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

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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)

seven paragraphs? dude it was like a 5 paragraph essay. Her point in even mentioning it was to emphasize that she's never paid attention to the guy

xxps to tracer

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

did he have a 'character' call Patrick Ewing "Mighty Joe Young"?

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:17 (nineteen years ago)

deej i'm talking about her ny times op-ed

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:18 (nineteen years ago)

anyway, while Imus' explanation strikes me as kinda disingenuous and self-serving (bear in mind I've always hated him), you have a point about this not being very well-documented and spreading all viral-styleee

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:19 (nineteen years ago)

xp so am I, i think?

― deej, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:20 (nineteen years ago)

ok its more paragraphs than i thought but paragraphs usually implies more than two sentences per. and its 5 'paragraphs' anyway

― deej, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:21 (nineteen years ago)

what is your point? my point is that she says "this is not about me" after spending approx 1/3 of her piece repeating a very misleading story about herself!

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:22 (nineteen years ago)

The Ifill thing (if we accept his explanation) would be another example of stuff like Randy Newman being accused of being a bigot by the MSM for penning "Short People." But what little I've heard of Imus' "satire" smells of using characters to say stuff his audience finds straight-on funny, ie black reporter as cleaning lady.

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:23 (nineteen years ago)

1. I know, because he apparently did it to me.

2. I was covering the White House for this newspaper in 1993, when Mr. Imus’s producer began calling to invite me on his radio program. I didn’t return his calls. I had my hands plenty full covering Bill Clinton.

3. Soon enough, the phone calls stopped. Then quizzical colleagues began asking me why Don Imus seemed to have a problem with me. I had no idea what they were talking about because I never listened to the program.

4. It was not until five years later, when Mr. Imus and I were both working under the NBC News umbrella — his show was being simulcast on MSNBC; I was a Capitol Hill correspondent for the network — that I discovered why people were asking those questions. It took Lars-Erik Nelson, a columnist for The New York Daily News, to finally explain what no one else had wanted to repeat.

5. “Isn’t The Times wonderful,” Mr. Nelson quoted Mr. Imus as saying on the radio. “It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House.”

6. I was taken aback but not outraged. I’d certainly been called worse and indeed jumped at the chance to use the old insult to explain to my NBC bosses why I did not want to appear on the Imus show.

7. I haven’t talked about this much. I’m a big girl. I have a platform. I have a voice. I’ve been working in journalism long enough that there is little danger that a radio D.J.’s juvenile slap will define or scar me. Yesterday, he began telling people he never actually called me a cleaning lady. Whatever. This is not about me.

...

oh, and:

8. 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.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:24 (nineteen years ago)

morbs you could certainly make that argument, and having a fuller picture of the lines in the david duke character's sketch could help you decide.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:32 (nineteen years ago)

#8 ugh

― JW, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:32 (nineteen years ago)

yeah i dunno, there's a bit of a difference between "i didn't say that" and "i said that as part of my hee-larious david duke-type character routine in which we all get to make and laugh at racist jokes while pretending to make fun of racists."

― tipsy mothra, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:34 (nineteen years ago)

People have called on the FCC to fine him

And I call upon Jehovah to smite him. And I call upon Michael Richards to shun him. And I call upon the entire population of China and Mongolia to make fun of him. But I haven't had much luck, yet.

― Aimless, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:42 (nineteen years ago)

here's what imus should have done. he should have gone on sharpton's show and immediately started crying and then said: "please forgive me reverend al. when i was young i was taught how to speak jive by a man, no, not even a man, more of a WOLFman, and even though i know it's not right and that i go too far sometimes, it's like an addiction..." the nation would have wept for don.

― scott seward, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:44 (nineteen years ago)

the jive talking wolf man will be imus' replacement

― kenan, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:48 (nineteen years ago)

in some ways the most bizarre thing ifill says is "I’ve been working in journalism long enough that there is little danger that a radio D.J.’s juvenile slap will define or scar me."

so, like, those athletes really shouldn't have worried so much? many, many people are defined and scarred by juvenile talk radio slaps - in the case of presidential candidates they can be defined and scarred right out of the race! but ifill has been working in journalism long enough to know that this just isn't true.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:50 (nineteen years ago)

the jive talking wolf man will be imus' replacement

uh Wolfman Jack is dead

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:52 (nineteen years ago)

she's just trying not to look like a whiner

― kenan, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:52 (nineteen years ago)

wolfman jack was awesome!

― M@tt He1ges0n, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:53 (nineteen years ago)

uh Wolfman Jack is dead

oh HA i missed the wolfman jack reference

― kenan, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:53 (nineteen years ago)

imus is so amazingly vile looking

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:55 (nineteen years ago)

Shakey Mo's Top 3 Radio Personalities of All Time

1. Johnny Otis
2. Paul Harvey
3. Wolfman Jack

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 13 April 2007 16:56 (nineteen years ago)

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