High ratings or not, Don Imus gets kicked off MSNBC

not sure if someone really has a spine. i don't disagree with there pulling the plug, but their reasoning didn't make sense.

check out joe, he seems to hit it on the head again, and it looks like his closing line from his post two days earlier may be not only insighful but have forsight

mia

http://joeleonardi.wordpress.com/2007/04/12/the-meek-spineless-national-...

It was just announced on cable news, don't see it on Google yet. JJ

I am adding comments as I watch cable news to the thread I had going on this from the Rutgers news conference.

There's an interesting column over on the cnn website that makes the point that Imus is being roasted in the media for being a racist, when his comments were really more sexist than anything else. If you have ever listened to Imus's show, it is a guy's show, about and for guys and filled with lockerroom humor. The culture of that show is sexist, not racist. Imus wasn't making fun of "black" basketball players, he doesn't have anything against black basketball players. What he doesn't like are WOMEN basketball players. He is an old school sixty something male who prefers women to have traditional roles and doesn't like women who braid their hair and act tough and athletic like men. He's a sexist. That's who Don Imus is, it is the key to his popularity among his overwhelmingly white male over 35 audience.

Yet since the media perceptions are far more sensitive to racial issues than sexist issues, he got called out as a racist. Imus called these girls "ho's", yet because he said "nappy headed ho's", the prevailing accusation is racism not sexism.
If he had just called them 'ho's', and left out the 'nappy headed', ask yourself, would he have been fired? I don't think so because in this day and age people are far more sensitive about racism than sexism. Sexism is still acceptable to many, sad to say. Look at the Augusta National Golf Club, which will not admit women, and yet CBS shows the Masters there every year. If that club did not admit blacks, CBS would not show the Masters. The sponsors would be in an uproar just like with Imus after his comments.

In any case, this whole episode shows that this country has huge issues with both racism and sexism. Which makes it all the more important, I think, to take dramatic symbolic steps to deal with it. Imagine what it would mean to little girls or little african american kids, to see the election of a black man, Barack Obama, or a woman, Hillary Clinton, as our country's next leader. Change starts at the top. Symbolism is important. What better way would there be to show that the time of Don Imus has passed then to elect somebody who isn't a WASP male, who isn't like Don Imus, as president? Don Imus after all, probably had his downfall because he never had any reason to change so long as the world was just like him. The world is changing. Imus knows it now.

the symbol of old guys in the lockerroom -- right? Neither did his anatomical sex. It was all in his mind.

Right?

The LAST thing true progressives would want to symbolize is the kind of external-only symbology you suggest!
[gasp and gestures of mock horror]

females are not a minority, just systematically kept down and discriminated against. After all, what fun is an exclusive club without someone to exclude?

me personally -- yeah, the sex insult was worse.

It is about what the kids think. Imus's comments wouldn't have mattered as much if he had insulted a bunch of old ladies in a nursing home. The media may not have cared about that. But he insulted a bunch of young college age girls, and it brings to mind the perceptions and stereotypes those girls-- and all youth of color-- will have to deal with throughout their adulthood. We don't want those girls to lose their faith in this society and the roles they can have in this society because they get insulted like that.

Here in New York City, you see the consequences of racism, sexism and general alienation in young people all the time. Kids who have grown up under rough circumstances and as a result do not become productive citizens as adults because they have not been given reason to believe in society. They have not been given enough reason to believe that they are as much a part of this world and this society as any other human being.

The truth is that you will never be able to convince these kids, growing up as they do, that skin color doesn't matter, that gender doesn't matter, that they are not second class citizens, unless we can show them that things have changed. These african american and hispanic kids that heavily populate the projects around here, and who are in and out of trouble with the law, see all government and authority in this country as "white" All their lives they have felt as though they are on the outside looking in. It's a perception thing and we need to change it.

So yes skin color is an external-only issue, as you say, but it symbolizes so much more than that. This is why I think no other candidacy can mean as much to this country as that of Barack Obama. The Democratic Party by the dramatic act of nominating a black man as its presidential candidate, and the country by electing him as President, can make one of the most powerful gestures of inclusiveness in our country's history. Young kids of color will see him as President and finally perhaps overcome the lifelong perception that government, and the society that runs the government, is white. Maybe they will then feel a part of society, and want to be active in their communities, politically and otherwise.

I happened to be in Times Square very late the other night. There were a group of african american men, older men, gathered on 42nd street watching the giant CBS tv screen high above the street. They were watching David Letterman's show. Why? Barack Obama was the guest. They wanted to see him. They were very excited, even only being able to read the captions of what was being said, as there was no sound. Obama is a dream for them. This is why John Edwards can be the most liberal candidate the party's ever had and his candidacy still won't mean as much as Obama's could. You can be president and do all the right things, as I am sure Edwards could, and still not BE all the right things. John Edwards can't make these people think that society has changed, or can change, in the way that Obama could. He'd be another president who looks like a lot of other people who have been president. Edwards has a great message. Obama can clearly be the greater messenger. His presidency can mean more to the young people in this country, for whom surface issues matter. Kids who need to see one of their own running the show before they can truly believe they ARE part of the show.