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Updated: Imus under the gun after "nappy-headed hos" remark [VIDEO]
On last Wednesday's show, veteran shock jock Don Imus and his producer Bernard McGuirk called the (mostly black) Rutgers basketball team "nappy-headed hos," (VIDEO 1).
On Friday, after calls for an apology and Imus' resignation reached a pitch, he squirted out a teensy little apology (VIDEO 2). Richard Prince writes:
However, Philip Nobile, a New York writer who has called attention to offensive Imus comments for years, told Journal-isms, "I heard the so-called apology this morning. The words were right but Imus was obviously insincere.
"The statement was read without affect, to the smallest audience at 6am, and never repeated. McGuirk said nothing."But the Imus show couldn't leave well enough alone; no, they had to have a segment, also on Friday's show, featuring a piss-poor Bill Clinton imitator chalking Obama's $25 million fund-raising up to "pimping" or "selling crack." (VIDEO 3)
"Somewhere we must draw the line in what is tolerable in mainstream media," he said. "We cannot keep going through offending us and then apologizing and then acting like it never happened. Somewhere we've got to stop this."In video 4, Imus talks more about the issue on this morning's program: "I am not a racist..." For another take on the scandal, see Jill Nelson's essay HERE: "Word up, Don: being racist, sexist, and disrespectful towards women and others isn’t cool, hip, or a revolutionary act of politically incorrect subversion, it’s plain wrong..."
Tagged as: media, racism, al sharpton, don imus
Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.
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