Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Imus and the Knights

For the past week The Drudge Report and the sports media have been discussing Don Imus' complete stupidity commenting on the Rutgers women's basketball team (the NCAA runner-up) and referring to the young women as "nappy-headed ho's."

The statement is insulting, demeaning, heinous and cruel. It is degrading to women. It is racist against blacks. Rutgers coach C. Vivian Stringer (who is black) rightly excoriated Imus. So did Jesse Jackson. And of course, anti-Semitic race-baiter Al Sharpton joined the chorus.

Here's the deal: Imus is an ass, period. The Imus Ranch he touts is a tremendous financial boondoggle for him (he can use it 50 weeks of the year, the program for underprivileged kids is two weeks), not a commitment to the kiddies. He has a history of racist or similarly stupid utterances. He is simply a dumb disc jockey who survived record-spinning chats to become a radio icon in NYC.

That said, the spectacle of public abasement is equally ugly. NBC et al. should have fired him and been done with it; instead, it suspended him and has to watch as Imus and the broadcasters with whom he has been affiliated get dragged through the manure that he created. And in the end, Imus will be done as a broadcaster anyway.

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