Confessions of a Litigious Mind

The random, irrelevant musings of a law school graduate.

Friday, April 13, 2007

i had to

i had to weigh in on the whole don imus thing. first, it's in my contract, and second, i think things are much worse now than they were before. i might be in a minority view here (pun intended), but let me explain.

nappy headed ho's.

does it have racial undertones to it? of course. should he have said it? probably not. BUT, i argue that the backlash from all of this is causing more harm than it is good.

how many times had i heard the phrase "nappy headed ho's" before this incident? i dont know, maybe once or twice, maybe never at all. how many have i heard it since then? over 100. and it's such big news, with imus being fired by cbs and msnbc and all, everyone knows about this. are you telling me the phrase of 2007 amongst immature teens (and adults) isn't going to be "nappy headed ho's"? i bet it is, unless something else comes along to replace it. the principle of it all might be right, but in theory communism is pretty sweet too.

and i'm not completely sure why people have chosen this incident. maybe cuz imus is extremely well known. but i've heard worse in recent history. i mean shit, gingrich didn't get fired over his "ghetto" comments. and there have been others. and let's be completely 100% candid here. at least one of the reasons is cuz he's white.

i take more exception to the outrage over the use of the word "ho" however. ho is everywhere. every rap song, every schoolyard. it's a word that in its now-common usage has really lost the qualities that once made it an insult. i call one of my good friends a ho all the time. she doesnt get offended because she knows i dont mean anything bad. and ok yeah, she's my friend, but still, there are much worse things.

i watched part of the rutger's womens basketball news conference on espn news the other day as they answered questions. it was basically a waste of my time as no one was going to say anything inflamatory or exciting. then i missed the answer to the one question i wanted to hear when the phone rang. the question was about the use of "ho" in all kinds of rap songs and pop culture. but that part hasnt been played back at all, so it couldnt have been too good either.

i dont know exactly what to make of it all, but i do know this: things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better.

posted by josh @ 4/13/2007 10:00:00 AM

6 Comments:

At 4/13/2007 10:20 AM, Blogger d$ said...

bow wow gets to use "nappy." why not imus?

 
At 4/13/2007 10:51 AM, Blogger Butterflyfish said...

I'm glad people protested Imus and all -- that's what America is all about. If you're pissed, you get to yell about it. Whether or not you get press coverage depends on whether or not you have Al Sharpton working for you. But that's antoher issue for another day.

What *I* am pissed at is that his station didn't stand by him. Of course to make the sponsors happy, slap on the wrist, suspension *maybe* -- but taking him off the air? That is bullsh*t. That sends the absolute wrong message about discourse in this country -- if your skin is the wrong color, you cannot say things that might piss people off. These days, that skin color is white. And that is as much bullsh*t as when people weren't allowed to assemble or vote because they were black.

 
At 4/13/2007 6:56 PM, Blogger Supreme Monkey Overlord said...

i'm glad imus got fired, but i could care less about what he said. imus hasn't been funny, relevent, or entertaining in a decade and should have been taken off the air and put down out back a long time ago. plus what i don't get is that he says shit like this all the time and no one notices, mostly because no one is listening. people like Rush Limbaugh and reverend jerry falwell say way worse stuff than "nappy headed hoes" daily and nothing happens to them. well, rush was on monday night countdown for like a week before he said mcnabb was only good cause hes black and then got kicked off. but anyway, the best line was the reporter at the newsconference asking one of hte basketball players what they think MSNBC should put on for programming instead of imus, classic stuff.

 
At 4/14/2007 10:46 PM, Blogger LawNut said...

My beef with the whole Imus business is that it sets such a poor precedent in terms of "free speech." Is what Imus said wrong? Of course it was; but that's not the point. Imus ran more of an opinion show than anything else - and I think it sets a precedent where people will be afraid to speak their minds, lest they lose the very jobs that they were hired for in the first place to do just that - give their opinion. So, while I think Imus is an assclown for saying what he did, I cannot agree with his firing. And I think you make a great point about all this attention that "nappy-headed hos" is getting - I mean, I think we could all stand to benefit from having this phrase go away!

 
At 4/15/2007 6:36 AM, Blogger angela said...

I think it's utter ridiculous that he got fired for saying "nappy headed hoes" when his job was to SHOCK people. And, when you think about it, the phrase "nappy headed hoes" is not all that shocking as much as it's just kinda lame and unfunny.

 
At 4/16/2007 9:05 PM, Blogger Butterflyfish said...

"limbaugh is the Emmanuel Goldstein for the Left- whatever it is you hate, he has said it."

Fucking brilliant.

 

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