<p>I also don’t understand why Imus is getting such press and priority. I’ve never listened to him so don’t know much about him but I don’t know why his story (4 or 5 days old) was prioritized yesterday by one of the big 3 networks as the number 1 story on the national evening news - above the bombing of the Iraqi parliament.</p>
<p>From what I’ve heard that he said, I’ll never start listening to him. I suppose a deal with satellite radio will be in the works for him now.</p>
<p>Think I’ll report that link, conyat.</p>
<p>Sorry, don’t think I’ll give “Robin’s” opinion much weight.</p>
<p>Oh dear, I didn’t look at the rest of the page, just searched for Imus and read the one article. Too late to edit it out. Hopefully a mod can remove it. Apologies to anyone who was offended.</p>
<p>And I give Robin’s opinion a lot more weight than the opinions of the anti-personal-responsibility crowd.</p>
<p>“Blame the messenger is really replacing personal responsibility in our culture. It’s alright for someone to harm you in secret; the real culprit is the person who exposes or tries to get justice for the situation.”</p>
<p>I don’t think Hereshoping (or anyone else) is blaming the messenger here, or saying that Imus’s ugly remark was anything other than grotesque. The “messenger” in this case is the media, and as far as I can tell they’re just doing their jobs–good, bad, or indifferent. … The “real culprits,” I think, are the political opportunists and dabblers who leap in front of a camera every chance they get and make a bad situation worse by accusing, demonizing, stirring the pot, and prolonging the pain, all while feeding their own outsized egos. I just don’t see these people as particularly well-intentioned.</p>
<p>Well said, Hindoo!</p>
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<p>I guessed you missed this:</p>
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<p>Imus isn’t responsible, oh no. That’s too much like accountability. It’s really the people complained about Imus. If only the racist remarks had been allowed to go unchallenged, how much better off we all would have been…</p>
<p>I hate to keep making an issue of this, but the crusade against personal responsibility is a pet peeve of mine. Why is it so wrong to say that people should be responsible for the consequences of their actions–especially when those consequences are easily forseeable?</p>
<p>And I absolutely do believe that Imus is personally responsible for the septic stew he finds himself in. No question about it. …</p>
<p>Interesting link, conyat. … Now there’s a shock jock!</p>
<p>I’m never going to live that down. LOL. But I take responsibility for posting the link without vetting the whole page. But by the “logic” being bandied about on this thread, instead of taking responsibility, I should be blaming the person who complained about it.</p>
<p>Gosh, conyat. Imus apologized and has been fired. What further personal responsibility would you like him to take? Frankly, I don’t personally feel that <em>I</em> should have to apologize or take responsibility. Sorry.</p>
<p>In all seriousness, though, I grew up in the Civil Rights era. They integrated my grade school the year before I started kindergarten. So I am very familiar with this line of argument; I heard it all through my formative years.</p>
<p>“If not for this person or that person getting the xxxxs all stirred up, they’d be happy to sit on the back of the bus, be barred from the public swimming pools, etc.” </p>
<p>I don’t find that argument any more compelling now than I did then.</p>
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<p>You’re the one saying he’s not “really” responsible. Not me.</p>
<p>You’re way off base here, conyat.</p>
<p>“The people who blew this up into a major story are the ones truly responsible for harming these girls.” I think this meant to point out that while Imus started this vile situation, others out there seem hell-bent to make it worse. I cringed on behalf of the Rutgers girls when I saw some of these “concerned leaders” leap all over the pathetic Imus story like a pack of wild dogs ripping into a carcass. To me, it seemed extraordinarily cruel to keep dragging these young women in front of a blinding publicity spotlight, then humililate them in front of the world over and over and over again by continuously repeating Imus’s hurtful remark. All this has done is create a circus-like situation that continues to expand like the blob that ate Chicago. Yes, something needs to be done about racism in America. But no, a feeding frenzy led by a self-serving egomaniac like Jesse Jackson is not the way to do it.</p>
<p>I don’t like the ignorance is bliss argument the way it was used here [not by you]. I find especially specious the claim that the young women would never have heard about the remarks or been hurt by them if no one had complained about the remarks. </p>
<p>Would it really have been better for these women to go around the rest of their lives, trying to have professional careers, etc., with Imus listeners nudging each other and snickering “nappy headed ho” at them behind their backs? And them not even to know what was going on?</p>
<p>I expressed my views on the matter in post #4.</p>
<p>That being said, there seem to be a lot of media folks and others who seem to get some sort of weird guilty pleasure out of repeating the I-Man’s remarks.</p>
<p>It’s this, of course, “I would never say such a thing” attitude, but please let me remind you for the thousandth time what it was exactly that he said.</p>
<p>There are so many agendas at play here, it’s enough to make one gag.</p>
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<p>It’s called praeteritio – the rhetorical device of asserting something by pretending to deny it or of saying something by insistently telling everyone what it is that you would never to say.</p>
<p>They are women, not “girls.”
That may seem a small thing, but it’s all part of the same sort of linguistic denial of dignity.</p>
<p>Nice to hear from you, ctymomteacher! It probably deserves its own thread, but I’d love to hear more about life on the road. :)</p>
<p>It’s not a “linguistic denial of dignity” at all. It’s the expected term from a group of middle aged & older posters who can relate to these girls as our daughters. Five of the girls are only freshmen! Girls is in no way used to demean them or marginalize them. In fact, it brings me back to my own teen years, when I’d have been mortified to be called ugly on a national platform & have to be dragged into a media circus. Now, as a woman approaching 50, I couldn’t care less if anyone thought I was ugly. But I’d be enraged if someone said that about my D. These girls are so young that the insult must really sting.</p>
<p>I agree with Hindoo & HH that the girls are now being used as pawns.</p>
<p>I think the women on the Rutgers team could figure out for themselves whether the remarks were offensive. It’s kind of paternalistic to assume they wouldn’t have been hurt without Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton telling them how they were supposed to feel. I know too many strong, intelligent African American women to believe otherwise. </p>
<p>But one interesting issue that comes out of all this is why whenever anything happens that touches on race, the white-dominated media always runs to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton for a response, as though they were the only two African Americans in the country–or at least the only two whose opinions matter. Absent Sharpton’s radio show, neither of these individuals has the power to force the media to carry his opinions or to phone his office for a comment, at the exclusion of other African American voices. </p>
<p>Why not interview WNBA members, for example, or editors of African American magazines, African American radio hosts, etc.? All of these people probably would have had valuable insights, especially the women of the WNBA who have probably faced racism and misogyny many times over in their careers. </p>
<p>Instead, in many media outlets, an entire demographic is reduced to two spokespeople. Which all by itself says a lot about the status of minorities in this country.</p>
<p>Absolutely conyat!! Why do Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton get the lion’s share of press attention whenever there is a controversial race issue to be discussed? Because they are so polarizing and the media WANTS polarization and conflict which translate into ratings. The media doesn’t want resolution or understanding. How boring would that be? No one would watch THAT.</p>
<p>If we were truly interested in knowing exactly how minorities in this country feel when slighted or victimized, as were the Rutgers women, seems as though we would demand to hear what someone other than Jackson and Sharpton have to say. We get Jackson and Sharpton because we want Jackson and Sharpton…for the perverse pleasure of complaining about them or, for some, for the more insidious agenda of diminishing the discussion.</p>