Oprah, Forget Dr. Phil! This Woman is AWESOME!

Wow...just, wow. I think I...love you.

Mr. Kettle? You have a call on line one...

Okay, enough already! Let’s get something straight: Imus’s comments were deplorable (and clearly racially insensitive), but the furor over this situation is not only disproportionate but misguided. The hypocrisy of our so-called black leadership is so glaringly obvious that I'm far more upset with those who are "outraged" than with Don Imus. I’m not even talking about Jackson’s past experience with carelessly flung epithets or Sharpton’s inability to apologize for past transgressions. I’m talking about the continued attack against straw men such as Michael Richards and now Don Imus. Being outraged at Imus is like being mad at somebody for pissing in the sewer. Yeah, it's wrong, but let's keep it in context. Do you know what outrages me? This:


Guilty of being rich, black and famous? Are you out of your fracking minds? He's a prick who got caught "making it rain" in a pre-Pac-Man Jones kind of way on an underage girl. Yet he's also got one of the hottest songs in the nation which gets played roughly 478 times per hour on most local R&B/Hip-hop stations. A sampling of the fine lyrics:

Ima Ima Ima Ima flirt
Thats right I tell the truth and the whole truth
When it come to hoes I be pimpin like I supposed to,
rollin em like I supposed to, shinin like I supposed to
In the club fuckin wit honeys like I supposed to
I dont understand when a nigga bring his girlfriend to da CLUB
Creepin all ova the floor wit his girlfriend in da CLUB
And wonder why all these playas tryna holla at her
Just soon as she go to the bathroom nigga Ima holla at her
A dog on the prowl when im walkin through the mall
If I could man I would probably flirt wit all of yall
Yea- yea homie you say she yo girlfriend
But when I step up to her, Ima be like tarzan
Believe me man this is how dem playas do it in the CHI
In plus we got them playette foolers in the CHI
Now the moral of the story is cuff yo bitch
I'm black, handsome, I sing, cause im rich and Ima flirt

Of course this has been the case for a while now. This is nothing new, not by any stretch. Yet, here we are picketing outside of CBS radio. What about the dozens of Hot 97-style Hip-hop/R&B stations that put this kind of crap in heavy rotation 365/24/7? From L.A. to ATL to NYC, we get inundated with this and call it a part of our "culture." "Well parents need to monitor what their kids listen to!" Oh yeah? Between music videos, radio, magazine covers (is every magazine some variation of Maxim or what?) and not to mention the internet, it is nigh impossible for a parent to act as a filter for all the garbage kids get exposed to. Hell what am I talking about kids? Garbage that we get exposed to. The Spartans faced better odds in '300'. The point is with all the huge targets out there, we pick on a frail geriatric cowboy whose target audience are the type of people who cried when they heard Strom Thurmond died.

You can't pretend people such as Michelle Malkin don't have a point when they highlight these double standards. (Man, how screwed is our 'leadership' when I find myself agreeing with the likes of Michelle Malkin?). Reading the message boards of popular sites like digg and fark which have predominately young white male audiences, it's funny how quickly they can point out how farcical this whole thing has been. The most common thought is that Imus made a horrendous joke, but if you're going to single him out, then go after the worst offenders as well.

So Sharpton and his ilk are probably patting themselves on the back for getting Imus canned from MSNBC and probable further even worse repercussions from CBS. But to quote the Wolf: "Let's not start sucking each other's *!@#$ just yet." 99% of black folks (Dept. of Unverifiable Statistics) either don't listen to Imus or even knew who he was prior to this incident.

What's been accomplished? After the Richard's flap I heard all this hand-wringing about how we'd abolish the 'n'-word from public discourse, yet a couple of months later I attended Cedric the Entertainer's concert and his routine was liberally peppered with the word. What are we to make of this? I can at least understand the 'in'-group vs. 'out'-group mentality when it comes to that word. I vehemently disagree with it, but I can at least find a debatable point in it. But I'm sorry, you can't defend the use of 'ho' or 'bitch' or any of the misogynistic language that frequently flows over the airwaves no matter how affectionate you think somebody is being when they say it. Even when the words are edited, they're still there and when we buy the CDs, we can hear the lyrics in their original unspoiled splendor.

Of course the issues are deeper than the media we consume, but let's not act like these things aren't a huge part of the problem. When I taught middle school I never had to admonish a student for rapping/singing the transcript from Don Imus's show. Some would argue that it doesn't matter that Sharpton and Jackson are themselves hypocrites and that Imus needs to be punished regardless of who put him on the hot seat. Imus says as much himself. A person might go on to say just because we hear these things all the time in black popular culture, other's are not granted license to indulge in the same vulgar behavior. Two wrongs don't make a right after all, but let's not act like these two wrongs are even remotely equal.

Wow.