Can we talk about Imus like adults?

I had to explain this on a fellow local blogger's site about why I don't find the events of this past week shocking. Lenny Bruce was correct in saying it: the more times we use a certain word, the more we are desensitized to it.

 

If anyone watched the Rutgers presser and thought it was a measured, intelligent response, they certainly weren't watching the same presser I was.

The first 15 minutes was Stringer trying to convince anyone who would listen that her team was good at basketball. Who said they weren't?

The players had a few intelligent things to say, but you could tell a large chunk of what they said was what they were told to say. I was waiting for ONE player to step up and say, "Hey, it was stupid and insulting, but it's not going to affect my life." Just one. I guess that was too much to ask.

One player, I can't remember which one, said the team's meeting with Imus would be "critical to the state of New Jersey." Are you serious?

 

Exactly.

I'm not so good with my geography anymore. If the Rutgers team isn't satisfied with the answer and they cut New Jersey away from the rest of the U.S., just where would New Jersey float to?

 

Imus has a microphone into which to say what's on his mind -- measured and intelligent or otherwise. I don't have a problem with Rutgers' coach and players having a chance to do the same, even if it wasn't perfect.

 

Whitlock and me would most likely have the same answer: we don't have a "designated" black leader. It's a gaggle of self-absorbed individuals who are fighting to take the mantle of something that has no weight, and expect the masses to follow like lemmings. That ain't going down like that.

It pisses me off personally when I sit in on a meeting or an event and someone approaches me and asks me if I'm here to represent the black community, simply because I'm the only one of my kind there. I represent myself. Everyone who doesn't have enough self-esteem to stand on their own two legs and have their own individual opinion outside of the "usual suspects" are weaklings.

Boots, I want to hear from other people as well (not Al, Jesse, Maxine Waters, Conyers, McKinney, or the rest of those clowns, not even Oprah). Has anyone asked Obama for his opinion, since he's been on the show before?

 

I don't have a problem with Rutgers holding a presser on the issue. Not at all -- if they address the issue. It took 30 minutes to get there. That's my only problem with the presser.

 

OK, I'll play on the other field for a while.
If they had done nothing, said nothing, how would the situation have changed for the better, besides making white people feel more comfortable again? How did Gwen Ifill's silence a few years back when they called her the "cleaning lady" make things better? How did Clarence Page's "dignified" request that Imus take a pledge against this stuff as a reaction to the Ifill comments work out in the long run?
And, of course, these young women had to be "told" what to say because....well.. because why?
I can guess, but I won't.

 

The Rutgers administration spent a considerable amount of time at the start of the presser praising the players and telling everyone how intelligent they were. Maybe the AD and Prez didn't think they were intelligent enough to answer the question for themselves. And that's sad.

 

I think based on his history, it's not a reach to call Imus a racist asshole...

But I would have had so much more respect for Stringer if she wasn't milking this for every bit of attention it can bring to her and her program...

Imus is a complete asshole and he never should have said what he did... But the longer this drags out, the worse it makes Stringer and her players look...

I still can't believe she equated Imus' comments with her husband's death and her daughter's injury, to even mention that is just beyond absurd.

The "Scarred for Life" comment is hanging with me as well... If you're "scarred for life" by a stupid comment, then you seriously need to grip on reality.

I would have had so much more respect for Stringer and her players if they said,

"Look, we think the guy is an asshole, I would encourage everyone not to listen to his show and I would encourage advertisers to boycott him, now can we just move on?"

 

Related reading material

http://www.nashvillescene.com/Stories/Cover_Story/2007/04/05/The_Bitch_Ho_Problem/index.shtml

 

You could "just tell," huh? What do those magic psychic powers you have tell us about Tiger Woods' state of mind last Sunday?

Maybe what you were asking for was ridiculous. It is certainly possible that you are demanding people to feel a certain way in which they don't. Again, I guess this falls back to those magic psychic powers of yours.

 

Maybe boots should have said "He'd be in Astoria faster than Grant went through a whiskey bottle."