The whole thing with Imus is crazy. I honestly have very mixed feelings on the whole thing. One of the guys over at Highbrid Nation who actually worked with Imus at WFAN for years wrote a good article talking about Imus' views on race from the perspective of a minority that was around him every day. You should check it out if you get a chance.

i understand black brothers and sisters feeling they have helped it happen. but i'm sorry. i cannot view a group's reappropriating a hateful slur as cause that they are to blame for further hate against them. personally the idea of blaming the victim for haters like imus repulses me.

I'm confused, though. During the same show (or maybe a different one but recent), they had this segment, Secrets of Israel which made fun of anti-semitism.

There was definitely a different take on the situation, but it's really subtle and I don't do very well with subtle.

I would dearly love to read an analysis of the way each one is dealt with from your point of view.

The Daily Show and the Colbert Report (especially Colbert) confuse me, because I don't really know how to take what they say sometimes. I know they are *really* bad on sexual minorities because I'm more attuned to that. I also am starting to get a little more attuned to issues of race and many of their "jokes" make me uncomfortable, though I don't always know why.

One thing that struck me about the particular segment that you are highlighting here is that they make a little jab at having a token "Senior Black Correspondent" who actually is a token black man, because there aren't any regularly-occurring black people on the Daily Show. I don't know if they realize that and are subtly pointing out their own problems or not. But I'm pretty sure that The Daily Show will continue to have that "comforting" white face for a very long time to come, only using (and I mean "using" in a lot of different ways) people of color when they need someone to make a joke they wouldn't otherwise feel comfortable making themselves, but feel it's okay to write if it's spoken by a person of color.

I'm not challenging you and wouldn't think at all badly if you just ignored my ignorance on this. I do think that the juxtaposition of the two videos might give you even better grounds for making the point you're making.

And thank you for pointing out what Samantha Bee did, because I honestly actually thought she was serious and that wasn't a joke. I'm pretty gullible.

The reason I will not watch Jon Stewart is because the first time he and his staff won an Emmy Award, he stepped to the mic, looked back at his all white, predominately Jewish, male staff and said, "Here's to the benefits of workplace diversity." That was game, set and match for me. *sigh* I have too long a memory.

I just think: what if my daughter had done what these women did, then had her attractiveness and morals questioned in a national forum? These are college students who did a great thing. To be publicly humiliated afterwards was unfair and low. If the man hates Rutgers or women or blacks, that's his problem. But to do what he did was inexcusable. It's just not funny.

If anything, as ironic as it seems, we should thank Imus for exposing himself for who he really is and in fact exposing how many like him feel about our brown skin brothers and sisters here in the U.S. By this self exposure sponsors kicked him and his employer where it really hurts "their wallets". The women of Rutgers should not be hurt, it should only hurt when someone of value says such things and in my opinion Imus no vale madre!!!. Their value is not cheapened by his comments, on the contrary, it is enhanced as it goes to show the adversities that young black men and women must go thru in order to get some level of respect in this country and that struggle only makes them stronger.

KL, i agree we should thank him, because this furthers awareness that this kind of thing is no longer going to be tolerated.

but you say "the women of rutgers should not be hurt." this is not just about them. this is about what is acceptable discourse on public airwaves, out of the mouths of outlets and men who hobknob with politicians are endorsed by the advertisers who appear on his show (not many now!), this is about what all of us hear on the regular, and what the children know is okay to say. so it's not a matter of just shrugging it off. i feel every public instance of this type of filth should be confronted. and i'm glad it is now.

I dont think the Rutgers team's value is cheapened, either. But I do think pundits and media folk have to know this isn't going to fly anymore. One by one, if we have to. Now why the heck is Rush Limbaugh still getting paid, I'll never know.

DI, I'm going to come back to your comment. I"m not ignoring you, just busy for now!

Just hope that wasn't coming across in my post. I think the specific comments were horrible. I agree with the outrage. But what shocks me is how "nappy-headed hos" has been extracted from the *entire* conversation, the sum of which made it all too fucking clear that this was a swipe against black women.

'Gaffe' is the most serious trivialization of the act. But The next level up in what we have to consider seriousness bothers me the most because it is the most widespread. Our local paper ran an Associated Press analytic piece about talk radio on the front page. Headline: 'off-the-wall,' 'over-the-edge.' In the body 'bad taste' 'testing the line,' 'crossed the line,''outrageous antics,' [And quotes a trade magazine publisher, "the hippest, most spontaneous pop culture"!!!]then cites four examples of sexual (!) 'offensive material', although one does include racial abuse too. Then again, 'bad taste' plus 'edgy' and 'controversial.' Imus' 'schtick' consists of 'cheap shots.' 'Envelope pushing material.' Like some buncha post-modernists gaga over transgression.

In the entire article not one word concretely characterizing WHAT HE SAID!! Where are the words "racial bigotry"? "cruel misogyny"? Let's identify just what edge, just what envelope, just what line. The point isn't offensive versus non-offensive. the question is right or wrong, it's who offends whom and why.

There have been plenty of columnists who have spoken more strongly, but the editorial position of the papers and the networks excludes race from the picture and reduces the issue to I don't know what, manners I suppose. Providing cover for the bigots and cutting off the real discussion we need.

hi amanda. for me, "nappy headed hos" says an awful lot. to me, that makes perfectly clear it was a swipe against black women! but i hear you. the entire conversation gives the entire (gross) context.

this culture does work on soundbytes, especially the mainstream. it would be great if we had a more substantial appetite as a media-consuming public...and i think it's good to work for that. but at this point, if a soundbyte gets a bigmouth racist called out and aptly rewarded, then i guess it has done its job, eh?

Why We Can't Take a Joke.

John McWhorter of the NY Daily News has a slightly different theory:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/04/10/2007-04-10_a_dangerous_detour.html

They love him at Lucianne's place.
http://www.lucianne.com/threads2.asp?artnum=333681

You know what is really pissing me off, is that every four seconds somebody, in the spirit of quoting, repeats the same words over, and over and over. Don't make it worse, we know what he said, so deal with that and don't rehash it, ok.

wow, LG. that man's column has so many holes in it an eighth grader should be getting paid to deconstruct it. what a joke. if i get sick or something, i'll reply to that. otherwise i'll have too much energy and it won't be enough of a challenge. ay.

John McWhorter is an apologist of the worst kind, no better than the mass-media sycophants who support Imus' show. You can always count on him to say nothing of any value.

As for Stewart & Company, it's this old hypocritical myopia about suffering that rears its head time and again. The Holocaust is an atrocity, but the anti-indigenous genocide and the Middle Passage aren't. White folks just don't see their relationship to people of color for what it is---a massive program of violence and exploitation. Either they're stealing our culture, or mocking our language, or getting rich off our labor, or invading our countries, or raping and killing us. Stewart can't connect Imus' verbal filth to the real rapes and real suffering of Black women; to him, it's merely a dumb "gaffe."

The White just can't seem to put two-and-two together. And yet they fancy themselves the founders of reason?

oh SHNAP that was badass. what a cymbal crash.

Yolanda, you nailed it
"...The Holocaust is an atrocity, but the anti-indigenous genocide and the Middle Passage aren't..."

Saddam Husein was a war criminal, but every American president from day 1 isn't

Yolanda, you nailed it
"...The Holocaust is an atrocity, but the anti-indigenous genocide and the Middle Passage aren't..."

Saddam Husein was a war criminal, but every American president from the beginning of this 'nation' isn't