[Vision2020] Jason Whitlock on Imus

Fri Apr 13 13:07:47 PDT 2007

Yes!  Finally - someone gets it!

Thanks for sharing this.

J  :]

>From: Tim Lohrmann <timlohr at yahoo.com>
>To: vision2020 at moscow.com
>Subject: [Vision2020] Jason Whitlock on Imus
>Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 10:39:45 -0700 (PDT)
>
>
>   From the Kansas City Star
>   http://www.kansascity.com/182/v-print/story/66339.html
>
>
>   Posted on Wed, Apr. 11, 2007
>   Imus isn’t the real bad guy  Instead of wasting time on irrelevant shock 
>jock, black leaders need to be fighting a growing gangster culture.By JASON 
>WHITLOCK
>Columnist
>   Thank you, Don Imus.
>   You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.
>   You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to 
>pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is 
>still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social 
>equality.
>
>   You’ve given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally 
>televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to 
>respond to your poor attempt at humor.
>
>   Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we 
>can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude 
>ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than 
>eradicating our self-hatred.
>
>   The bigots win again.
>
>   While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock 
>jock, I’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers 
>basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s 
>or Snoop Dogg’s or Young Jeezy’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps 
>and hos.
>
>   I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don’t have 
>the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk 
>killas.
>
>   It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed 
>our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, 
>corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior 
>expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, 
>self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.
>
>   Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and 
>wait for someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the 
>mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves.
>
>   It’s embarrassing. Dave Chappelle was offered $50 million to make 
>racially insensitive jokes about black and white people on TV. He was 
>hailed as a genius. Black comedians routinely crack jokes about white and 
>black people, and we all laugh out loud.
>
>   I’m no Don Imus apologist. He and his tiny companion Mike Lupica blasted 
>me after I fell out with ESPN. Imus is a hack.
>
>   But, in my view, he didn’t do anything outside the norm for shock jocks 
>and comedians. He also offered an apology. That should’ve been the end of 
>this whole affair. Instead, it’s only the beginning. It’s an opportunity 
>for Stringer, Jackson and Sharpton to step on victim platforms and elevate 
>themselves and their agenda$.
>
>   I watched the Rutgers news conference and was ashamed.
>   Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for eight minutes in 1963 at the March on 
>Washington. At the time, black people could be lynched and denied 
>fundamental rights with little thought. With the comments of a talk-show 
>host most of her players had never heard of before last week serving as her 
>excuse, Vivian Stringer rambled on for 30 minutes about the amazing season 
>her team had.
>
>   Somehow, we’re supposed to believe that the comments of a man with 
>virtually no connection to the sports world ruined Rutgers’ wonderful 
>season. Had a broadcaster with credibility and a platform in the sports 
>world uttered the words Imus did, I could understand a level of outrage.
>
>   But an hour-long press conference over a man who has already apologized, 
>already been suspended and is already insignificant is just plain 
>intellectually dishonest. This is opportunism. This is a distraction.
>
>   In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no 
>threat to black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so 
>destructive and must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about 
>the idiot rappers on BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the 
>country who use words much more powerful and much more destructive?
>
>   I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point 
>glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men 
>shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to 
>be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his 
>listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re 
>selling out their race if they do?
>
>   When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he 
>is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when 
>you’re not looking to be made a victim.
>
>   No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta 
>rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms 
>to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. 
>There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are 
>going to sit it out.
>   For previous columns, go to KansasCity.com
>
>
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