Don Imus was fired from his radio talk show from the station MSNBC. During a show he was commenting about the New Jersey's Rutgers Basketball team calling them "Nappy Headed Ho's".
The conversation started talking about the Rutgers big win, when Bernard McGuirk, Imus' executive director, commented, "that's some hard-core ho's there." Imus replied "That's some Nappy Headed Ho's there". It was meant to be a joke. I can understand how being on the radio you are going a mile a minute and could say things in the heat of the conversation then go "shit did I just say that". Your live on air, can you take it back, no. Does that mean he should not have been reprimanded...no.. He deserved the suspension. But it was the use of the word "nappy headed" that got him in trouble. It was okay for the executive director of the show to call them ho's. Grey's Anatomy star Isaiah Washington got away with calling the gay community 'faggots'. Did he get fired...No! I guess the gay community doesn't deserve any respect or justice either.
I think because he was an old white guy with a cowboy hat, the fall out came alot faster and alot more damaging to him than would have someone of color. If the radio show host was black I don't think we would be having these conversations. There is a double standard. The fallout comes primarily through news outlets. Most people didn't even hear the context or inflection of the conversation. It was television that exploded the issue.
Al Sharpton, Reggie Jackson, heads of the NAACP and the Rutgers players have called way more attention to this than should be. Yes, as a talk show host, you have a responsibility to your public, but you also have free speech. It was meant as a joke, you could listen to it, and know it was a joke and not meant to intentionally harm anyone.
Last year's most critically praised comedy, Borat: won Sacha Baron Cohen a Golden Globe for playing a Kazakh journalist who calls Alan Keyes a "genuine chocolate face" and asks a gun-shop owner to suggest a good piece for killing a Jew.
As Imus pointed out, Al Sharpton is so quick to get him fired, but has Al Sharpton ever come out and apologized to the Duke Players that were prosecuted, judge publicly, and setenced before they even got a trial by Al Sharpton and others in the NAACP, for the alleged rape of a black stripper. They were released, charges dropped, and their lives ruined all because of a false accusation.
I hate saying it, but there is a huge double standard in America. I am sick of being labeled because I am white. I have been discriminated against because I am white. I have been punched for no reason by a perfect stranger in front of my 89 year old grand mother, because I was white. A woman in the African Museam in DC didn't want to help me because I was white, I have been called a white honkey, a white bitch. I had a gun pointed at my head by a black man in college and when the officer came to file the report, his reaction..."of course you would say it was a black man, your white in a black neighborhood, why are you even here". Most would never guess that my minor in college was African Literature or that my senior thesis was on African Tribal Ritual. My beliefs are assumed already because of the color of my skin. But the majority of my nationality is made up of some of the most historically racially prosecuted peoples.
I agreed with the suspension of Imus, his comments were insensitive and inappropriate. But to ruin the guy's career, over something that he really didn't mean to hurt or offend... I think goes a little too far. I hope CBS doesn't follow in the footsteps.
UPDATE: CBS decided to be pricks and get on the bandwagon and fired Don Imus. A man that is in the broadcasting hall of fame. Wow. So when will Washington get fired for calling gays faggots? I guess that won't happen..he isn't an old white guy.
After a conversation with my mother, I decided to re-think the argument with hubby. My mother is totally on my side, but something she said made me think about the purchases that hubby and I have made over the last year, which include a 50" dlp television & a Charlse Fazzino peice of artwork. Those were joint decision purchases, that had we not made, we might have a bit to buy the car we need. SO I told hubby I was setting the fight aside, but that he needed to help me out and make the other car happen. I can't punish him for decisions we have both made. 
