[Rhodes22-list] On Don Imus

[R22RumRunner at aol.com]

COMMENTARY
Imus isn’t the real bad guy
Instead of wasting time on irrelevant shock jock, black leaders need to be  
fighting a growing gangster culture.
By JASON WHITLOCK - Columnist
Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our  
real problem. 
You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend  
that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most 
 important fight in our push for true economic and social equality. 
You’ve given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally  
televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to  
respond to your poor attempt at humor. 
Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can  
once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves  
into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our  
self-hatred. 
The bigots win again. 
While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock,  I
’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball  
team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’
s  or Young Jeezy’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos. 
I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don’t have the 
 heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas. 
It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our  
youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and  
overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this 
 culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug 
 dealing and violent. 
Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and wait for 
 someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of 
repeating  the things we say about ourselves. 
It’s embarrassing. Dave Chappelle was offered $50 million to make racially  
insensitive jokes about black and white people on TV. He was hailed as a 
genius.  Black comedians routinely crack jokes about white and black people, and we 
all  laugh out loud. 
I’m no Don Imus apologist. He and his tiny companion Mike Lupica blasted me  
after I fell out with ESPN. Imus is a hack. 
But, in my view, he didn’t do anything outside the norm for shock jocks and  
comedians. He also offered an apology. That should’ve been the end of this 
whole  affair. Instead, it’s only the beginning. It’s an opportunity for 
Stringer,  Jackson and Sharpton to step on victim platforms and elevate themselves 
and  their agenda$. 
I watched the Rutgers news conference and was ashamed. 
Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for eight minutes in 1963 at the March on  
Washington. At the time, black people could be lynched and denied fundamental  
rights with little thought. With the comments of a talk-show host most of her  
players had never heard of before last week serving as her excuse, Vivian  
Stringer rambled on for 30 minutes about the amazing season her team had. 
Somehow, we’re supposed to believe that the comments of a man with virtually  
no connection to the sports world ruined Rutgers’ wonderful season. Had a  
broadcaster with credibility and a platform in the sports world uttered the  
words Imus did, I could understand a level of outrage. 
But an hourlong press conference over a man who has already apologized,  
already been suspended and is already insignificant is just plain intellectually  
dishonest. This is opportunism. This is a distraction. 
In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no threat to  
black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so destructive 
and  must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about the idiot 
rappers on  BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the country who use 
words much  more powerful and much more destructive? 
I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified  
selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting 
each  other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a 
baby-daddy  rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’
re  suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if 
they  do? 
When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is  
what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not  
looking to be made a victim. 
No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta  
rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to  
negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no  
money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it  
out. 
To reach Jason Whitlock, call (816) 234-4869 or send e-mail  to 
_jwhitlock at kcstar.com_ (mailto:jwhitlock at kcstar.com) . For previous  columns, go to 
KansasCity.com








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