The (distraction over) Imus Distraction is (itself) a distraction from 911Gate.

Your site adds to the ‘Imus Distraction’ by removing important op eds like those about Howard Zinn to discuss Imus? You also removed other important issues to add a Blackberry article?
Perhaps you should apply to the current misadministration for a job. You obviously dont know how to run your own site and would fit righ in with the neo con morons, along with the new ‘war czar.’ BTW, what happened to the war czar piece? Was it replaced by the ‘blackberry crisis?’
You post an article, get a few honest observations which dont fit in with your agenda (your very suspect agenda), and suddenly the article disappears and is replaced by pablum. Or, you post a controversial article that elicits many interesting comments, you sit on them, then post thirty of them at once burying many interesting comments where you know that they have little chance of being read.
I once thought your site had a shot of becoming a real forum for views not found in the MSM, but now I think you have been coopted by the MSM.
It appears to me that you are attempting elicit left leaning comments and then get them off the net before they can be read. Could it be that you are just fishing for people with left leaning views?
Whatever you are trying to accomplish, it is amaturish and clumsy.
Fortunately I have other sites that appreciate my comments, or at least tolerate them.
See you in the comics.

The loud mouth should have been fired a long time ago, he has been using racial epithet for years.

There is no reason why he was allowed to remain on the air after having called the females who are college students and athletes, hoes.

Also, black and white artists denigrating women ought to be pulled off the air-period. I am sure some or most of you read the recent article by Ralph Nader on the subject of treatment of women serving the military.  This fellow seems to have the same kind of attitude toward women as many men of the military do. As a civilian who worked for the military in Iraq, I know for fact that status of women from the point of view of some or many men in the military is that of a hoe, a bimbo and a piece of meet. Imus mimicked the very sentiment of the military. Shame on him.

It is time to stop systematic denigration of women. It has to start here and now. We criticize Islam because it restricts women clothing, but allow our radio personality, entertainment industry and military denigrate women as a class, what hypocrisy?  If we stand up, they stand down. Those who say demeaning words means nothing, have never been subjects of it. It cuts through soul of a female.

Robert if you are reading this, please let me hear from you.

Was this really just a black issue !?  For instance, I don’t recall Don Imus ever having insulted any of the millionaire, professional, NBA players, although I have to confess that I have perhaps listened to Imus for an accumulated lifetime total of perhaps 10 minutes. 

To me, he was merely indulging in trying to entertain his [ and NBC’s and ABC’s] favorite target demographic: the youngish male pro-jock audiences, who felt challenged by the minor spotlight being cast on an accomplished women’s basketball team.  Race or hair style was just a convenient target.

One would have hoped that in a less sclerotic political environment, this could have been turned into a great advance for women’s sports.  For instance, think how the Bobby Riggs - Billie Jean King match helped boost the equality women’s tennis over 30 years ago, and imagine what a face-saving gesture of a challenge between Don Imus and his cronies versus the Rutgers players would have accomplished for women’s basketball!  It would have been an incredibly popular and profitable [ for Rutgers] event.

But, instead of allowing us to consider how unbalanced women’s sports coverage is on any of the networks, the hypocritical networks decided to fire Imus and hopefully keep the issue buried.

How is it, that those who the insult is not directed at, get to pass judgement on the importance of the offence?

I argee some are distracted.

Don Imus is nothing more than a loudmouthed, bigoted, idiot. He will not be missed. And on the other hand, Rev. Jackson and Rev. Sharpton do not represent Black leadership or Black thought. They simply represent themselves, and are enabled by the media to stir passion within discussions.Now the real questions are 1: How do the guns and drugs get into Black communities? 2: Why are there more prisons being built than job training centers? 3: Why are social services set up to give more help to single mothers than to poverty stricken families trying to succeed? 4: If we can rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq, why can’t we rebuild the infrastructures of our own inner cities?

If Imus and his cohorts get on the radio and scream “Nigger!” repeatedly for four hours, that has nothing to do with black people.

Yes.  Let’s prach “responsibility” while irresponsibly avoiding the issue: hate speech does adversely impact its targets.  Or are we to look away, with you, from those young ladies at Rutgers who, not fitting your racist sterotyping of the black community, are making something of their lives—and didn’t asked to be directly abused by a foul-mouthed bigot whose appeal is to a largely WHITE low-life audience who cheers his every juvenile, hateful name-callling?

It has everything to do not only with Imus, amnd not only with his targets, but also with a culture which allows such hate-speech, and then makes excuses for it when it injures the innocent by blaming the victims.

Why does it matter what he says?

Gee, why should it matter that our airwaves are filled with hate-speech, blatant racism, and “fans” who eat up and emulate those in their own lives.  Why should it matter that thowse who defend such garbage as “free speech” never mention the fact that every right is inextricably entwined with a responsibility?  Are we to be a civil society?  That is the inference that can be drawn from your at-length racist victim-blaming stereotyping.  Then how do we get there when the lowest of gutter-incivility is offered as a commercial product, and defended as somehow not mattering?

It never ceases to amaze that those who originated, and purport to complain about the “coarsening of the culture” are the very same “family values” individuals who don’t debate or discuss, but rather name-call, smear, and lie against those they perceive as their opponents.  And then there are those who defend that incivility as not mattering by blaming the victims of it.

Okay, here is a koan of sorts.  Tomorrow, I mean tomorrow, magically, cosmically, spiritually, ALL guns and drugs (legal and illegal) disappear - I mean like they are gone, kaput, vanished.  I state this because it is those two (implied) contributory factors that always seem to make (or enter) this whole frigging type of debate.  It may be coded, but it is always implied.
For so damn many of you insta-pundits it seems like those two things - and those two things only - are the raison d’ jour for societal ills.  Conversely enough though,  it is those two things which are the raison d’ jour for all too many veiled racist remarks masquerading as commentary on these types of boards.
So to those - and for those, I offer, like the sound of “one hand clapping:” tomorrow, all guns and drugs vanish, what is the sound of a society with no drugs or guns?

Tia makes sense and I agree but James Harris clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he says that “black children who continue to grow up in violent and disjointed communities?  By and large, predominantly black areas have festered in tragedy while black leadership has failed to reverse the plight of the black populace.” Clearly he has never been to or met anyone from a black community. Furthermore, while it is true that black men kill each other too much it’s either because of the vast sums of money in the drug trade or crimes of passion like most murders by any racial or economic group. In addition, this crisis of black on black crime: according to the FBI statistics, over the last 30 years or so, 85% of the crimes against white people were committed by white people. 90% of the crime against black people were by black people, 93% of crime against Hispanics were by Hispanics, and a whopping 97% of Asian crime is by Asians. Yet crime against ones own kind is looked at as some bizarre pathology unique to blacks? N-word, please! Fact is, crime is down to historically low levels. Fact is, the real racism that hurts exists in the employment practices, especially the upper levels, and in arrests and sentencing. Sharpton and Jackson and Dyson should be all over those issues.

I’m surprised by much of the sympathy for Imus. I would classify him with all of the other pompous idiots who populate our radio and cable airwaves. I only wish we could also get rid of Coulter, O’Reilly, Hannity, Malkin, Limbaugh, Robertson, Falwell, Kristol, and other extremists who have dragged this country down into the gutter.

I think the article makes an important point.  As a teacher, I have experienced rude and disrespectful treatment from African-American students. My children have alse been the target of racism from Black peers. Based on my experience, racism exists among many groups.  I do think that it is important to “fire” those who spew racist remarks (ho, pimp, etc.), regardless of their race.  Let’s look into ALL the television programs that air racist language/behavior/attitudes, especially those on BET and on MTV.

Firing Imus will not solve the black’s problems!? I’ll be damned.

Guess we’d better try something else.

How about boiling Sharpton in a big pot and serving him up for a turkey dinner?

Or taking Jesse’s expense allowance and distributing it to black kids for school supplies?

Or letting blacks vote, and making sure their votes are counted and count, for a change, in the ‘08 election, even in Florida?

Or taking 1% of the Iraq debacle budget and rebuilding every school in the US attended by so few as one black child, and making sure they have the amenities we afford our political folk?

And taking another 1% of the Iraq throw-away money and hiring the smartest folks we can to make sure every black (and non-black) kid in the USA is given every chance and inducement to take his educational level to the highest possible, so a disaster like the current screw-up administration has less chance of recurring?

And you may not believe it, but I’ll bet if you assigned Imus to that task, he’d bust his butt and succeed, or die trying.

Let me clarify: I’m not in agreement with Dr. Knowitall . . . let’s just elevate the discussion and educate extremely short-sighted people instead of getting upset and calling names—it isn’t productive to engage at that base level.

Mutterhals,

If we’re going to restore pride to all people, calling someone a “fucking racist” isn’t getting us off to a good start, is it?  Take some meds and calm down. 

I find Harris’ article insightful and right on target in addressing the “distraction” that is the Imus debacle. As an African American woman, I had a visceral reaction to Imus’ comments.  But shortly thereafter, I went back to worrying about the bigger issues plaguing not only my community but Americans at large.  We are spendind inordinate amounts of time, money and resources in Iraq when that could be put to better use, bringing all Americans, all members of the human race for that matter, into parity with each other.

Hey chip-your-shoulder (Dr. Knowitall), you wanna know a good way to restore pride to all people? We start refering to ourselves as human beings, not black this and white that, fucking racist that you are.

Great article Mr. Harris! I’m somewhat of a self- educated, MLK biographer, and I can absolutely agree MLK is rolling his eyes from less than mediocre chumps like Jesse & Al.  Ralph Abernathy’s bio confirms it, along with multiple other sources, MLK barely tolerated Jesse and had to reprimand and scold Jesse often saying: “Jesse, you have too much hate in your heart,” as for Al Sharpton, paleeeze, even more so, but that’s what happens when you kill the real deal—you get less than mediocre characters right out of a comic book.

Spot on.

The Imus thing is being made into a distraction… it didn’t have to be.  Anyone saying anything as freaking thoughtless and hateful as he did on the airwaves neeeds to be sanctioned, but the real problems remain unaddressed.

So what about Coulter?

“Simply put, he gets it” That is the problem He doesn’t get it, he is a self-serving bombastic racist, the same as Jesse Jackson. Both are feathering their nest at the expense of Blacks and duping white liberals. They are as vile as the Bush machine…they just play a different game, it is called the Confidence game. Riling the Black population and flummoxing the issues is their right of passage to riches. Nothing for the 30-60 % unemployed Black Man. Shame on these hypocrites and their believers.