Usually, it’s easy for me to sit here and write about topical issues like global warming, increased gas prices or why Tango decided not to marry New York, but after the past couple of weeks, I’m not so sure how to write about the whole Don Imus issue. I remember seeing Imus’ morning drive talk show, which used to air on MSNBC about four years ago when I was studying for a test. He was talking sports, and at the time i was looking for a sports show to watch that wasnt SportsCenter.
Needless to say, I didn’t find the show that great and found something different to watch, which eventually meant returning to my first love, non-stop reruns of the previous night’s SportsCenter.
It wasn’t until this incident when I started doing research on Imus’ past of comments directed toward every different race you can think of: Jews, Blacks, Mexicans, Muslims, Japanese and so on. If you can name it, he probably made fun of it.
In the end, Imus took on the one thing he had no chance of beating: women. Not just any women–black women who had done nothing more than get to a national championship game that many sports fans believe to be an unbearable sport to watch in the first place: women’s basketball.
I’m sure he thought he would be able to get away with calling them “nappy headed hos” scott free like he has in years before, but he failed to realize his 1970s beliefs are far more outdated than the cowboy look he seems to love sporting around.
The Rutgers team didn’t do anything to deserve being dubbed “hos.” In fact it’s the very reason the Imus show was pulled from MSNBC, then from his syndicated show on CBS radio.
It’s very easy to take on people who may or may not warrant scrutiny, but a mostly black team that played in a game that had nothing to do with major issues didn’t.
Imus was never right, and he never should have said what he did, but the nature of what he said really shows a higher problem– what certain people can and cannot say.
See, it’s racist if Imus says the word “ho,” while its perfectly fine for 50 Cent to say it in a rap song. Last time I checked it had the same derogatory meaning, and whoever says otherwise is full of crap.
Maybe activists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton should focus more on teaching a lesson to the youth that the word “ho” should not be used at all instead of worrying about how good they look in the press.
In the end, it’s the Rutgers basketball team that should be canonized for having to deal with everything that was thrust upon them. Class, dignity and courage are values that are taken for granted way too often. Unfortunately, it took a crotchety old man with a microphone for us to see it in them.
