WTF?: "Seinfeld"'s Michael 'Kramer' Richards in Weird-o-Rama Onstage Meltdown

Ha, yeah, I think the myth and idealization of the scholar-athlete are probably pointing up the horribleness of his target a little bit. But not THAT much, really. People totally suspend the scholar-athelete myth when it comes to black men (accurately, but often selectively aimed at black men), all the time ... and surely the scholar-athelete ideal is way closer to true with women's sports, where there's not loads of money involved ... and they were, athletically speaking, the underdogs here ... and just generally when a small, specific bunch of girls from places like Newark go to college and are an unlikely sports success and then for zero reason you gratuitously insult them w/r/t race and sex (and let's face it, more than anything CLASS), it's just ... ridiculous.

If a right-wing radio guy had said something similar about, say, abstract "welfare recipients," there'd be grumbling and complaint but not this level of furor -- because that's the current mode of subtextual racism. Whereas the Imus comment kinda points back to an older and more blatant and more hurtful form of racism, which is the kind where you remind specific people that no matter WHAT they do -- college, hard-earned athletic success, whatever -- you're still gonna see them as ghetto, as low-class hos, as dirty and worthless and beneath you.

Note that that's the exact same mode as the Gwen Ifill cleaning-lady comment, too! And I hate to say this, because it's going to sound weird, but ... well, people get away with faintly racist comments when they connect them to behavior and culture, insulting abstract stereotypes of bad things that black people are supposedly like. But Gwen Ifill is ... professional, educated, has a newscaster voice, and is socially no different from any white journalist. So calling her the cleaning lady has that same undertow -- "no matter what you do, how successful and mainstream and respectable you are, you're still a nigger."

And I say that'll sound weird because I don't mean to suggest that it's somehow more okay to make racist remarks about poor, uneducated black people than it is to make them about Gwen Ifill. It's just that when you're doing it to Gwen Ifill, you're making it clearer that you're not just one of those racists who has issues with perceptions of "black culture" -- you don't care WHERE black people are in our society, you're still going to keep sneering that they're beneath you.

Apparently I don't know how to spell "athlete."

little thick with the nazi comparisons, esp at the end there.

By the way, back to Hurting upthread: I think the sad fact is that most Americans don't really care that much if someone is racist, sexist, or classist, so long as they don't feel like they're in the group being insulted. They might not like it, and they'll criticize it, but they don't want anything to change because of it; they cordon off "race" as a specific, minor, and unimportant issue. E.g., in this case, what everyone probably wishes -- from the media Imus works in to his listeners/viewers -- is that he'd just not say anything too over the line, and they could go on as they did before, appreciating him in every other way.

I can understand the impulse behind this kind of cordoning-off -- it's totally natural and makes sense -- but it's all dependent on not really caring how awful these kinds of insults are, and putting your own tastes and convenience above the horribleness of the thing done. (In a way people wouldn't with plenty of other types of horrible comments, actually -- nobody would cordon off a joke about child molestation that way.) Point being that comments like this aren't actually taboo -- people seem to criticize them as "inappropriate," or impolite, but they don't actually get that gut-level taboo "you are a truly bad person for saying that" reaction.

Kiss Me
http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/don_imus_freshintel.jpg

There was some story about how that game was *surely* the biggest day of their lives. Ughhhhhh.

no one says such things about white athletes

Okay also following this story I am really serious about this: Imus's ABSOLUTE best excuse would be to pretend he wasn't aware of the significance of his words! Like, "I was playing with slang, but I'm an old white guy, so I didn't really understand the implications, and I'm really really sorry."

i don't think he's that bright

Like most successful political-radio dudes, he seems like too much of a bull-headed, cantankerous old dick to think of polite ways out of stuff. (Reasonable people make for bad radio -- possibly they spend too much time pausing to actually think about what they're saying.)

xxpost That's probably partially the truth, but more true in his head is probably what I joked about earlier about him self-applying the "honky" label. He's thinking, "Well hell, I've always been a bit of a race comedian, how is this so bad?"

they don't actually get that gut-level taboo "you are a truly bad person for saying that" reaction

Which is likely how Imus gets away with saying blatantly racist things. His remarks go un-criticized, and his own attitudes go unexamined. For a long, long time.

stern was recounting how many times he heard imus referring to th secretary at wnbc as a n---er,in a riff that actually made me laugh out loud.

By now he's like your old racist grampa. He ain't going to change.

By the way, back to Hurting upthread: I think the sad fact is that most Americans don't really care that much if someone is racist, sexist, or classist, so long as they don't feel like they're in the group being insulted. They might not like it, and they'll criticize it, but they don't want anything to change because of it; they cordon off "race" as a specific, minor, and unimportant issue. E.g., in this case, what everyone probably wishes -- from the media Imus works in to his listeners/viewers -- is that he'd just not say anything too over the line, and they could go on as they did before, appreciating him in every other way.

I can understand the impulse behind this kind of cordoning-off -- it's totally natural and makes sense -- but it's all dependent on not really caring how awful these kinds of insults are, and putting your own tastes and convenience above the horribleness of the thing done. (In a way people wouldn't with plenty of other types of horrible comments, actually -- nobody would cordon off a joke about child molestation that way.) Point being that comments like this aren't actually taboo -- people seem to criticize them as "inappropriate," or impolite, but they don't actually get that gut-level taboo "you are a truly bad person for saying that" reaction.

okay this actually explains this whole thread in a way that I didn't understand before, so thanks.

i think what you meant to say was, nabisco OTM

I like to use different words sometimes.

yeah, that was pretty excellent

i think if u spent alot of time fixing your hair before a huge televised basketball game u would be insulted if someone referred to ypur efforts as "nappy"

I imagine Imus to be the kind of guy who excuses himself by thinking/saying things like, "It's no big deal if I call a black person a nigger, because everyone knows I don't really hate black people."

stern was recounting how many times he heard imus referring to th secretary at wnbc as a n---er,in a riff that actually made me laugh out loud.

oh my I'd love to hear this.

I meant nabisco otm, but also, this is an invisible wall I run up against every time I talk about racism and I think I understand the "argument" such as it is a little better now.

I think the sad fact is that most Americans don't really care that much if someone is racist, sexist, or classist, so long as they don't feel like they're in the group being insulted. They might not like it, and they'll criticize it, but they don't want anything to change because of it; they cordon off "race" as a specific, minor, and unimportant issue.

Honestly, I think people in general tend to "cordon off" everything that Doesn't Affect Me Directly -- I'm not sure that race is any different in that way. It takes a really massive, visible injustice to activate people's sympathy/outrage to the point of triggering action -- think Emmett Till, or the water hoses.

(Or, to put it differently, to the point where you'll hear someone say things like "I don't much like black people/gay people/etc., but what they did to him ain't right".)

It takes a really massive, visible injustice

funny that at that point in my reading of the sentence, i was already thinking "fire hoses".

getting beat up is nothing. getting beat up on television, however...

Okay also following this story I am really serious about this: Imus's ABSOLUTE best excuse would be to pretend he wasn't aware of the significance of his words! Like, "I was playing with slang, but I'm an old white guy, so I didn't really understand the implications, and I'm really really sorry."

...what do you think the chances of this are, btw? i have, in my life, heard ppl old and young alike "try" out slang and fail miserably. usually, if you call them on it there's an honest "oh no shit? holy crap embarrassing" or a defensive "but THEY etc etc"

or a defensive "but THEY etc etc"

see also the political cartoons thread

then again i'm on a campus where i hear (white) bros answer their cell phones "whuddup my nigga!" all the time

see also nabisco being otm re: middleaged women and applebee's

indeed

getting beat up is nothing. getting beat up on television, however...

Hey, remember that footage that went around a while back of the UCLA student getting Tazered in the computer lab? Reading a text description of it was one thing, but watching the footage made me want to start a riot. Such is human nature.

the footage of a chicago cop repeatedly punching and kicking a woman half his size is my current favorite example of same. You can describe it all day long, but hey people do shit. Seeing it makes you nauseated.

Um.

i mean, decribing it gets your blood up a little, sure, that's some fucked up repugnant shit. But footage gets an emotional reaction that you can never muster for printed words.

this is why i go to the movies.

There's a media overload problem at work here, too -- we read about horrible things all the time, but most of those things we (to borrow a phrase) cordon off into the part of our brain reserved for same-ol-bad-news. But to see something like firehoses, or Vietnam, or Rodney King, or what have you, it reconnects you with the news in a sudden and lizard-brain kind of way. And our lizard brain is still in charge, ppl, don't think it isn't.

Re: the scholar athlete/black male thing - at Rutgers, I was part of a group that was lobbying to tone down the football and basketball programs and move them to Div I-AA (not a very popular cause, as you can imagine). I can't tell you how many times I heard people argue "This is the only way a lot of these [inner city black] kids get a chance to get an education."

How can someone say that and not realize what they are implying?

BTW Rutgers had something called the Educational Opportunity Fund, a scholarship/preparation program to bring poor kids to Rutgers (academically promising ones). It was grossly underfunded.

had/has

he's well-assisted... by two new york tabloid newspapers that, you recall, are GOP and at least centrist/moderately neo-con in orientation...

Way late and upthread, but gabbneb repeatedly OTM in that post and on this thread.

Okay also following this story I am really serious about this: Imus's ABSOLUTE best excuse would be to pretend he wasn't aware of the significance of his words! Like, "I was playing with slang, but I'm an old white guy, so I didn't really understand the implications, and I'm really really sorry."

-- nabisco, Wednesday, April 11, 2007 7:07 PM (Yesterday)


haha stern has been saying the same thing.

NBC News Drops Imus Show Over Racial Remark





By BILL CARTER and LOUISE STORY
Published: April 12, 2007

NBC News dropped Don Imus yesterday, canceling his talk show on its MSNBC cable news channel a week after he made a racially disparaging remark about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.







The move came after several days of widening calls for Mr. Imus to lose his show both on MSNBC, which simulcasts the “Imus in the Morning” show, and CBS Radio, which originates the show.

CBS Radio, which is the main employer of Mr. Imus, said in a statement last night that it would stick by the two-week suspension of the show that it and NBC News announced earlier; the suspension begins Monday.

But CBS said it would, in the interim, “continue to speak with all concerned parties and monitor the situation closely.”

The demands that Mr. Imus’s show be canceled have grown in intensity every day since last Wednesday when he made the comments, in which he labeled the women “nappy-headed hos.”

Numerous advertisers said yesterday that they would refuse to sponsor the show in the future. Among the advertisers were General Motors, American Express, Sprint Nextel, GlaxoSmithKline, TD Ameritrade and Ditech.com.

NBC said the cancellation was effective immediately. Mr. Imus was scheduled to be the host of a telethon today and tomorrow on radio station WFAN and simulcast on MSNBC to benefit three children’s charities. The network will instead program three hours of news coverage.

Mr. Imus did not respond to telephone messages last night. But Bo Dietl, a security expert who is a frequent guest on Mr. Imus’s show, said last night that he had just talked by telephone with the host, and that his mood was “very down, very upset about what occurred with MSNBC.”

“I said to him that they didn’t even give him time to talk to the victims,” Mr. Dietl said. “He agreed with me.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has been among the leaders of the movement to force Mr. Imus off the air, said in a telephone interview that “we have been halfway successful so far” and that he and others would continue to press CBS to join NBC in cutting ties to Mr. Imus.

Mr. Sharpton said he was organizing a rally to take place today outside CBS’s corporate headquarters on West 52nd Street in Manhattan.

“This has never been about Don Imus,” Mr. Sharpton said. “I have no idea whether he is a good man or not. This is about the use of public airwaves for bigoted, racist speech.”

Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat who is running for president, called on MSNBC and CBS Radio to disassociate themselves from Mr. Imus, and said that he would never go on the show again. He said he had appeared once, more than two years ago.

“He didn’t just cross the line,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with ABC News. “He fed into some of the worst stereotypes that my two young daughters are having to deal with today in America.”

In its statement, NBC News said the decision “comes as a result of an ongoing review process, which initially included the announcement of a suspension.”

“It also takes into account many conversations with our own employees.”

The statement went on: “What matters to us most is that the men and women of NBC Universal have confidence in the values we have set for this company. This is the only decision that makes that possible.”

NBC also apologized again to the Rutgers team for “the pain this incident has caused.”

NBC executives said last night that the decision had been made jointly by the NBC Universal president, Jeff Zucker, and the president of NBC News, Steve Capus.

Several NBC employees said that discussions about Mr. Imus had been going on throughout the company over the last few days and that the sentiment among the employees turned out to be a critical factor in the decision to cancel his show.

In one example of that sentiment, Al Roker, the popular weatherman for the “Today” show, wrote a commentary on that show’s Web site calling for the Imus show to be canceled.

Mr. Zucker made the point in an e-mail message he sent to NBC employees last night that conversations with employees had been a driving factor. “Over the past several days, we have had to grapple with an incredibly difficult and sensitive issue,” Mr. Zucker said in the e-mail message.

“After our announcement of the suspension of Don Imus, we have had ongoing discussions with a number of employees and employee groups within our business. The result of these discussions has been very clear. NBC Universal has a strong reputation for integrity and our employees value that integrity tremendously.

“Those conversations have led to the decision Steve Capus and I made today.”

Mr. Capus in an interview on MSNBC last night said that in his view, the comment Mr. Imus made was racist. He added that it was far from the first time Mr. Imus had made insensitive or offensive comments on his show.

“There have been any number of other comments that have been enormously hurtful to far too many people,” Mr. Capus said. “And my feeling is that there should not be a place for that on MSNBC.”

MSNBC paid a fee to CBS to simulcast the show, about $4 million a year. It was spending about $500,000 a year to produce the show for television. For that investment, it earned what it labeled a modest profit.

But the show, which has been seen on MSNBC since 1996, was helpful to NBC in other ways. It provided a forum and promotional platform for many NBC News personalities. The show is of far more value to CBS Radio, and its flagship station, WFAN, which, in addition to the rights fees from NBC, get nearly $20 million in advertising and syndication revenue from the show; the show’s individual radio affiliates, collectively, earn another $20 million in revenue, according to people apprised of the show’s finances. The show is also widely syndicated by Westwood One, which is managed by CBS.

But NBC executives, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss personnel matters, said that the program had only minimal impact on MSNBC’s budget.

In an interview on MSNBC last night, Mr. Capus said advertising money was not a determining factor.

“What price do you put on your reputation?” Mr. Capus said. “And the reputation of the news division means more to me than advertising dollars. Because if you lose your reputation, you lose everything.”

CBS executives, including the chairman, Leslie Moonves, continued to hold meetings yesterday with groups protesting Mr. Imus’s remark. Among these was the National Association of Black Journalists, which was one of the first groups to demand the cancellation of his show.

Mr. Imus also held a meeting with CBS executives yesterday, according to one executive who was informed of the meeting. CBS put off any further action beyond the suspension, the executive said, in part because Mr. Imus had asked for time to meet with members of the Rutgers team. He was tentatively scheduled to hold that meeting some time today.

At an afternoon rally on the Rutgers campus, students chanted anti-Imus slogans and waved protest signs. State Senator Nia H. Gill of New Jersey, who earned a law degree from Rutgers, called on the college to boycott companies that advertise on the show and said she would introduce a measure in the Legislature calling for New Jersey to stop buying products from companies that advertise with him.

The controversy helped push the ratings of “Imus in the Morning” on MSNBC to their highest level in months. On Tuesday, 624,000 people tuned in, a 50 percent increase from a week ago, according to estimates from Nielsen Media Research. An additional 1.6 million people typically listen to the program on the radio, according to Arbitron.

Starting this week, large advertisers began telling MSNBC and CBS not to broadcast their ads during “Imus in the Morning.” The companies, like Procter & Gamble and Staples, said they were dismayed that their brands had been associated with Mr. Imus’s offensive remark.

“Those comments, they’re just not consistent with our values, and we’re not going to be a part of it,” said Stephen Dupont, a spokesman for Ditech.com, a home loan company, which asked MSNBC on Monday to remove its ads from the show.

Although advertisers have been aware that the program often veered into politically incorrect territory and beyond, “this kind of woke a lot of people to the dark side of Imus,” said Fran Kelly, chief executive of Arnold Worldwide, an advertising agency. “He’s got every right to be on the air and say what he wants to say, but advertisers have every right to vote with their dollars.”

our dad is a big imus fan,but strangely only homophobic(male) and not th least bit racist.

http://odeo.com/audio/10654513/play
al rosenberg is to blame for alot of societyz ills

"It was completely inappropriate, and we can understand why people were offended. Our characterization was thoughtless and stupid, so, and we're sorry."

I would just like to say at this point how much I fucking LOATHE the editorial "we". HATE HATE HATE.

The way advertisers are fleeing, I think he won't survive the two-week suspension. Back to the ranch, asshole!

weird "i have lots of black friends" explanation
http://www.wfan.com/topic/play_window.php?audioType=Episode&audioId=601845

oh god so tortured. kinda creepy too how all of his black friends are dying black children, but what the hell, it's a start...

meanwhile,the best race humor of the week, BY FAR, was when john oliver on the daily show handed the israeli u.n. ambassador a copy of his screenplay Pimpin' Is Easy so that he could give it to the Jews in Hollywood. And then he made the ambassador play the role of Cinammon and read lines with him. Hahahahahahaha! what a hoot.

"meanwhile,the best race humor of the week, BY FAR, was when john oliver on the daily show handed the israeli u.n. ambassador a copy of his screenplay Pimpin' Is Easy so that he could give it to the Jews in Hollywood. And then he made the ambassador play the role of Cinammon and read lines with him. Hahahahahahaha! what a hoot."

link
http://www.ifilm.com/video/2841774/show/17676