 |
 |
Steve Gilliard, 1964-2007
It is with tremendous sadness that we must convey the news that Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog, passed away June 2, 2007. He was 42.
To those who have come to trust The News Blog and its insightful, brash and unapologetic editorial tone, we have Steve to thank from the bottom of our hearts. Steve helped lead many discussions that mattered to all of us, and he tackled subjects and interest categories where others feared to tread.
Please keep Steve's friends and family in your thoughts and prayers.
Steve meant so much to us.
We will miss him terribly.
DrBopperTHP: "Driftglass - Excerpted"
The original attitude
Thanks to DrBopperTHP for finding this important Driftglass post excerpt!
Finally, on Meet the Press, an extended meditation on what happens when the Bad Thing gets caught in the light reflecting off of Dom Imus’ colossal ego.
Allow me to explain.
Tolstoy said: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Which is about half right.
Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, but the razory maw of the beast that bores its way though the bones of every malignantly dysfunctional family has the same name.
The Bad Thing.
The Bad Thing is the light-stealing singularity around which the malignantly dysfunctional family orbits. It is incest or serial abuse. It is violent alcoholism. Thing for your livelihood, you will do and say anything -- anything -- to keep from having to face the true villainy of what it is you have come to serve, and what it is you have allowed yourself to become to serve it.
So it was this Sunday on Meet the Press when Gwen Ifill – for whom I have not had a lot of love in the past – and Eugene Robinson (who I like a lot) delivered a truth-laden and withering lesson on the provenance and prevalence of hatespeech in the media. The casual viciousness of it, and the conspicuous fact that so many of the Media Elite have been so utterly complicit in letting things get so bad.
And Ms. Ifill did not deliver her measured and (for network teevee) harsh jeremiad in a vacuum. She delivered it sitting across from the whitest, pastiest, third-rate, soft-toned, media-bestriding apologist for Conservativism in America today: David Fucking Brooks.
Bobo: We have to remember that a lot of this is comedy? And other people like Howard Stern and Bill Mahr have to look out…
Ifill: Doesn’t comedy have to be funny?
John Harwood: What about Borat? Some people say he’s s stitch. But some people say…
Ifill: Oh fuck you. We know where the line is. We know where the offense is. But the best way to dilute this argument/discussion is to keep saying “What about this” and “What about that?”
Bobo: Borat is cruel too. He is cruel to people who are bad on teevee.
Bobo serves the Bad Thing and so Bobo is horribly uncomfortable with the dark corners into which the Imus tempest might blow his little pastel wingnut outrigger. He tried constantly and desperately to steer the conversation away from those scary rocks out into friendlier waters.
Out to a discussion of “the larger picture.”
“The public culture”.
To keep widening the lens until everything is as gray and flat and featureless as his prose.
Yes, kids, you are hearing right: the champions of lock-and-load, lock-em-up-forever, no-mealymouth-excuses-about-how-hard-your-life-has-been Personal Responsibility Conservativism (so long as we’re just talking about muggers and pickpocket and car thieves) and are now desperately and loudly trumpeting their new truth:
That…wait for it…waaaait for it…Society Is To Blame.
That the coarsening of the culture is to blame.
We have now lived long enough to see the Rich, Powerful White People’s Brigade sprint for shelter in the loving arms of “We Were Victims of Circumstances!”
And who is to blame for the plight of po’, po’, wealthy, Caucasian Elites who get caught using their positions of privilege and power to slam and slander the weak and powerless.
Why, those awful Negroes of course. And their Devil Jungle Music! And probably Bill Clinton too, although we’re not yet sure exactly how to string him up for this one just yet.
Ifill: Judge the man by his actions.
Ifill: There has been radio silence about this. Newsweek, who sends all of their reporters on that show, were completely silent over this. Until his show was cancelled. Then and only then did they announce that their people would no longer be treading the Imus boards.
Ifill: The reason it took so long for the media elite to speak up is that they were so deeply complicit.
Robinson: That’s what hurt so much. That these were the best and brightest. These were not the baggy pants kids.
It was, on the whole, a good discussion, but three huge points were mostly overlooked.
First, however lacerating language may be, there is a completely different tenor when using language to take on the powerful, the hateful, the bigoted and the enemies of civil society...and using that language to either premeditatedly or gratuitously beat on the weak, the powerless, the noble, the honorable, the poor, the sick, the lame, the halt, the sick.
It is a categorically different thing for the landed and the privileged to thug on “the least of these”, and they fucking well know it, which is why the Right has had to pour so much time and money over the decades remarketing their whole mythology of victimhood.
That symphony of lies lifted wholesale from the dregs of the Confederacy and the White Supremacist movement to explain to the faithful why their leadership caste of rich, tubby, white bigots and their orc legions are really The Oppressed.
That entire encyclopedia of mendacity devoted to explaining why Bible-pounding, Christ-defiling demagogues with their own satellite networks, teevee stations, coast-to-coast radio empires, publishing houses, marketing firms, think tanks, congressmen, senators, embedded journalists, President, political Party, newspapers, tax-free rivers of revenue, Constitutionally-protected citadels, and a dozen doggie-doors straight into the heart of the White House...are really a horribly put-upon minority. Are really being subjugated by the Sekrit Liberal Elite Media Cabals working to destroy America by aiding terrorists and working with atheist scientists to take away our freedom by faking up a “Global Warming” crisis. The entire operations is run by man-hating feminists, abortionists and obscure assistant professors, accessorized and sexualized by queers, with muscle provided by Dirty Commie Labor Unions, soundtrack provided by Welfare Queens and funding by George Soros.
Second, the panel almost entirely avoided noticing that for twenty years the Right has made its political bones openly trafficking in the Bad Thing.
That the entire Conservative movement owes its electoral successes entirely to its efficient cultivation of the rawest, ugliest and most virulent hatespeech imaginable, and it’s harvesting of its poison fruits at election time. That far from paying the kind of steep cultural price these weak children and neocon stalking horses of the MSM suddenly seem giddily anxious to charge to everyone’s account equally regardless of rank, privilege or context (in the name of Holy “Fairness”), the Right has been lavishly rewarded for adopting the language, habits and attitudes of racists, sexists, homophobes and theocrats.
Third, the embrace of White Supremacist ideological infrastructure dressed up in Biblical language was not an accident. This was done by the Right willingly, carefully and by design. For twenty years the Right has pioneered the use of 1,000 decibel demonization, slander and lies as a matter of tactical necessity. Their leaders and elite media apologist like David Brooks know it, but for twenty years they have stayed silent regarding the simple fact that the entire Ponsi Scheme of Conservativism is built on hateful words and despicable ideas.
Which means that without Limbaugh and Coulter…
Without Hannity and Hume…
Without Will and Gingrich…
Without DeLay and Drudge…
Without Coulter and Malkin…
Without O’Reilly and Savage…
Without Dobson and Cheney…
Without Goldberg and Lott…
Without Falwell and Roberson…
Without Schafly and Tancredo…
Without all the rest of that loud, vile, Democracy-loathing freak-show...
There. Is. No. Republican. Party.
Period.
There. Is. No. Conservative. Movement.
Period.
Without their legion of demagogues, all of those cozy think tanks and glorious corporate welfare giveaways and high value-added wars and plush teevee pundit gigs would vanish in a puff of stink and a flutter of Confederate flags.
They are The Bad Thing and so, for twenty years, The Bad Thing has remained frantically unacknowledged and deafeningly unheard by the David Brookses of the world.
But now the Bad Thing has crawled onto a national stage and take a huge shit under a big spotlight, which is why the Media Bobos are freaked out.
Because the god-fearing, Party of Personal Responsibility Conservatives are terrified that the general public will finally notice that they are the ones who bear the primary responsibility for premeditatedly eradicated civil discourse in our society.
Terrified of finally being forced to submit to that paternity test.
posted by driftglass @ 9:56 PM
- posted by DrBopperTHP
Watson: "After Imus"
Labels: imus
Thanks to Watson for this take on post-Imus
Before the yahoos get to feeling too sorry for Imus, let's remember that
their hero Imus fired his sidekick Sid Rosenberg for joking about singer
Kylie Minogue's breast cancer.
And let's stop blaming Imus's problems on Al Sharpton. If Sharpton were as
powerful as the pundits claim, he would have been mayor, senator, or
president by now. He ran for all three offices and couldn't even get the Dem
nomination.
The white* guys in the corner offices dropped Imus, and they did so for
their own mostly financial reasons.
Bob Herbert wrote in the April 12, 2007 NYT (subscription): 'The crucial issue goes well beyond Don Imus's pathetically
infantile behavior. The real question is whether this controversy is loud
enough to shock Americans at long last into the realization of just how
profoundly racist and sexist the culture is.'
Assuming that we agree with Mr. Herbert that our culture is too racist and
sexist, what should we do about it?
The obvious areas to improve are the most tangible ones - health, housing,
education, and employment.
But what do we do about our media? Promoting diversity in hiring, retention,
and promotion in our media corporations would be a big start, but what about
content?
Freedom of expression is precious. We have traditionally avoided 'prior
restraint'. The government generally won't prevent expression, although it
may punish it afterwards if it's found to be fraudulent, seditious,
pornographic, or slanderous.
Our broadcast media is privately controlled. So we're back to the guys in
the corner offices. What rules should they be using? Aren't their employees
entitled to know in advance? If the bosses plan to leave it the
'marketplace', then we need to rely on people like Rev. Sharpton to organize
boycotts against things we don't like.
If we really want to upgrade our decadent culture, we have to impose
non-racist and non-sexist norms on AM radio and the music video culture. Too
ingrained? I don't think so. Entertainers have always been able to work
around the seven magic words. Howard Stern knows the difference between AM
and satellite. Hockey players know they can't fight in the Olympics.
We won't change the flavor if we don't change the recipe.
[* OK, there's Kenneth Chennault at AmEx.]
- posted by Watson
Seitan Worshipper: "Corzine may not have been buckled up"
Labels: corzine, imus, new jersey
Wear seat belts
Thanks to SW for this catch
Some unexpected fallout from the Imus flap (the Gov. was on his way
to meet with the Rutgers athletes and Imus) - and, alas, was not
wearing a seat belt:Corzine may not have been buckled up
CAMDEN, N.J. - Gov. Jon S. Corzine was apparently not wearing his
seat belt as required by law when his official SUV crashed into a
guard rail, leaving the governor hospitalized in critical condition,
a spokesman said Friday.
A state trooper was driving Corzine to a meeting between Don Imus and
the Rutgers women's basketball team Thursday night when another
vehicle, swerving to avoid a pickup truck, hit the governor's SUV and
sent it into the guard rail on the Garden State Parkway.
The crash broke the governor's leg, six ribs, his sternum and a
vertebrae. Authorities were searching for the pickup truck driver
blamed for causing it.
Corzine, 60, did not suffer any brain damage in the crash. But he
won't be able to resume his duties as governor for several days, if
not weeks, and he won't walk normally for months, Dr. Robert Ostrum
said performing surgery on the governor Thursday night at Cooper
University Hospital.
- posted by Seitan Worshipper
Orcinus' Sara Robinson: "A Good Day"
Labels: imus
Rutgers center Kia Vaughn, All-Met Division I Women's College Basketball Player of the Year
Thanks to Sara Robinson of Orcinus for this post!
Don Imus is off the air -- not for a two-week slap-on-the-hand, but for good. It's a good day.
What Imus said about the Rutgers women's basketball team is hardly the most offensive thing we've heard from a right-wing talker over the past 20 years. In fact, looking his long record of past gaffes (including calling Gwen Ifill "a cleaning lady," and NYT reporter William Rhoden "a quota hire,") it's not even particularly out of line for him. What happened this time? Why is today different from all other days?
For 25 years, the dominant radio format in America has consisted of rich white conservative boys filling the national atmosphere with their putrid bloviations about people who were not rich, white, conservative, or boys. What started out as outrageous bad-boy shock-jock shtick in the 80s curdled into self-righteous rebellion against "political correctness" in the 90s, as a growing number of trash talkers and professional potty mouths joined a national race to the rhetorical bottom. Radio stardom was easy. Forget rock'n'roll -- all you had to do was be willing to spew a little more hate against minorities, foreigners, women, the poor, and liberals than the guy on the next band over, and you could have a mansion in Palm Beach, too.
But something is changing in America. I'd like to think it started with brain.html">Spocko -- just a guy with a recording device and the addresses of the hate talkers' advertising sponsors. Spocko's assault on KSFO was a local skirmish, but it was stunningly well-organized; and, perhaps more importantly, it took on one of the biggest stations in one of the country's biggest markets. Spocko simply asked the hate jocks' advertisers a few straightforward questions: Is this what you endorse? Is this what you believe? Does this convey the kind of image for your product, or your station, that you want to project?
It seems likely that, even as ABC's attorneys were trying to bully Spocko into silence, these questions also gave radio execs across the country a long moment of pause (probably while they were letting a big slug of Maalox settle). You could hear the echoes of that pause in the voice of NBC president Steve Capus tonight on Countdown, as he emphatically explained that he was the guardian of the NBC brand, and that all a network has is its own credibility.
Furthermore, he noted, "There has been a trust placed in us. We must honor and respect that trust." It was like the man had a sudden attack of conscience, an up-close and personal encounter with his network's critical role in maintaining the high level of civil discourse that makes democracy possible. You have to wonder where the
hell Capus and his scruples have been vacationing for the past two decades; but at least they finally made it to the party. Which makes it a good day for corporate responsibility.
Let's hope it's a big party, too. Imus's guests in recent years have been a veritable who's who of the nation's political and entertainment elite. His shit never stuck to them before -- but it's sticking now. Which means all the other hate talkers are also having that long Maalox pause tonight. They've got a stark and nasty choice here. On one hand, ugly is what they do. It's how they got famous.
It's really all they know. But, as of today, they're either going to have to clean up their act, or risk losing the hot bookings...and, perhaps, their jobs. What's clear is that ambitious celebrities will think twice before being seen in such gutter company after this.
Which makes it a good day for civility.
Another thing I found striking about this how deeply Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson understand the concept of the transmission belt that moves anti-democratic ideas and behavior from the fringes to the mainstream -- and how tightly they seized on this as a prime opportunity to educate the nation about it. I've seen both of them on
several news shows over the past few days; and in every case, they explained, carefully and clearly, that allowing Imus to get away with a mere hand-slap this time would only loosen the standards, and open the door for more mainstream expressions of racism and sexism in the future. It has to stop here, they said. Otherwise,
we're going to see it everywhere.
Which makes it a good day for decency.
One of the things Dave and I have said (over and over) here is that when it comes to hate crime and hate speech, we get exactly what we're willing to tolerate. Stopping it is as simple (and sometimes, as hard) as standing up and making it clear we don't approve. 24/7 hot-and-cold running hate speech became the national radio norm because too many of us were willing to listen, and not enough were willing to put pressure on those footing the bill.
In that sense, Don Imus' firing says far less about him than it does about us. And what it says is that we have finally begun to count the heavy cost of 20 years of on-air denigration of everything that is not white, male, rich, and conservative -- and are realizing that it's a price we're no longer willing to pay.
Which makes it a good day for democracy, and everybody who wants to see it thrive.
- posted by Sara Robinson
Jesse Doc Wendel: "Education is the silver bullet"
Thanks to Doc for this great commentary!
Someone asked a few weeks back, for a little bit more about my background. I'll tell you this -- I am by far, the least academically distinguished of anyone in my family. My father, a retired Ph.D. in German, lectured in German and Humanities at the University of Arizona for thirty years. My sister is an attorney and a single mother. My brother, two children, married to a Ph.D. professor at the University of Kansas, himself with an MBA, runs the enormous performance arena for UK. And my mother -- *sighs* -- my mother is perhaps the most gifted of us all. A section leader with the Tucson Symphony when I was growing up (violin) as well as Assistant Concertmaster, when I was off to the Army she went to Law School at thirty-five. Went on to become a name-partner in the most profitable bankruptcy law firm in Arizona, then private practice, and in her retirement from active practice, now sits as a part-time Tucson City Magistrate (a judge), when they need someone to fill in, handling everything from traffic tickets to restraining orders to domestic violence.
At one point my mom spent several years as the Chief of Staff to the Chancellor of the University of Missouri at Kansas City, one of the larger metropolitan universities in the United States. Anyone whom has ever watched The West Wing knows the job of Chief of Staff. Mom was there doing her job on 9/11 and in retrospect this may seem obvious but at the time, no one knew it was what we know today as "9/11". It was two airplanes that hit a building and in the first hour or so no one outside the government had any idea what was happening.
The question came to her to make the call, "Should we send everyone home or should classes stay open?" And without knowing the magnitude of what was actually happening, this is what my mother said stone-cold (paraphrasing from memory):People are dying in New York City. Of course, professors may close their classes if they wish, and students may miss classes if they wish. But this University will remain open. And to anyone whom asks why, it is this. We don't know yet what has happened, but the chances this happened by accident are nil. Someone did this. Someone did this instead of negotiating, talking, communicating. This University will stay open today because Education is the silver bullet. Education is how we reach people. Education is how we build a world together. I grieve for the people dying and dead in New York and for their families. This is a sad day. Thank you.
Education is the silver bullet. Amen mom, amen.
I'm as self-taught as they come and certainly don't feel less than my brother or sister because they have advanced degrees. I've been privileged to study with and be mentored by some of the leading computer scientist/philosophers in the world. But I share a love for academics for its own sake, for learning for the love of learning which goes bone deep. I'm never without something to read, simply never. Most nights I fall asleep surfing the web or writing to friends. People I've never met are sometimes surprised to received an email from me and we just start talking. Education is the fracking silver bullet and you never know where you're going to find the next person, the next data point, that makes sense out of some such something over there from six months ago or six years ago, and suddenly a light goes on.
Which is why Imus pissed me off. I must admit, I've never even listened to him. Nothing he says has even made it to my level of attention. Not funny, not challenging, and not going to help me in the future. I know. One of my competencies is being able to pull stuff together from different sources and suddenly, pow, a synthesis. Imus simply ain't gonna help a goddamn thing in the future. Nada. So he's shitcanned from my playlist without even a listen.
But for him to trash some young student-athletes, now that does make it to my radar. Because education's the silver bullet. My mother says so.
I have forgiveness in my heart. Gods know I've done lots -- lots! -- of damage in my life. And someday perhaps you'll get to hear some of that beyond what I've already posted. My point is, I'm open to forgiveness here. Genuine forgiveness. But what comes with forgiveness is profound recognition of the damage done along with a commitment to cleaning up the mess -- and the damage done here goes beyond simply these young women. The damage goes to the very core of education being the great equalizer, not in any racial sense -- although there is that of course -- but in a more universal sense.
An educated person, someone whom thinks for themselves, can't be bullshitted. They know who they are, they are prepared to take life on, the inequities of wealth, of race, of social status, all this can in large part be erased or at least be compensated for by a good education. But without a good education, truly there is no hope for the current world which some of us dream of dissolving, a world where 1-2% of the rich own 60% of the world, where half of the world's population is poor. That world can not and will not and shall not end without education. For only with education can people learn how to do anything except get angry and blow shit up. Only with a commitment to education as the answer, will governments use this silver bullet, instead of real bullets, and bombs and soldiers. Only education holds out hope instead of death. An attack on young people attempting to learn is an attack on the heart of what it is to be human.
I don't expect Imus to understand all this. He comes from and validates a world attempting to maintain its privilege any way possible. It would be good to shift that entire world all at once, and I am confident as with the contextual shift of drinking and driving, sitting at the back of the bus, and England owning India, that day will eventually come. Till then, demanding and receiving apologies one at a time is a good place to start.
These girls were attacked by a media sniper using wealth, power and privilege. He tried knocking them off their real game -- getting an education. An authentic apology is due.
Trash Talk Radio
By Gwen Ifill - Op-Ed Contributer - The New York Times
LET'S say a word about the girls. The young women with the musical names. Kia and Epiphanny and Matee and Essence. Katie and Dee Dee and Rashidat and Myia and Brittany and Heather.
The Scarlet Knights of Rutgers University had an improbable season, dropping four of their first seven games, yet ending up in the N.C.A.A. women's basketball championship game. None of them were seniors. Five were freshmen.
In the end, they were stopped only by Tennessee's Lady Vols, who clinched their seventh national championship by ending Rutgers' Cinderella run last week, 59-46. That's the kind of story we love, right? A bunch of teenagers from Newark, Cincinnati, Brooklyn and, yes, Ogden, Utah, defying expectations. It's what explodes so many March Madness office pools.
But not, apparently, for the girls. For all their grit, hard work and courage, the Rutgers girls got branded "nappy-headed ho's" — a shockingly concise sexual and racial insult, tossed out in a volley of male camaraderie by a group of amused, middle-aged white men. The "joke" — as delivered and later recanted — by the radio and television personality Don Imus failed one big test: it was not funny.
The serial apologies of Mr. Imus, who was suspended yesterday by both NBC News and CBS Radio for his remarks, have failed another test. The sincerity seems forced and suspect because he's done some version of this several times before.
I know, because he apparently did it to me.
- - - - - -
Whatever. This is not about me.
It is about the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. That game had to be the biggest moment of their lives, and the outcome the biggest disappointment. They are not old enough, or established enough, to have built up the sort of carapace many women I know — black women in particular — develop to guard themselves against casual insult.
Why do my journalistic colleagues appear on Mr. Imus's program? That's for them to defend, and others to argue about. I certainly don't know any black journalists who will. To his credit, Mr. Imus told the Rev. Al Sharpton yesterday he realizes that, this time, he went way too far.
Yes, he did. Every time a young black girl shyly approaches me for an autograph or writes or calls or stops me on the street to ask how she can become a journalist, I feel an enormous responsibility. It's more than simply being a role model. I know I have to be a voice for them as well.
So here's what this voice has to say for people who cannot grasp the notion of picking on people their own size: This country will only flourish once we consistently learn to applaud and encourage the young people who have to work harder just to achieve balance on the unequal playing field.
Let's see if we can manage to build them up and reward them, rather than opting for the cheapest, easiest, most despicable shots.
Gwen Ifill is a senior correspondent for "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" and the moderator of "Washington Week."
- posted by Jesse "Doc" Wendel
LowerManhattanite: "He Hoped He Was Funny...And Failed"
The unfunny *sshole's the one laughing--the comedian's the one thoughfully plotting his grisly murder
Thanks to LowerManhattanite for this great insight into Imus!
I found myself going through a few crates--U-Haul boxes actually, of old vinyl records this past weekend. Gearing up for the big spring ditch-uh...cleaning, the wife likes to see happen every early April. Having worked in radio for many years, I've found myself with duplicates of albums--a necessity for staple recordings because heavy use wears 'em out--but now, as I'm digitizing a lot of my rare and out-of-print vinyl, I can simply digitize these certain recordings and toss the dupes.
I came across the box with all of my classic Richard Pryor albums, and considered for a moment tossing them for space's sake, as I'd a few years ago received the box set of CD's of the albums. And then, like Bugs Bunny, realizing he was swinging a sledgehammer at a live bomb, I practically screamed to myself in utter disbelief, WhadddammIdoin'?" . These were the original dead sea scrolls of comedy! The books of laugh-your-*ss-off Revelations. The original, mother-f*ckin' "word", ya'll. Couldn't toss 'em. The comedy Gods would strike me dead. So, I thumbed through 'em. "Wanted". "Was It Something I Said". I chuckled to myself looking at the "band" titles, and remembering those bits like it was yesterday. And then, I stumbled across the seminal "Craps: After Hours" album from '72. That album was the comedic slap across the face with a glove, challenging the world to a duel it would later lose, Alexander Hamilton-badly to Pryor's nuclear arsenal of comedy perfection. I didn't have this one on CD, so I took it to my computer/audio area to digitize it . Carrying it to the stereo, it wasn't alone. I had pretty much the whole stack of Pryor classics, and took a minute to fan 'em out and look at 'em as I set things up.
I found myself laughing again at the "band" titles. And looking at the back of the brilliant "That N*gger's Crazy", I couldn't help but notice the title of the first track:
"I Hope I'm Funny."
Richard Pryor--at the peak of his comedic powers--and conversely, in the midst of a terrible, years-long bout with substance abuse--still had the self-awareness and humility to at least put that little bit of trepidation out there.
"I HOPE I'm Funny."
Those words stayed in my mind kinda peculiarly. They hung there askew on a hook of irony for me because in the background, I had the radio on, and it was tuned to 660 AM WFAN, the sports radio station. The top sports radio station in the country...and the radio home ...
...of Don Imus.
So those words, "I Hope I'm Funny", rang a little different with me at that moment--and now--from that moment on.
We're having that discussion again--Goddamnit. The one where classism, sexism and basic human respect come down their individual roads and criss-cross at that big 'ol traffic circle called racism--and yeah, crack the f*ck up as usual. The same conversation we had six months ago when Michael Richards floored it, hitting everything in sight and ending up *ss over tea kettle in racism's fountain in the middle. The same conversation where a lot of folks blithely told people "Keep moving...nothing to see here...it's just an accident." A mistake? An accident? Funny, that. Most "accident" scenes boast skid marks--an attempt to at least... stop, from the careening "accidental" offender. No such forensic evidence exists here. It was the usual headlong. pedal-to-the-metal plow, smack into the same old bullsh*t.
But this time--in Imus' case it seems, no mere suspension, querulous-voiced "apology" or duck-away rehab stint is gonna cut it.
Nor should it. And that's a good thing.
'Cause this ain't new sh*t by a mile. As a New Yorker, I've been exposed to Imus' "humor" for thirty-plus years, when he and Howard Stern first showed up at 66 "W-NNNNNNNNNN-B-C!" in the seventies. He and his gang of *ssholes have been doing this for years. Maybe I'm alone in this, but I recall vividly the flap over one of his idiot aide-de-camps--Sid Rosenberg--on Imus' show a few years ago "hilariously" referring to the tennis playing Williams sisters--based on their next-level athletic style of play--as..."animals"...and as being"better suited for National Geographic Magazine than for Playboy". Rosenberg was fired for this--for about two weeks--and then brought back by Imus when he--guess the f*ck what?--made an on-air apology. As former NBA star Derrick Coleman said so perfectly, "Whoop-de-damn-doo." On the show, Rosenberg would later refer to Palestinians as "stinking animals" and that the U.S. "Ought to drop the bomb right there, kill 'em all right now". No suspension for those words. And Imus' producer, the blotchy-faced, half-wit bigot Bernard McGuirk has spewed so much racist sh*t through his "Amos n' Andy"-esque "impersonations" of Maya Angelou, Spike Lee and Ray Nagin, not to mention his own proud wingnut persona, that there's just too much to mention--so just click here for a single recent, heinous sample. It's a daily thing. His job is to play the hyper-bigoted foil to Imus' faux-tut-tutting centrist--all in the guise of in-studio conflict--while still getting that "shockingly funny" sh*t out there. So it's him and Imus we're focused on today.
Let's go over the actual exchange from last week, shall we?
Imus In The Morning Program--April 4th 2007:
IMUS: So, I watched the basketball game last night between -- a little bit of Rutgers and Tennessee, the women's final.
ROSENBERG: Yeah, Tennessee won last night -- seventh championship for [Tennessee coach] Pat Summitt, I-Man. They beat Rutgers by 13 points.
IMUS: That's some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and --
McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos.
IMUS: That's some nappy-headed hos there. I'm gonna tell you that now, man, that's some -- woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like -- kinda like -- I don't know.
McGUIRK: A Spike Lee thing.
IMUS: Yeah.
McGUIRK: The Jigaboos vs. the Wannabes -- that movie that he had.
IMUS: Yeah, it was a tough --
McCORD: Do The Right Thing.
McGUIRK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
IMUS: I don't know if I'd have wanted to beat Rutgers or not, but they did, right?
ROSENBERG: It was a tough watch. The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the Toronto Raptors.
IMUS: Well, I guess, yeah.
RUFFINO: Only tougher.
McGUIRK: The [Memphis] Grizzlies would be more appropriate.
Little bit more involved than just the "nappy-headed hos" comment when you read it out, ain't it? They're "hard-core", as in thugs. "Jigaboos", as in hewing to something other than the "pretty white girl" beauty standard. And to cap it all off, they're compared to animals--that old standby for the Imus show--"Grizzly Bears"--to be precise.
Now again...this isn't anything new for Imus and his crew of pointy-hooded sycophants. It's been a three decade-long series of diarrheic blasts of shock-geared bullsh*t (And take special note of the inability to tell the difference between one Spike Lee Movie and another. "School Daze" featured the infamous self-hate spoofing, satirical production number "Good and Bad Hair"--not "Do The Right Thing") from this guy. He'd become something akin to the old, spatter-shirted, muttering, miserly nut down the block that you eventually learn to sorta ignore. If you freaked out every time he randomly tossed a mildewed toilet seat out the attic window, you'd get tired. But imagine now, if you will, that the old nut has a steady stream of influential visitors to his house--a steady stream of powerful visitors sucking up to him. Say the mayor (Joe Lieberman) comes by--followed by the Governor (John McCain)--then the publishers of the town's two big papers (Kurtz and Fineman), et.al. All currying favor with the rich, old nut because in spite of his natterings, he knows people. He's got influence. That's what's so pernicious here. Imus was irrelevant for years until he refashioned himself as a Beltway megaphone. When the bigwigs realized he was "rich"--a.k.a.--a potential asset to be used, his status changed, and thus, his impact as well. Which is why his statements--and the statements on his show, which he did not even mock 'tut-tut" last week, carry the weight that they do. But, hey! As the "I"-Man said to an in-his-face Al Sharpton yesterday, his "agenda was to be funny".
Back to that whole "funny" thang again.
I've written on "funny" here, in dealing with Michael Richard's' wig-out, and on the failures of wingnut-geared comedy efforts in comments elsewhere. , and was ironically enough in the process of writing another one on wingnut comedy in general when this Imus hemorrhoid ruptured before all of our eyes. So I'll fold what I was writing on that into this. I'm no genius...but I know a little about comedy. I've gotten paid to write it for television for years. Performed it on radio, onstage and in the occasional comedy club. And as much an inexact "science" as comedy is--there is some pretty basic sh*t to it. It's rarely "discussed" analytically, because it sorta loses its magic when you deconstruct it. Doing so outside comedy circles is like watching an autopsy. Informative as hell, but clinical and un-fun to witness.
So...I'll try to go about it "Quincy"-style. to make it a little more palatable.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, you are about to enter the most fascinating sphere of yuks, haw-haws and titters--the world of comedic analysis"
What is "funny"? Well, it's a combination of things. The absurd. The sublime. Free-form rambling and...silence. It's a rubber face, and a frozen one all at once. A bold pratfall and a slowly levitating eyebrow. It's speed. A slow burn. Timing. Timing. Timing. It's brains. A quick wit--and simultaneously the idiot's vacant stare and accompanying remark falling from a drooped lip. It's born of pain, raised by anger, wizened through adult exasperation and seasoned by the cynicism of experience. It's the painter's gift--of whipping the verbal brush strokes that create a funny visual for an audience It's the writer/storyteller's gift of connecting, disconnecting and intentionally mis-connecting words that stimulate the collective cerebrum of a ready-to-be-brain-tickled crowd.
It's juggling, knife-tossing, acting, soliloquizing, contorting, debating, whispering and shouting all at f*cking once.
And very, very few people do it well--and too many try it at all. You know the greats and the goods. No need to list the pantheon. So let's look at those who don't make the cut and why. Meanness and viciousness for meanness and viciousness' sake isn't funny. It's an element of funny, but not a basis. Unless it's part of a character you're playing--like Don Rickles' eternally dyspeptic, ugly grump, whose raison d' etré is to metronomically rail at anyone within five feet of him. Rickles' angle was "Zing--then move on. Zing--then move on". Hit any-and-everyone in sight. You laugh at the guy next to you being roasted and then laugh at yourself when your number comes up eventually as the crazy, angry guy locks eyes with you. Meanness and viciousness can be deployed as defensive armor--as in the case of the shooting star that was Sam Kinison at his peak. His venom and ripping was based on who you saw spewing it--a short, fat, ugly little man you'd probably dismiss as a cipher if you saw him bringing your mail or stacking boxes at the supermarket. The eternal underdog. The shlub. His primal scream therapy/schtick worked because he was NOT the homecoming king. He was a nobody giving vent to his desire to not be ignored. It was genius. And fleeting. It became intolerable as soon as he embraced a pseudo-rock star persona. He wasn't a shlub anymore, giving vent. He became the rich, loud-mouthed, spoiled jerk, and that scream went from being celebrated as "rah-rah" to "getthef*ckouttahere" A key part of comedy is identifying with the audience. To be the put upon "everyman". Even Bob Hope, deemed by many to be a pretty good stand-up comedian (though not a great in my mind), made his true comedic mark as a put-upon comic foil to Bing Crosby's above-it-all straight man in the "Road" movies.
They humanized him. You see, his acerbic ripostes got loads more mileage with him in the underdog role.
But meanness and viciousness for its own sake? A non-starter. And when your target becomes the little guy, the low man on the totem pole, because it's easy and cheap--well...that's when you get an Imus situation. Because there's one key thing I left out of the above description of "funny". And that thing is power. Comedy is rooted in power relationships. The boss mocking his underlings is NOT funny. The boss slipping and busting his *ss in the office parking lot IS funny. Why? Because mocking the establishment, the power structure is the REAL taboo. Tweaking "The Man", if you will. Because it's freighted with the danger and excitement of challenging power--in spite of its ability to crush you. Imus' idiocy fell flat for many reasons. One, because it took no thought at all to fall back on silly racist tropes of the stale, old Hottentot Venus and pickaninny variety. Two, it scanned as out-of-the-blue venom, with not a hint of humorous context--just under-the-breath misanthropic invective broadcast out loud. All these women did was lose a championship--as an underdog (that again), and be Black while doing it. Wow. what chortle-worthy fodder. And third...he represents the establishment, the aforementioned power --a.k.a. stodgy old White guys looking down their wrinkled noses and mocking their perceived lessers--namely Blacks and Women. How does he reflect that power? Look at the people who call him "friend" and give him that patina of "gravitas" through their fawning as guests--the likes of Joe Lieberman, Chris Dodd, The Howards--Fineman and Kurtz, Pat Buchanan, John Kerry, Chris Matthews, Tim Russert and of course, Mr. Straight Talk, John McCain. A Beltway insiders' "Who's Who" to beat every band in the joint. Power...f*cking personified. When power laughs, parts of the masses laugh nervously and scattered. When the little guy laughs, his co-horts in the masses laugh comfortably, naturally--and in greater numbers. It also explains the comedic failures of Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Miller and the bed-sh*ts of Fox's "Red Eye" and "The 1/2 Hour News Hour".
Limbaugh identifies with White Power lite...closet Klansmen who don't take heavy starch in their hoods--thank you very much. And as such, his brand of humor is rooted in a faux-populist attachment to the powerful's dream and equality-crushing of the amorphous, non-All American "other". It gets stiff hee-haws from his racist listenership not because it's funny--because as pure humor, it isn't--but because it's racist and fueled by a desire for that audience to feel some sort of kinship with that racist application of power.
Miller fails even more spectacularly because he doesn't even attempt these days to try to mask his running alongside said dream and equality-crushing power. He happily hitched his cart to a runaway train headed straight for end-of-the-line pilings, concrete, and a tank car full of gasoline, post-September 11th. And he fatally wounded an already flagging career--a career flagging due to a Johnny-one-note delivery, well-documented laziness, and an already annoying, smarmy and condescending style. That superior air alone sucked away most of the wind Miller's wit had puffed his meager sails with--but couple it with his proud embrace of an oppressive elite and it dis-masted him and left him adrift--humorless...unctuous...simply a pissy, sniping boor.
In the case of Fox's "Red Eye" and "HHNH" ("Half-Hour News Hour"), the f*ck up is simple. The goofy, sh*t-for-brains boss stand before the employees cracking jokes on the assembled. The only ones laughing are those close to the boss, or currying favor with the boss. Humor based on the power-ful mocking the power-less spawns hollow laughter indeed. It's forced. And mean for meanness' sake. Again, look at the Kinison example. The underdog can afford to be grating and mean as he elicits sympathy. How does one sympathize with a roughshod-running president, naked political hypocrisy, and championing stomping the little guy? Only misanthropes would. And if that's your target audience--You. Are. F*cked.
So, we come back to Imus. "Nappy-headed hos". A multi-car pile-up where classism, sexism and basic human respect come down their individual roads and again. criss-cross at that dangerous traffic circle called racism. But where-oh-where was "teh funny"? Well, looking at the wreck CSI-style, we can suss out this much. He was probably falling back on the humor staple of the anachronism. The supposedly incongruous emanating from the unexpected source. Like the Staples commercial with the office dweebs dancing heartily to Salt n' Pepa's "Push It", or the nerdy arena organist freaking the Funkadelic keyboard part in Nike's "Roswell Rayguns" spot a few years ago. Imus thought it would be cute and ironic for a creepy, old White guy to diss young Black women based on their looks, using stilted ghetto lingo.
Except he forgot one thing. Creepy old White men dissing young Black women is such a part of Americana that it's near impossible to do it ironically. That is, without coming off as...yeah, a creepy, old White guy dissing young Black women based on their looks. How un-common. Non-racist. And gasp!--non-sexist.
Wait. You think I was gonna walk away from this and not deal with this doddering, play-cowboy f*ck's SEXISM on this sh*t? Oh no. Before I take him off the hook, let me tear his f*cking lips and gills out while doing so. Spare me please, the bullsh*t about how "The rappers do it too. He was borrowing from them". The "Michael Richards/Murder On The Orient Express" everybody's guilty excuse not only doesn't wash, but actually further soils matters. "Hos"? Context, if possible please, mother-f*cker? Were the Rutgers girls known to be promiscuous for pay? Reknowned "skanks" in the Paris Hilton mold? What did he know of them other than their being Black women? Is it some twisted holdover from slavery days where Black women were little more than disposable "bed-warmers"--simple sex objects to the moneyed slave-master elite? To be cackled at and sexualized all at the same time? It's the Hottentot Venus all over again. "Nappy-headed"? What the flying f*ck does their Goddamned hair texture have to do with thing the first--unless one is trying to somehow rip at the women because they don't hew to the oh-so-perfect beauty standard that Imus' late-life trophy wife so blondishly projects. How e-gali-f*cking-tarian. What fun it is to try to bring a group of women down--to disparage them just because they don't fit a narrow, silly-f*ck mold of what constitutes womanliness in the eyes of a few shallow, superficial pr*cks. This cuts close to the bone, here. My lawyer sister is a Rutgers Law School Alumni--active in the school post-graduation. My stepson's cousin is a starter for Duke's women's team. We've been to games and socialized with the players--as hard-working a group of student-athletes as I've ever seen--moreso than many I've come across, and that includes professionals .
And I have a daughter. An athletic African American teenaged daughter who's had to contend with the "beauty standard" bullsh*t foisted upon her by society in general. She's one of the few "chips in the cookie" at her school in Jersey and has enough to deal with on that tip. So for a prominent, and influential broadcaster to "jokingly"--ha-ha--call these Black women--who he doesn't even know--at Rutgers "Nappy-headed Hos", is to call my daughter a "Nappy-headed Ho" as well. And that ain't gonna sit well with me...ever. So for the record, f*ck R. Kelly. F*ck Luke from 2 Live Crew. F*ck Rush Limbaugh, and yes indeed Don Imus--f*ck your shriveled old *ss too.
By all means, tout the "beautiful", "blonde" Anna Kournikova as perfection on the tennis courts where she's won as many major tournaments as I have. Um... none, based on her looks alone. Raise to the heavens the equally blonde and "perfect" Maria Sharapova as your onanistic paragon in spite of her comparatively thin winning record--to that of the too-Black-to-be-considered-attractive and feminine, but more talented Williams sisters. Please...objectify these women to your sick, twisted, hateful heart's content. And then beg bullsh*t forgiveness when you overstep as usual and are exposed as the cultural, "Dimus-aur" you are. Quiver in mock-upset. Waver your voice in pretend shame at this week's ugly line-cross. I don't care if you unearth the bodies of PIgmeat Markham, Redd Foxx, and Richard Pryor, somehow re-animate 'em and bring 'em on your show in a weekly token Black comedian segment for penance. You picked on a bunch of girls out of high school a couple of years who just lost the game of their lives while trying to make something out of themselves in this world. So I say again, with gusto and a little extra spittle at you---f*ck your shriveled old *ss--to the second power. You wouldn't know funny if you sat on the toilet, had it crawl outta your *ss, look up between your liver-spotted legs waving a sign saying "Hello...I'm Funny", and then bit you on the nuts while humming the "i'm funny" blues at 115 decibels. Jesus Chocolate Christ--you still use a Richard Nixon impersonator on your show in 2007! F*ck if I can't wait for Bernie McGuirk's hilarious impersonation of Harold Stassen giving us his pointed take on those Iowa caucuses coming up.
And truly...truly spare the world your patronizing "I helped a n*gger once" sob stories. It smacks of your boy Joe Lieberman's "I was down with Civil Rights...once." punk-*ss bitchery. I know you Imus. I work in NY radio. I was friends with the late Monteria Ivey, a Black comedian you pimped as a protegé on your show and hooked up with an occasional show on FAN. He and I worked down the street from each other on TV projects for awhile in the city. Not the funniest Black guy in town...no way you'd have that, as it would've exposed you as the coasting burnout you are. But because as funny as he was, his stock and trade was limited to playing the "bad dozens-running n*gga" and other simple stereotypes you found heh-heh..."funny", he was cool to you. "Yeah...but I helped him!" you wanna blurt and interrupt. Well...your kind of "help" reminds me of a great line from a real comedian you wouldn't f*ck with if your life depended on it-- Chris Rock.
"If you're black, America is like the uncle that paid your way through college....but molested you.."
You're that uncle, Imus. That unfunny old uncle--stinking of Brylcreem, cocktail franks, Wild Irish Rose and the rotting remnants of a marginal talent long-ago consumed. Oh yeah...and sweat. Acrid, senses-assaulting flop sweat.
What was it you said? "Our agenda was to be funny".
It brings me back to Pryor's opening bit. "I Hope I'm Funny."
The man who had more funny in a single nose hair than you have in every inch of that sallow, wrinkled body of yours had the humility to openly hope he was funny before an audience. Yet you, possessing the all the laughs of a dumpster full of body parts go on the air day after day, squeezing out turd after turd of "funny" that your olfactorily-challenged *ss can't smell as plain old sh*t. .
Or perhaps you do know...and it doesn't really matter as the game for you is all about "teh powah", and the lame-*ss humor is just a front for what your game really is. Who knows? All I know is, your *ss is off the air for two weeks right now. And you're starting to feel the heat, as longtime advertisers like Staples, Proctor & Gamble and Bigelow Tea have dropped you faster than you dropped the acid tabs you cooked your brain with in '71. The Rutgers girls easily embarrassed you Tuesday with their poise and humanity contrasting with your coarse and demeaning rhetoric. You're bleeding in the water I-Man. And sharks are circling like a mother-f*cker.
The Richard Pryor bit about his divorce from his wife comes to mind here. It seemed that on the day he showed up in court, his soon-to-be ex came in looking angelic--crying, playing to the sympathies of all assembled.
"She had everybody cryin'. The bailiff. The lawyers. The mother-f*ckin' judge. Judge said, 'N*gger we want everything. You got any dreams? We want them, too."
It's come to that, Imus. You f*cked up that badly here. And maybe for the last time. "We want everything. You got any dreams mother-f*cker? We want them too".
- posted by LowerManhattanite
Watson: "Imus"
Before the strange cowboy fixation set in
Thanks to Watson for this thought on Imus.
Imus has indicated that he will make programming changes in the aftermath of his sexist and racist comments about the Rutgers women basketball players.
Assuming that he is not taken off the air, I suggest that he voluntarily refrain from using blacks as the subject matter of his humor.
His on-air staff is all white, as are virtually all of his guests, so his black jokes don't have the 'all in the family' context appropriate for ethnic humor.
Health and income statistics indicate that blacks have not recovered from being legally confined to the bottom of our society, so these jokes have the ugly and cowardly aspect of kicking someone who is down.
Mr. Imus prides himself on being an 'equal opportunity bigot', so given the numerous other ethnic groups for him to lampoon, the black material should scarcely be missed.
- posted by Watson
Jo Public: "Dinsy Imus"
That whole cowboy thing - sheesh
Thanks to Jo Public for this great piece!
CNN:
“Howard Kurtz, media critic for The Washington Post and host of CNN’s ‘Reliable Sources,’ said Imus is known for his comedy, but, he said ‘the problem is... his comedy too often strays into the offensive.’
Kurtz, whom Imus once called a ‘boner-nosed, beanie-wearing Jew-boy,’ said Imus may now understand that his remarks about the Rutgers team crossed the line.
‘Imus should be held accountable for some of these offensive things that he says, but there is also a good side to Don Imus, and I don’t think that should be completely obliterated in all of this chest thumping,’ he said.”
I liked it better in the original British:
http://orangecow.org/pythonet/sketches/piranha.htm
Presenter: Another man who had his head nailed to the floor was Stig O’Tracy.
Interviewer: I’ve been told Dinsdale Piranha nailed your head to the floor.
Stig: No. Never. He was a smashing bloke. He used to buy his mother flowers and that. He was like a brother to me.
Interviewer: But the police have film of Dinsdale actually nailing your head to the floor.
Stig: (pause) Oh yeah, he did that.
Interviewer: Why?
Stig: Well he had to, didn’t he? I mean there was nothing else he could do, be fair. I had transgressed the unwritten law.
Interviewer: What had you done?
Stig: Er... well he didn’t tell me that, but he gave me his word that it was the case, and that’s good enough for me with old Dinsy. I mean, he didn’t *want* to nail my head to the floor. I had to insist. He wanted to let me off. He’d do anything for you, Dinsdale would.
Interviewer: And you don’t bear him a grudge?
Stig: A grudge! Old Dinsy. He was a real darling.
- posted by Jo Public