How a sane America would have reacted to the Don Imus situation

This is from reader James N.’s comment in the discussion of the racial double standard:

The appropriate responses to the involved parties here would have been:

1. “Al Sharpton, you liar and manipulator, shut up.”

2. “Basketball ladies, sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. Grow up.”

3. “Mr. Imus, you spoke like a pig. Apologize and don’t do it again.”

Anything more than that is SO excessive as to place our national sanity in question.

- end of initial entry -

Jay M. writes:

I have a decent ear for such matters being surrounded by such speech every day, so here’s my take on Imus.

Comedy {and especially political/social comedy} draws heavily on imitation, on giving voice to others’ bizarre perspectives—see Stephen Colbert as the supreme example. If Imus wanted to abuse these players racially, why did he choose these words in particular, “nappy” and “ho,” both used exclusively in the black community? It seems clear that he was channelling, for the sake of a laugh, a black male perspective. Even the way he speaks the sentence has that sort of cadence and intonation.

Comics do this all the time, and are normally shielded from judgment because the audience understands that it is not the comic talking as they say far out things.

So the whole hysteria is rather bizarre to me.

RWM writes:

James N. wrote:

3. “Mr. Imus, you spoke like a pig. Apologize and don’t do it again.”

I strongly disagree with this statement and I believe it undercuts his position. This is part of the attitude that enables people to rally around the actions (firing) that he opposes. I think it is a feminist statement—or, more accurately—a statement made to please feminist women. Men don’t call other men “pigs” for what in former times was unchivalrous conduct. It is right out of the feminist playbook of using language crafted to shame men. If the Rutgers (grown) women are supposed to “grow up” and forbear on petty insults, to whom is Imus’ apology due? Are we expected to believe that Al Sharpton or blacks in general have a greater grievance than the women Imus insulted?

Moreover, “don’t do it again” is an express prohibition of the very kind that is complained of. “Don’t do it again” means nothing if compliance is not expected. If the public at large embraced the prohibition against broadcasters making similar statements, there will not be widespread protest when they are fired for the same reasons.

I think traditional men fall into a trap of treating women in a way inappropriate to the current age and circumstance. By being so quick to ‘protect’ women from even these trivial indignities, it reinforces the privileged status of women. It decreases the tension between the way modern women perceive themselves and their role in this world and their true role and nature as set forth by the Creator. See, e.g., Eph. 5:22-25. Of course, we see that whenever women set the rules of society it leads to disaster and decay. So long as women insist that they are not only equal but identical to men, men should not reflexively rush ostentatiously to protect them in the way James N. demonstrated. Otherwise, it perpetuates the current disorder between the sexes.

I’m sorry about jumping back and forth on my points. I’m in a hurry but wanted to respond.

LA replies:

My guess is that James N. was indicating that since Imus had not just used generic “black talk,” but had insulted particular individuals, who are college students, that it was appropriate for him to apologize to them for the comment, especially after it became an issue.

While I don’t exactly follow RWM’s points, I want to say that there is no contradiction between saying that Imus should apologize and that the students should grow up. Remember, they are saying that this single comment has scarred them for life. They’ve appeared on the Oprah program (not that I watch Oprah, but I have my sources) acting like noble martyrs, or at least like the modern victimological version of noble martyrs, playing up their victimhood for all it’s worth. So James, in his “What would a sane America do” scenario, is saying to the girls, “You are not injured. You are not scarred for life. Stop this nonsense. Accept Imus’s apology, and let’s be done with this.”

Also, I wouldn’t make too much of James’s choice of the word “pig.”

James S. writes:

Buchanan has the best simple description: “While the remarks of Imus … about the Rutgers women were indefensible, they were more unthinking and stupid than vicious and malicious.” I haven’t read anyone else make that obvious distinction.

LA replies:

Such obvious distinctions are prohibited under the liberal regime.

Brandon F. writes:

I think there is something crucial that is being overlooked in this forum and others.

Imus used the black slang when he and another man were commenting on the rough look these girls have. Apparently they have tattoos and carry themselves in a “street” fashion. If this is true then the commentary, no matter how crude, is appropriate. In our liberal p.c. culture it is anathema to criticize the other with regard to behavior and attire. This is especially true with blacks. Black popular culture is by and large base and decadent. The most vicious and sexually themed behavior is celebrated openly with little mainstream criticism. The same damage integration did to our schools is being carried out in our culture.

I went to racially integrated schools. Whites were regularly beaten and intimidated by blacks in the name of fairness. The most vile language and behavior was committed by these same blacks. The only time I saw a gun in school (in the 7th grade) was one a black classmate showed me. The point of sharing this experience is to illustrate the ongoing allowance of black incivility and it’s consequences.

Here is a lovely example of very popular black culture. “Ridin’ Dirty” means driving with guns or drugs.

James N. writes:

Thanks for sticking up for me. Of course I was not using the term “pig” in the feminist sense of male chauvinist pig, but rather in a traditonal way, to describe swinish behavior towards women.

I’m in transit on the way home, I’ll write more tonight or tomorrow.

Josh writes:

Perhaps I could extend on RWM’s point? I would venture to say that RWM is a Gen Xer and his point seems to be that we shouldn’t treat modern-minded women with a traditional code of conduct. If these women are demanding “equal” status then they are no more deserving of an apology from Imus than any of the other hundreds of individuals that Imus has verbally attacked over the years and subsequently never apologized. But because THEY are insisting that Imus apologize for this “unprovoked” and “reprehensible” remark as a sign of OUR traditional understandings, we are granting these particular individuals a superior status that is based on nothing more than the fact they are black and women. They are claiming to want both equal and superior status and that is what traditionalists are foolishly giving them. I believe this is the crux of RWM’s argument.

Michael K. writes:

In response to your discussion about one of the great events and defining moments in American history: the “I-Man” joking about “nappy-haired hos.”

The context and nature of the comments: Imus refers to some of the black amazons as “tough girls,” “tattooed.” Then one of his colleagues—Bernard something(?), I believe—calls them “hardcore hos.” Then Imus alters the course of America history with his evil and outrageous “racist” comments about “nappy-haired hos.”

What if these innocuous, trivial, jocular, and offhand remarks had stopped after Bernard(?) had referred to some of the black girls as “hardcore hos”? An interesting question.

“Tattooed,” “tough,” “hardcore,” “nappy-haired,” “hos”: how “outrageous,” “terrible,” “insulting,” “racist,” “degrading,” ad nauseam, or even inaccurate are these words? And Imus obviously wasn’t referring to the entire team. He certainly wasn’t referring to the two white players, or even to all of the black players, but only to some of the starters, apparently, and possibly a few subs who play regularly.

What is insulting, offensive, or “demeaning” about “nappy-haired,” a black term for kinky hair? This is no more insulting, offensive, or “demeaning” than calling a red-head a “tomato.”

Lamentably, I’ve never seen the girls shoot, pass, and dribble. But the tattoos to which Imus refers are obviously not little flowers on their ankles or the names of their lovers on their derrieres (or “booties,” to use black parlance), which obviously would not be visible while they were playing basketball, but big, ugly, male-like tattoos on their arms and shoulders (legs, necks, faces?).

Why would black girls with manly tattoes on their arms and shoulders, and who act in a menacing and thuggish fashion, be insulted by being called “tough” and “hardcore”? To “young ladies” such as these, “hardcore,” “tough,” and the like should be taken as compliments.

In “rap” and “hip-hop,” “ho” is not a synonym for prostitute. It’s a synonym for women, especially black women. There was no malice in the voices of Imus and Bernard. They were using the word descriptively, as a synonym for black women.

“Scholar athletes,” the “best America has to offer,” the “future leaders of our country,” “wholesome,” straight-A students, a valedictorian, a classical pianist, and on and on.

I’d like to learn more about these noble young black women, the “best America has to offer.”

How many have IQs in the 70s and 80s and 90s? How many, far from being “scholars,” don’t even belong in college? As Vdare pointed out, the straight-A student and valedictorian is a white girl from Utah. Is she also the classical pianist? And even if a black is the “classical pianist,” that’s only one out of 10.

How many have criminal records, possibly for violent crimes? How many have tormented, harassed, bullied, and assaulted white girls? How many belonged to gangs before they received athletic scholarships to Rutgers, or have brothers, lovers, and friends who are gangsters and criminals?

How many listen, “jive,” and dance to “rap” and hip-hop” that vilifies all women as “bitches” and “hos” and “pieces of meat” to be abused and degraded? And they were “scarred for life” by Imus’s remarks!

How many espouse the racial views of Al Sharpton, Julian Bond, The NAACP, the Nation of Islam, the New Black Panthers, Duke’s “gang of 88,” ad nauseam? How many “know” that Seligman, Finnerty, and Evans are guilty of rape and were enraged when the charges were dismissed? How many of the “best America has to offer” despise “Amerika”? How many of our “future leaders” hate all or most whites?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 14, 2007 10:29 AM | Send