Imus Fans - The Ball Is in Your Court
I'm not an Imus fan, though I do listen maybe one morning a month, so I'll slightly miss not having that option. (I only listen to the radio on my 25-minute morning and evening commutes. I usually listen to WFUV (what I would call aging-hippie radio) or the NPR station WNYC. Both are commercial free - which is key, as radio commercials are particularly excruciating). So other than my horror at the media's continued insistence on giving Al Sharpton a platform, I have no dog in this fight. But Imus does have fans, who surely must be very upset about losing one of their few daily pleasures.
They should fight back. Death threats aimed at Al Sharpton are, of course, inappropriate, however tempting. But what to do? They should refuse to listen to the replacement show, Mike and the Mad Dog, and not be charmed by these hosts' support of Imus. They ought to organize boycotts of sponsors who abandoned Imus. But perhaps most effective would be to monitor black radio and publicize anti-white bias. This should not be hard to do - black airwaves are filled with bile against whites, but our suicidal society has become nearly incapable of recognizing it for what it is. The current strategy - of pointing to black entertainers being disparaging of other blacks - is not going to do it. No one minds self-defacing humor, however foul. But the Imus crucifixion clearly establishes a rule that you cannot speak ill of another race or sex. Well, finding black activists and feminists who speak venomously against whites and men on the air should not be hard. So the ball is in Imus fans' court - if they want their Imus-in-a-Morning back, they have some work to do to get it back.
They should fight back. Death threats aimed at Al Sharpton are, of course, inappropriate, however tempting. But what to do? They should refuse to listen to the replacement show, Mike and the Mad Dog, and not be charmed by these hosts' support of Imus. They ought to organize boycotts of sponsors who abandoned Imus. But perhaps most effective would be to monitor black radio and publicize anti-white bias. This should not be hard to do - black airwaves are filled with bile against whites, but our suicidal society has become nearly incapable of recognizing it for what it is. The current strategy - of pointing to black entertainers being disparaging of other blacks - is not going to do it. No one minds self-defacing humor, however foul. But the Imus crucifixion clearly establishes a rule that you cannot speak ill of another race or sex. Well, finding black activists and feminists who speak venomously against whites and men on the air should not be hard. So the ball is in Imus fans' court - if they want their Imus-in-a-Morning back, they have some work to do to get it back.
posted by ziel | 4/14/2007 07:03:00 PM
8 Comments:
Forget about Imus. Anybody who would fawn over a nincompoop like Tom "Flat Earth Society" Friedman, who Imus had on his show frequently, deserves to be put off the air.
But how about the media's coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre? I have yet to hear one network news outfit point out that the shooter was A) A Chinese national who only recently arrived from Shanghai on a student visa, B)seemed to have been trained in execution-style assassinations, and C)was specifically targeting engineering students at one of America's foremost engineering schools.
So the scumbag communist Chinese are using a new tactic to steal a "competitve advantage" from the U.S. Besides sending thousands of spies over here each year, committing industrial and military espionage on a massive scale, they're sending hitmen over here to kill our best future engineers.
And the Wall Street Journal loves to boast that we've merged with this bunch to form "Chimerica Inc.".
tom_m,
They haven't released the killer's identity and you have all this inside info?
The Chicago Sun-Tribune has that info, as reported yesterday by World Net Daily.
The reason the mainstream media hasn't reported that "info" is because the killer didn't fit their assumed profile of a white, gun-toting redneck from the hills. If the killer had, they would have released that info within 5 minutes of when the shooting stopped.
Now they're identiifying him as a South Korean. That's what I get for relying on World Net Daily, and for posting off-topic.
Pravda just came out with a report that Cho Seung-Hui was a big Imus fan and was seeking revenge, so your post isn't that off topic.
"The reason the mainstream media hasn't reported that "info" is because the killer didn't fit their assumed profile of a white, gun-toting redneck from the hills. If the killer had, they would have released that info within 5 minutes of when the shooting stopped."
Just like the beltway sniper. The local idiot keystone kop Moose and the rest of the ass clowns in the media were looking for nazi skinheads. Meanwhile those two black, muslim murderers were trying to get caught.
If we can back to Imus, if only for a minute, I, too, would watch him occasionally as I prepared for work.
He was fairly untalented, cranky, self promoting (what big morning show guy isn't) and a pretty big pain to listen to. I did listen for his interviews with some interesting reporters and commentators (Russert, David Gregory, Andrea Mitchell,etc) but found him to be fairly uninformed (or ill informed) and just a general drag on the show.
What WFAN should do, rather than abandoning the whole show, is just let Charles McCord carry on, interviewing newsmakers, providing news, etc. Admittedly, he'd have a lot of time to fill with all of Imus' self promotion extracted but it could still be a good show.
No doubt that several on air personalities, black and white, have said much worse, and not in the (inappropriate) joking manner that Imus made his comments. The question is whether we want to really do as Ziel says and hunt them down and expose them, resulting in more censorship and less free expression of ideas, good, bad, racist or otherwise. Not sure that is the way to go. Sharpton has already been exposed as the complete hypocrite that most know that he has always been. He still believes the Tawana Bralley story! You notice that Jesse Jackson backed away from this pretty quick once people started drawing parallels to "Hymie Town", even though he had a good defense, ie. I can't be fired as I have no job but, in some respects I lost my job because I was going to be President.
Imus will be fine. He's got plenty of dough. His biggest punishment is undoubtably coming from his witch wife, who just released a new book which will not be helped by this. No sex for Don, assuming there was any after the conception of the golden boy, Wyatt. My concern is for Bernard McQuirk, the producer/on air personality who started this by first mentioning the apparently newly banned "H" word. He may have a tough time getting a job unless some free speech advocate steps up. I hope he does as he is a very intelligent, well informed and humorous guy who may have stepped over a line that he didn't realize was there.
I think calling Imus a shock jock in the days of Howard Stern, Opie & Anthony, John & Ken (afternoons on KFI640 in LA), The Regular Guys (hilarilous- kicked off Atlanta radio twice), Mancow (who apparently has learned is lesson and is more like Girlcow now), etc. is a mischaracterization. While Imus occasionally said some outrageous things, he has, for years, been much more of just a cranky old man. Had this occurred last week rather than two weeks ago (pre-V Tech), this would have been a blip on the screen, if anything. Apparently, this was a slow news cycle and the masses can understand this better than the Alberto Gonzales mess or the continued slaughter in Iraq.
Anyway, it's done. Imus is gone and our airwaves are free from contoversial, racist, inappropriate talk. Anyone ever hear of changing the station. If I got Al Sharpton here (not likely in Louisiana), that's what I'd do. Let the market speak. No way that the sponsors heard enough in that short a time and with so little discussed/resolved to make an informed decision regarding continued sponsorship. It was a knee jerk reaction and is dangerous for free speech. I venture to guess that, like Howard Stern, Jimbo hates Imus but would agree this was wrong.
By the way, tom_m is a nut. Take him off the air.
Harlem
Ziel: By the way, I listen to WFUV too. It is not for "aging" hippies, it is for "aged" hippies.
No station with Vin and Dave Herman can be anything but aged but, as one myself, I appreciate their ongoing efforts to find music no one has ever heard. Unfortunately, it is too frequently unheard of for good reason.
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