Fw: On Imus

The photo did not upload in the previous attempt. I'm trying again. Sorry.

The article below gives a pretty standard liberal stance towards Don Imus and his return to morning radio.

I don't particularly like Imus anymore, but I must say that he often displays a sense of humor and takes stances far to the left of people such as Rush Limbaugh, Bill O"Reilly, the rest of the Fox crew, Matt Drudge, etc. In fact, of the entire crew, he is the most liberal and intelligent. As he once said, his audience is that of Howard Stern "but with a G.E.D.".

Talk Radio is hoplessly neandrathal in its appeal. In fact, it is so bad that when I first heard Rush Limbaugh, I thought he was a comedian. It was only after a day or two, hearing his listeners, that my jaw dropped and I realized that there were poeple out there who actually believed this stuff. I know much better now.

Well, here is an illustration of what our erstwhile illustrator think of him and and article discussing his return to the air. As for me, he isn't available here and I know how to change a station on my radio. See, there usually is a tuner (with which you can change the station and get something else or a switch or knob you can use to shut it off. If that fails, pulling the coard of of the electric socket is almost certain to shut it off. It is is still running, you will need to remove the batteries -- they are usually in a compartment at the back.

Cheers

*ZNet | Culture*

*Why is Imus back in the game?
He got $20 million, a vacation and a new contract. What kind of
punishment is that?*

*by Dave Zirin; Los Angeles Times
<http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-zirin18nov18,1,7995757.story?coll=la-news-comment>;
November 21, 2007*

After a nine-month vacation, radio shock jock Don Imus will be
back on the air in December. Perhaps you thought that Imus'
comments calling the Rutgers University women's basketball team
"nappy-headed hos" would have rendered him untouchable -- that
at best he would find a home in the outer banks of satellite radio?

But no. Instead, the man who seamlessly blended wonkish Beltway
interviews with crude racist and sexist shock jockery will be
returning to his old life, this time shaming the WABC airwaves
in New York and, presumably, being syndicated across the
country. Imus' punishment in retrospect appears like a massage
on the wrist: He received a $20-million settlement from CBS for
cutting his contract short, he took a nine-month vacation, and
now he's returning to commercial radio.

Time certainly hasn't healed all wounds. Deepa Kumar, a media
studies professor at Rutgers, said to me recently: "Imus' return
to radio exposes in no uncertain terms how low the corporate
media will sink to make a profit. For students and faculty at
Rutgers who organized to get Imus fired from CBS Radio, this is
a slap in the face."

Rutgers basketball coach C. Vivian Stringer says today, "I won't
kid you, I was and still am very angry."

Already a terrific fiction has been laid out about why Imus lost
his job in the first place. Some have said it was all the
Machiavellian machinations of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
Sportswriter Jason Whitlock, for instance, called them "domestic
terrorists" for leading protests. Others have written that the
uproar was strictly a function of political correctness. As Dick
Cavett wrote in the New York Times: "How absolutely silly it
looks from this distance. . .. Among the erstwhile Imus
program's virtues was that it provided a welcome relief from
political correctness."

In other words, we couldn't take a joke. It's certainly true
that there is no shortage of shock jocks making millions by
dumping on people because they're the wrong color, gender or
sexuality. This is big business built on the idea that some
people are less human than others. But Imus hit a nerve when he
applied this brand of "humor" to sports.

Remember that Rush Limbaugh felt the biggest backlash of his
career when he said that the media over-hyped Philadelphia
Eagles football star Donovan McNabb out of their "social
concern" to see a successful African American quarterback. After
thousands of angry calls and e-mails, Limbaugh was bounced from
a sports gig on ESPN. Both Imus and Limbaugh built empires on
this kind of bombast, but when they cross-pollinated their
bigotry with sports, a new level of anger erupted.

We are relentlessly sold the idea that our games -- our precious
sports -- are a safe space from this kind of political abuse.
Sports are a "field of dreams" where hard work always meets
rewards. We treasure this idea. When the Rutgers basketball
players defy the odds and make the NCAA finals -- and get called
"nappy-headed hos" for their trouble -- it presses an
all-too-raw nerve.

For women's sports, this nerve is particularly raw. This is the
35th year of Coach Stringer's career. This is also the 35th year
of Title IX, the landmark 1972 legislation aimed at, among other
things, leveling the playing field between men and women in
sports, offering the promise of equal opportunity and equal
access. It was a victory of the women's and civil rights movements.

According to the Women's Sports Foundation, one in three high
school- and college-age women partake in sports today.
Twenty-five years ago, that number was one in 27. That's
important, in part, because young women who play sports are less
likely to suffer from osteoporosis, eating disorders or the
darkness of depression. This law has improved the quality of
life for tens of millions of women across the country.

But for women, sports remains a place of denigration, not
celebration. Swimsuit issues, cheerleaders and beer-commercial
sexism define women in the testosterone-addled sports world.
Every woman who has played sports, and every man with a female
athlete in the family, felt Imus' words in a way that cut
deeply. He woke a sleeping giant: those of us who value women's
contributions in the world of sport. When Imus targeted the
Rutgers women's basketball team for racist and sexist abuse,
that sentiment crystallized. His continued unemployment could
have served as a potent reminder of a moment when the young
women of Rutgers stood up and said enough is enough.

But after a ludicrously short cooling-off period, Imus is back.
It's remarkable to see him come out a winner in all of this, but
for Stringer -- despite all the turmoil -- there are no regrets.
She says she valued the opportunity to raise the issue of the
way drive-by sexism permeates the mainstream media.

"God knows that I would love to win the national championship,
and I have been in pursuit of this all of my life," Stringer
said. "But, if I were given the choice -- do you wish to speak
to the world and really have an effect or a change and make
people feel better, or to win a national championship, if I have
to choose between the two -- I would take what happened this
year because far more people paid attention and far more people
were really and truly affected than a basketball game could ever
have been."

Imus once again has the microphone. The question will be whether
he learned anything in his nine months away, or if the trials of
Stringer and her team were for naught. Or maybe Cavett is right
and we should all just smile as he lets the hate fly.

[David Zirin is the author of "Welcome to the Terrordome: The
Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports. You can receive his column
Edge of Sports, every week by going to
_http://zirin.com/edgeofsports/?p=subscribe&id=1_
<https://mail.zmag.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://zirin.com/edgeofsports/?p=subscribe%26id=1>.
Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com]]