You’ve by now become aware of the media shit storm over Don Imus’s comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball team and how they got him canned not only from his MSNBC simulcast, but got him booted from his long running radio show. Harvey Fierstein has a op-ed in the NY Times today. RudePundit echoes some of what Harvey is saying.
I only knew Imus from the stuff that Howard Stern used to say about him. I think my uncles listen to him. I never liked the guy. I think his humor is stupid and old and boring. I couldn’t understand the guy most of the time. I really don’t give a shit that he’s gone even though I’m sure he’ll pop up somewhere, probably on Sirius or XM.
The Wall Street Journal had a good point…that things like this normally wouldn’t have been noticed or kept going except that now clips from your show can be posted on the Internet, preserved and commented upon. Dinosaurs like Imus have to realize that the game has changed. Both CBS and MSNBC have been condoning his patriarchal old white dude shtick for years. The most recent comments were probably middle of the road for him, but it somehow caught a lull in the news cycle and the huge corporations that host Imus decided they couldn’t stand the heat.
The reason Imus was canned is as plain as his own last name, I’m Us. Nobody wants to face that, so let’s get rid of him, make ourselves feel better for a few minutes and get back to what we were doing.
[tags]donimus, firing, cbs, msnbc, rutgers, harveyfierstein, nytimes[/tags]
3 Responses to “I’m Us”
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Man I am way behind on this. Anyways, I got the impresssion he was just doing that thing that white guys do, which is to talk like black guys for comedic effect briefly (juxtaposition being the humor). Like he might also say “bust a cap in your ass”, old version of the same bit. It’s kind of a tired bit at this point. But anyways, I can’t really get behind firing someone over that kind of thing (I do hate Imus though – same reasons, boring old guy stuff). If you look past the race issue, which is really quite a flimsy one, what I didn’t like about the line was that its net effect was to lash out at some kids who didn’t deserve it. Celebrities and pro athletes can be fair game, but you don’t need to pick on college students who didn’t do anything to deserve it, and that was where the poor taste was to me.
Wow I just read my post, I am the new chair of the dept of redundancy dept.
Yeah, firing him sets a precedent for firing others, so, in that respect, I’m not sure I’m down with it. This is a good article on the firing.