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

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Why aren't these keepers of the First Amendment flame coming to the defense of Don Imus?

Any mention of the First Amendment in all this is total red herring. The First Amendment states that "Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech." Last I heard, Congress and federal law had nothing to do with Mr. Imus's mess.

His woes are purely free-market-driven. IOW, his sponsors are deserting him. Isn't that their cherished, hard-won and god-given right, according to the WSJ and other bastions of Capitalism Untrammeled? Sheesh! Get consistent, you righty pundits. Read the program for christsakes.

― Aimless, Thursday, 12 April 2007 23:58 (nineteen years ago)

McGuirk is also the program’s quick-witted on-air contributor, and is the voice and creator of such recurring characters as... Maya Angelou.

Huh? Can someone explain this to me, please?

― emil.y, Friday, 13 April 2007 00:38 (nineteen years ago)

HE DOES BAD MORNING ZOO IMPERSONATIONS.

― chaki, Friday, 13 April 2007 00:41 (nineteen years ago)

ILX: Don Imus is pretty

― gershy, Friday, 13 April 2007 03:16 (nineteen years ago)

He also expressed bitterness that MSNBC had “pulled the plug” on televising his program less than 12 hours before the fundraiser was to begin. “They got their pound of flesh and made their decision,” he said.

ADL PRESIDENT LAUGHING TOO HARD TO PURSUE ACTION

― Hurting 2, Friday, 13 April 2007 03:20 (nineteen years ago)

Maya Angelou'd be the best comedy character ever!

― President Evil, Friday, 13 April 2007 03:29 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alec-baldwin/what-imus-really-did-wron_b_45676.html

― gabbneb, Friday, 13 April 2007 10:06 (nineteen years ago)

also remember that maybe none of this happens - the real consequences that have rolled out over the last few days - without sharpton.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 13 April 2007 10:22 (nineteen years ago)

millions of black women would never have heard the phrase 'nappy-headed hos' repeated ad infinitum on radio and television?

― gabbneb, Friday, 13 April 2007 10:24 (nineteen years ago)

it gets repeated ad infinitum in large part because of sharpton and his efforts. stop trying to deny the man credit!

all these other big media names going "hem haw, it wuz bad but i know he's not a racist" - alec baldwin, mike lupica being two that i've read today - remind me a lot of the nick sylvester thing, where it was instantly clear who considered themselves personal friends and who didn't have that stake in it.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 13 April 2007 10:30 (nineteen years ago)

I was, for purposes of argument, giving the man credit, of course, and suggesting that it was a net negative even if imus got fired, which obviously sharpton had something to do with but neither of us could really say how much, and i imagine it has a lot more to do with former naacp head bruce gordon and big liberal les moonves. for nbc, it was a no-brainer - no one watches msnbc anyway.

― gabbneb, Friday, 13 April 2007 10:50 (nineteen years ago)

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/opinion/12herbert.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fBob%20Herbert

― gabbneb, Friday, 13 April 2007 11:26 (nineteen years ago)

Any mention of the First Amendment in all this is total red herring. The First Amendment states that "Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech." Last I heard, Congress and federal law had nothing to do with Mr. Imus's mess.
-- Aimless,

OTM. It's amazing how much the First Amendment and "Free Speech" get tossed around without anyone thinking about what they actually mean. "Free Speech" doesn't mean you get to be an asshole at work without repercussions from your employer. A private business like Wal-Mart refusing to sell a CD because they don't like the cover art isn't "censorship." If it doesn't have to do with the GOVERNMENT suppressing expression, it had nothing to do with the First Amendment.

― Mark Rich@rdson, Friday, 13 April 2007 13:15 (nineteen years ago)

The proper phrase here is "$10 million-a-year speech."

I had no idea Clear Channel had sold WFAN to CBS.

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 13 April 2007 13:18 (nineteen years ago)

a black rapper has a "song" about killing "Whitey" or some similar outrage

YSI?

-- max, Friday, April 13, 2007 1:06 AM (14 hours ago)

hahaha, exactly what I was thinking.

http://www.cfxweb.net/civax/pics/eddie_murphy_ktwp_tn.jpg

― Ms Misery, Friday, 13 April 2007 13:20 (nineteen years ago)

Also, Cal Thomas is a primo Ninth Circle liar. Bill Maher, of all ppl, once caught him on his panel trying to claim he "marched with Martin Luther King" ... when he'd done so as a reporter.

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 13 April 2007 13:21 (nineteen years ago)

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/3040/ph20050825020547ez.jpg

― and what, Friday, 13 April 2007 13:25 (nineteen years ago)

Red State Son on the endgame:

As CBS chief Leslie Moonves piously put it to his employees, "At the end of the day, the integrity of our company and the respect that you feel for CBS becomes the most important consideration." Oh yeah. Can't you feel the moral power? ...
Of course, Rev. Moonves didn't explain why CBS carried Imus's show for as long as it did, subsidizing countless hours of racist, sexist chatter, or why instead of just firing the old hack from the get-go, it placed Imus on a two-week suspension. But then, the road to Damascus is a winding one, and not everyone can see the hallowed light and convert at the same time.

So, barring a possible move to satellite radio, Don Imus is through, and we can get on with the other, many distractions from the real world that is the American way. Praise white Jesus!

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 13 April 2007 14:42 (nineteen years ago)

i would think that satellite radio would be happy to have him. how many of imus's regular listeners would have actually stopped listening to him if he hadn't been fired? probably not that many.

― scott seward, Friday, 13 April 2007 14:54 (nineteen years ago)

Probably not. But I don't know how many old folks will bother signing up for satellite radio either.

― Nicole, Friday, 13 April 2007 14:57 (nineteen years ago)

imus will definitely have another show. listener numbers like that, and an ego like that, will ensure it.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:01 (nineteen years ago)

Cluelessness continues

Also, i think the guy's pretty likely to wind up on satellite.

― kingfish, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:16 (nineteen years ago)

okay i never knew what townhall.com was until now and i think i was better off not knowing. i don't need to see dumb stuff like that. that's just blogging with a fancy logo.

― scott seward, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:22 (nineteen years ago)

It's where I get all the great political cartoons from, too.

A winner of a site.

― kingfish, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:28 (nineteen years ago)

The first paragraph of that townhall thing seems sort of right to me though:

Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson didn’t kill Don Imus’ show. It was a suicide, and that the vultures showed up shouldn’t confuse us about what happened. When Imus took an off ramp and drove forty blocks out of his way to run over the Rutgers women hoopsters –and then backed over them again while turning the car around to get back—he did himself in. It just took a few days for him to bleed out. The vultures always show up, but make no mistake. Imus has Imus to blame: His sponsors wanted nothing to do with his brand once that brand got recognition outside of the relatively small world that watched or listened to Imus. That’s the market, not the P.C. police. Imus could slag any player he wanted to, and probably have thrown down a few race cards in the process and remained untouched. He certainly did so with PBS’s Gwen Ifill. But college kids playing sports who are not within a hundred miles of a political debate –that’s far beyond the limits of what the public can stomach, or at least enough of the public to turn the sponsors’ heads away in shame.

― Hurting 2, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:29 (nineteen years ago)

xxpost, that's a fancy logo?!?

― Ms Misery, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:31 (nineteen years ago)

okay, a blog with A LOGO, how about that. a glorified blog. whatever. it's just bad.

― scott seward, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:34 (nineteen years ago)

"vultures"?

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:40 (nineteen years ago)

sorry scott, ;) </graphic designer>

― Ms Misery, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:40 (nineteen years ago)

by the way, imus has denied ever saying anything about gwen ifill

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:43 (nineteen years ago)

he doesn't remember, it was the tequila.

― kenan, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:44 (nineteen years ago)

I love when people deny things that are publicly on record

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:45 (nineteen years ago)

Ok, not the vultures part, but it's still a decent move to admit that Imus deserves what he's getting

― Hurting 2, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:45 (nineteen years ago)

god forbid our television, print and radio journalists actually dig up the transcripts to show us what was said and by whom before they just repeat whatever anybody else is saying. has anyone EVER seen the transcript where imus supposedly calls her a "cleaning lady"? i'm not saying it didn't happen but it would be nice to actually see it.

shakey where is the transcript?

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:47 (nineteen years ago)

and before you all get all "well it's the kind of thing he would say" or "he doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt" or whatever just remember that's exactly the way people you like get trashed in the media, too - winners and losers are chosen up and then everyone piles on the storyline

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:49 (nineteen years ago)

I'm not terribly adamant about this thread living its life out to its fullest, but Mr. Seward is starting to piss me off.

-- Noilly Prat (kenan), Tuesday, November 21, 2006 10:02 PM (4 months ago)

hahahaha, i forgot about that part of this thread. you should have called al sharpton!! he would have taken care of my drunken behaviour. "i am a good person and i did a bad thing."

― scott seward, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:54 (nineteen years ago)

:)

I got over it quick.

― kenan, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:55 (nineteen years ago)

Tracer - Audio record probably belongs to the reporter he said it to.

"Lars-Erik Nelson disclosed Imus's smear against Gwen Ifill in his column in the New York Daily News in 1998 ("Isn't the Times wonderful" Nelson quotes Imus as saying, circa 1995, "It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House.")"

^ Philip Nobile (July/August 2000). In the kingdom of Imus, the courtiers are quiet. Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved on 2007 April 12.
^ Gwen Ifill (2007-04-10). Trask Talk Radio. The New York Times. Retrieved on 2007 April 12.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3613/is_200007/ai_n8921227

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/opinion/10ifill.html?_r=1&oref=slogin7/04/10/opinion/10ifill.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:55 (nineteen years ago)

someone at work last nite totally brought up the rap thing. about all the rappers who say this stuff all the time and nobody does anything about it. it's weird how people can immediately latch on to stuff like that. weird and kinda typical and dumb.

― scott seward, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:57 (nineteen years ago)

Last I heard, Congress and federal law had nothing to do with Mr. Imus's mess.

People have called on the FCC to fine him

― JW, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:58 (nineteen years ago)

xpost

if it upsets them then they should call al sharpton and do something about it!

― Ms Misery, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:58 (nineteen years ago)

"I don't understand why all these white people got so offended when I talked about satan crucifying their children and drinking their blood. Heavy Metal singers say that sort of thing all the time and no one complains. I must be misusing the slang"

― Hurting 2, Friday, 13 April 2007 15:59 (nineteen years ago)

Hurting as both Sharpton and those athletes have said, this is not, or should not be about whether Don Imus "is a racist" or whether he deserves what he gets, this is about hateful ignorant speech over the public airwaves, whoever says it, and calling jesse jackson and al sharpton "vultures" while focusing on the exact opposite of what sharpton and the athletes have said about it is a pretty high-level way of missing the point

shakey yeah, i mean - was imus supposed to have said this on his show? in an interview? as one of his characters on the show (many of whom say obviously hateful things but are not supposed to be sympathetic in any way?)

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:01 (nineteen years ago)

the highlight - or lowlight maybe - of this whole thing was when imus said "that's a bunch of jive" on sharpton's radio show! cuz imus, too me, is totally of the era of jive turkeys. that's when i first heard him. in the 70's along with harry harrison and all those other new york deejays. this is when i still toted a denim jimmy jj walker "dynomite" bookbag and wore my dad's denim cap with all the pockets in it.

― scott seward, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:07 (nineteen years ago)

jive turkeys -vs- vultures

― scott seward, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:07 (nineteen years ago)

Tracer - I don't know, it doesn't look like Nelson's column is online. But I would suspect its from an interview...? If it was something he said on the air on his show it would be recorded somewhere and available and specifically cited.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:10 (nineteen years ago)

yeah. it's sort of buried in the mists of time. like when kerry said "who among us doesn't love nascar?" or when gore "said" he invented the internet. look i mean it's definitely a side point but i've never been a huge fan of ifill. she writes this column about imus a couple of days ago, where she repeats the cleaning lady story, saying she'd heard about it from someone else, and ends by saying "Yesterday, [Imus] began telling people he never actually called me a cleaning lady. Whatever. This is not about me." - "whatever"? that's the journalist's reaction? and if it's not about you why have you spent seven paragraphs talking about yourself?

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:12 (nineteen years ago)

Here's what Imus says about it:

“We had a bit on the radio called ‘Imus in Washington,’ which was like fake news. And I had a fake -- like a David Duke character. And Gwen Ifill had just been named the White House correspondent for NBC News. And this David Duke-like character, reflecting the philosophy and the attitude of the Reagan administration said, isn't it great that Gwen Ifill had been invited back to the White House as a cleaning lady.”

“And for years people have said I said that. I didn't say that. We were -- that was satire. That was a reflection of the racism we perceived of that administration. And for years I have had to -- people have said, well, you said this about Gwen Ifill, I did not say that.”

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:14 (nineteen years ago)

ding ding ding ding

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:15 (nineteen years ago)

gwen ifill: "it's the same thing!!"

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:16 (nineteen years ago)

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