Don Imus And A Lynching
DON Imus, white American radio shock jock, calls referred the Rutgers University women’s basketball team – comprised of eight African-American and two white players – “nappy-headed hos”.
The full text of MSNBC’s Imus in the Morning can be read here.
IMUS: That’s some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and —
McGUIRK (producer): Some hard-core hos
IMUS: That’s some nappy-headed hos there. I’m gonna tell you that now, man, that’s some – woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like – kinda like – I don’t know.
The Imus show is cancelled. And the debate rages. And one word begins to crop up time and time again: lynching.
Pat Buchanan: Imus threw himself on the mercy of the court of elite opinion – and that court, pandering to the mob, lynched him. Yet, for all his sins, he was a better man than the lot of them rejoicing at the foot of the cottonwood tree.
New York Times columnist Frank Rich: And perhaps even Don Imus himself, who, while talking way too much about black people he has known and ill children he has helped, took full responsibility for his own catastrophic remarks and didn’t try to blame the ensuing media lynching on the press, bloggers or YouTube.
Talk-radio host Michael Smerconish wrote: Ah, but the floodgates are now open. The cyber-lynching by faceless, nameless bloggers of talk-show hosts like me has begun.
Buchanan (again): Let me say this. Imus said a stupid thing, he and Bernie did, two words for about three, four seconds in the morning. They apologized and apologized and apologized and asked for forgiveness, and two Christian ministers, Sharpton and Jackson, acted like lynch-mob leaders. This was an example of real hate, John, real hate in America, but the hate was not from Imus, it was directed at him. There was no forgiveness. It was un-Christian – it was un-Christian and un-American.
Buchanan (again and again): Let me tell you something. This term ‘nappy-headed hos’ comes out of the ghetto, it’s slang, it’s ugly stuff, it’s terrible to women. It is constant on African-American radio. Imus was lynched because he was a white male who said it. That’s why.
Why the use of the word lynching? And why should used in the context of a white man who insulted black women?
Strange fruit indeed…
Posted: 17th, April 2007 | In: Reviews Comments (2) | TrackBack | Permalink
