Dines on Imus
Don Imus and Ron Jeremy
Racy Sex, Sexy RacismBy GAIL DINES
So Don Imus finally pushed the envelope too far by calling the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy headed hos”. This lethal combination of racism and sexism galvanized African-American and women’s groups, media watch-dog organizations and members of the public into action. His fate was sealed when major corporate responses, including Staples and Procter & Gamble pulled their advertising on his show, which reached 1.6 million people each week on 61 stations across the country. On canceling the show, CBS president Moonves stated that “there has been much discussion of the effect language like this has on young people, particularly young women of color”. While some supported Imus on the grounds of free speech, CBS’s decision to cancel the popular and profitable show became inevitable in the face of a rising chorus of condemnation and outrage. Reason won out. As much as Imus has the right to express racist FULL ARTICLE
And a hat tip to Amee for this excellent bibliography:
Following is a non-exclusive list of books by Black feminists who address
Hip-Hop and Feminism
(There are many more books than those that are listed):
Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip-Hop’s Hold On Young Black Women
by T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting
Prophets in the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip-Hop
by Imani Perry
When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down
by Joan Morgan
From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism
by Patricia Hill Collins
Gender Talk: The Struggle For Women’s Equality in African American Communities
by Johnnetta Betsch Cole and Beverly Guy-Sheftall
QUIZ question for the day: How does liberal abstraction allow Imus to claim moral parity with hip-hop artists?
Joe Ciarrocca:
I commend Gail Dines on her excellent article about sexism and racism. America a society that has been ethically, morally philosophically, intellectually, emotionally shutdown for its entire history!
18 April 2007, 5:00 pmDrew:
A: Um, because liberal abstraction is really just postmodernism in a neoliberal disguise?
Because there are some types of speech worth restricting?
I have trouble connecting with the Imus case (I’m young, white, male, and hate basketball).
This, on the other hand, caught my eye:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6570253.stm
Thoughts?
18 April 2007, 5:51 pmMark:
The equivocation of Imus and hip-hop artists was the major thrust of African-American sportswriter Jason Whitlock’s editorial “Imus isn’t the real bad guy”.
http://www.kansascity.com/182/story/66339.html
Whitlock got a lot of television coverage recently being brought on shows as a foil for Al Sharpton. He’s certainly got a lot of support from the right.
Whitlock manages to blend both the abstract equality of liberalism (well black comedians do it, why can’t Imus?) with the two minutes of hate that a large part of the nation indulges in whenever Sharpton or Jackson are mentioned.
19 April 2007, 9:29 amLegume Sam:
I think it’s time we start demanding the return of “equal time” provisions (as once existed before the 1980s) and their use against the “editorializing” of racists and sexists. For every racist and sexist comment heard, seen, or published on the mainstream media, the oligopoly responsible for this airing must be made to grant equal time for anti-racist and anti-sexist commentators.
20 April 2007, 3:25 pmDeAnander:
I’ve been mulling over the whole Imus thing and thinking that what I’d really like to have is naming rights over the network that hires/hired him. I am not sure I would care so much if he stays on the air spouting his poisonous drivel, if only the name of the network reflected reality — TIA! — it should now be called the Aryan Brotherhood Broadcasting Network or some such. just imagine the possibilities: the Woman-Hating Dickhead Nightly News Hour, the We Own Your Brain Channel, the White Supremacist Report, the Fearmonger Factor… if only I could get my mitts on the title generator and program guide camera-ready copy
[this is kind of a joke post btw, I am actually glad that this hatemonger is off the air. but what to do about the rest of ‘em — including the ones who use more bourgeois livingroom language, like Friedman? and what about that obscene performance from McCain, chortling like a fratboy savouring a prank as he promotes the incineration of large numbers of human beings and ruination of yet another sovereign nation?]
20 April 2007, 3:54 pmthecutter:
http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com/2007/04/thinking-blogger-awards.html
I’ve tagged you as a thinking blogger.
20 April 2007, 4:45 pmCharles:
[lbo-talk] Misogyny finally starting to have consequences
John Costello
Thu May 3 21:57:02 PDT 2007
Backstory: AutoAdmit is a law student blog and forum site. They have a
history of allowing, without moderation, racist and sexist posts and
threats of violence and rape against specific female bloggers and law
students. They hosted a “hottest female law students” contest, in
which women were entered without their consent and where men vomited
all sorts of misogyny at the “nominees” if they dared to ask their
pictures to be removed. Some of the women complained; the Washington
Post took notice; the executives who run the board defended “freedom
of speech” and “right to free expression”; and finally one of them,
Anthony Ciolli, resigned. Nonetheless, the law firm who had offered
him a job rescinded their offer.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/05/03/law-firm-rescinds-offer-to-ex-autoadmit-director/
> [Managing partner] DeWitt wrote that the content of the messages on the board are
> “antithetical” to the values of the firm and the “principles of collegiality and respect
> that members of the legal profession should observe in their dealings with other
> lawyers.” DeWitt pointed out that in an online letter to another blogger, Ciolli and his
> partner Jarret Cohen identified themselves as AutoAdmit’s administrators and
> defended its “free, uninhibited exchange of ideas.”
>
> DeWitt continued: “We expect any lawyer affiliated with our firm, when presented
> with the kind of language exhibited on the message board, to reject it and to disavow
> any affiliation with it. You, instead, facilitated the expression and publication of such
> language. . . . ” He wrote, his resignation from the site was “too late to ameliorate
> our concerns.”
This is excellent, and I hope we see more of it. Misogyny, racism,
homophobia, etc. are able to cling to life in part because there are
no consequences for people who participate in, abet, or enable them.
I’m glad to see that firms are starting to decide they would rather
have nothing to do with such people.
–
4 May 2007, 1:27 pm“It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling
exception, is composed of others.” — John Andrew Holmes