Showing posts with label Don Imus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Don Imus. Show all posts

Friday, August 13, 2010

Dial 'N' for numbskull


Don Imus said he was sorry, too.

Yet that wasn't enough to save his butt . . . or his TV and radio shows. And pffft, he was gone. For a while.

And back in 2007, Imus didn't even get the Rutgers women's basketball team on the other end of a phone line in order to drop "nappy headed hos" on 'em direct. Or taunt them with the N-word.

Over and over again.

No, that's what Dr. Laura Schlessinger did the other day. On the radio. With an African-American caller on the other end of the line.

"Jade" called in to the program to ask what to do about her white husband, who did nothing when friends and relatives came into their house, made insensitive racial remarks to her and even bandied about the N-word. In her presence.



YOU WOULD THINK
that's pretty cut and dried. Somebody's ass needs to be kicked here. And it ain't Jade's.

Well, Dr. Laura's a shrink, and I guess shrinks just don't think like regular people. From a transcript on the Media Matters website:
CALLER: OK. Last night -- good example -- we had a neighbor come over, and this neighbor -- when every time he comes over, it's always a black comment. It's, "Oh, well, how do you black people like doing this?" And, "Do black people really like doing that?" And for a long time, I would ignore it. But last night, I got to the point where it --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't think that's racist.

CALLER: Well, the stereotype --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't think that's racist. No, I think that --

CALLER: [unintelligible]

SCHLESSINGER: No, no, no. I think that's -- well, listen, without giving much thought, a lot of blacks voted for Obama simply 'cause he was half-black. Didn't matter what he was gonna do in office, it was a black thing. You gotta know that. That's not a surprise. Not everything that somebody says -- we had friends over the other day; we got about 35 people here -- the guys who were gonna start playing basketball. I was going to go out and play basketball. My bodyguard and my dear friend is a black man. And I said, "White men can't jump; I want you on my team." That was racist? That was funny.

CALLER: How about the N-word? So, the N-word's been thrown around --

SCHLESSINGER: Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is nigger, nigger, nigger.

ON WHAT PLANET does Jade's dilemma warrant a rant on "If black comics can say it, why can't we?" That's the kind of thing I used to hear from my late, incredibly racist old man.

In the Deep South.

And on and on Schlesinger went, using "nigger" at every opportunity, over and over -- as a taunt of the "hypersensitive" black caller.

Unbelievable . . . not.

I wonder how "hypersensitive" the Orthodox Jew psychiatrist would be about people coming into her home bragging about how this one guy wanted way too much for his house, but he Jewed him down.

Or telling her to her face that the damn "Kikes" were just too hypersensitive about racial and ethnic slurs.

Somehow, I don't think she'd be amused. I'd hope she would respond with an uppercut to the jaw.

BUT DR. LAURA is very, very sorry now, because this is national talk radio, and Don Imus-type money is on the line here:

I talk every day about doing the right thing. And yesterday, I did the wrong thing.

I didn’t intend to hurt people, but I did. And that makes it the wrong thing to have done.

I was attempting to make a philosophical point, and I articulated the “n” word all the way out - more than one time. And that was wrong. I’ll say it again - that was wrong.

I ended up, I’m sure, with many of you losing the point I was trying to make, because you were shocked by the fact that I said the word. I, myself, realized I had made a horrible mistake, and was so upset I could not finish the show. I pulled myself off the air at the end of the hour. I had to finish the hour, because 20 minutes of dead air doesn’t work. I am very sorry. And it just won’t happen again.

LET'S HOPE it doesn't. But sorry, as Dr. Laura would be quick to tell a caller, isn't necessarily enough.

And if she comes out of this whole thing with her national radio empire intact, somebody needs to apologize to Don Imus.