime of middle America and shame Hollywood into mending their ways and we can have a white father on a sitcom that we can all be proud of!

Anyway, it doesn't really matter. Don Imus isn't even a person. Hopefully, he'll be dead within the month from a massive stroke and they'll bury him in his silly cowboy hat and belt, see footage of Jimmy Buffet and Guy Clark performing at his memorial service and then his wife can marry someone who is capable of maintaining an erection.

comment #24

Mr. Muckle says ...

hey cjKennedy. Actually, I'm saying that speech IS an action. It's the thoughts I don't care about. The spoken/written words do matter, IMO.

comment #25

Craig Kennedy says ...

I totally misunderstood you Mr. Muckle. I think were on the same side of the fence, I'm just a little deeper into the neighbor's back yard.

comment #26

Craig Kennedy says ...

You're right Krazy Eyes. I'd love to see the basketball team turn around and tell off Sharpton and Jackson. Patronizing douchebags.

comment #27

TL says ...

Imus has been doing this kind of stuff for years (eg, calling the NYT's black female white house correspondent "the cleaning lady"). This time he happened to do it to a group of young, charismatic athletes coming off a huge accomplishment who had done nothing to deserve his ire.

Overblown based on his words? Probably. Underserved? Probably not. Sort of like a "lifetime achievement" Oscar, except instead of a statue, he got fired.

comment #28

echoes14 says ...

"White men have nothing to complain about in this society except for how they are portrayed in sitcoms and cartoons. (Barney Rubble--what a jackass!). Hopefully a white man's Martin Luther King Jr. will come out of the slime of middle America and shame Hollywood into mending their ways and we can have a white father on a sitcom that we can all be proud of!"

So, Krazy Eyes, you should've warned us how prejudiced you were before you posted.

comment #29

George Prager says ...

Krazy Eyes didn't write that. I did.