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There Must Still Be Something Out of Kilter

Section: Entertainment

Kam Williams

There Must Still Be Something Out of Kilter
by Kam Williams

�That's some nappy-headed hos there, I'm going to tell you that now, man
[laughing], that's some... woo!�
-- Don Imus describing the Rutgers Women�s Basketball Team, 2007

�That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and
lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever
helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place!
And ain't I a woman?
Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into
barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much
and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well!
And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold
off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus
heard me! And ain't I a woman?
Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of
kilter. I think that 'twixt the Negroes of the South and the women at the
North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty
soon.�
-- Sojourner Truth at a Women's Rights Convention, 1851

Make no mistake, Don Imus knew exactly what he was doing and to whom when he
and his creepy cohorts chose to belittle the achievements, to question the
femininity, and to smear the reputations of the members of Rutgers Women�s
Basketball Team. He picked on them because he figured he could get away with
it, as usual, because they were black, because they were female, because
they were powerless, and because they were defenseless and ostensibly
without the political clout to hold him accountable for the venomous,
vituperative attack, no matter how baseless or profane.
Had Imus disparaged females from, say, a predominantly Jewish basketball
team as �hooked-nosed Hebe hos� before going on and on about how masculine
and unattractive they were and comparing them to dinosaurs and grizzly
bears, there would be no need for me to write this article, and no ongoing
debate about whether or not he should be fired, because network execs would
have yanked him out of the studio and handed him his walking papers on the
spot. Despite Imus� claim that he�s an �equal opportunity offender,� both he
and his on-air sidekicks are well aware of the unwritten rules as to which
gender and ethnic groups it�s acceptable for them to ridicule.
The Imus Show already had a disgraceful history of demonstrating
insensitivity specifically towards black women prior to this incident, such
as the occasion on which the host referred to PBS-TV nightly news anchor
Gwen Ifill as a �cleaning lady.� Then there was the time that his sports
reporter, Sid Rosenberg, suggested that tennis stars Venus and Serena
Williams were better suited to appear on the cover of National Geographic
than Playboy.
So, it�s no surprise that Rosenberg, an admitted crackhead, was again one of
the willing participants in Imus� latest lame, white male-bonding
opportunity at the expense of the dignity of these innocent,
highly-accomplished African-American females. Also chiming in with approval
was executive producer James McGuirk who called them �jigaboos.� The only
more insulting slur I can think of is the N-word. The message this
inveterate racist Imus is so fond of delivering is that no matter what odds
black women manage to overcome in a society which undervalues them by
design, he is always ready to remind them of this country�s color-coded
caste system by resorting to inflammatory, offensive stereotypes.
Curiously, he showed surprisingly-little remorse while defending himself in
a transparently-phony non-apology during which he instead went on the
offensive. "I may be a white man, but I know that ... young black women all
through that society are demeaned and disparaged and disrespected ... by
their own black men and that they are called that name," he arrogantly
asserted.
I don�t know what bizarro world Imus is talking about, because I have never
referred to any black woman as a �ho,� and I have never witnessed any other
black man doing so, except in movies and music videos. Thus, it is very
telling that Imus is apparently citing as the source of the inspiration for
his callous remarks gangsta rap and blaxpoitation flicks which most
African-American males routinely complain about but have no control over
their mass marketing.
By contrast, consider the fact that Michael Jackson was successfully
pressured to recall a CD containing the anti-Semitic invectives �Jew me, sue
me� and �Kick me, kike me,� and to re-shoot its video and to re-release the
song with different lyrics. Just because blacks do not enjoy the same sort
of leverage as entertainment executives, does not mean that
African-Americans endorse the misogyny running rampant in rap and the rest
of the entertainment media.
Rather, the mercenary aspect of crapitalism is at fault, as it allows the
almighty dollar to set the programming agenda. Never forget, this is a
culture which exploits the human condition for profit.
The Rutgers women shouldn�t expect much to come from their meeting with
Imus, except for maybe more salt in their fresh wounds. Unfortunately,
productive communication can�t occur until both parties to the conversation
respect and understand each other. Impatient to get his job back, Imus is
likely to approach them in a results-oriented fashion. They, on the other
hand, as soulful spiritual folk, will undoubtedly be process-oriented and
content only if they can somehow connect heart-to-heart.
Despite his millions of listeners, Imus has already proven himself to be
woefully out of touch with the pulse of the country, isolated and hopelessly
adrift on an anti-intellectual ice floe without a moral compass. Isn�t it
obvious that at the dawn of a historic era when the nation sits poised
perhaps to elect either its first black or first woman president, there is
absolutely no reason why this bigoted, over-opinionated Neanderthal should
ever be behind a coast-to-coast microphone again, let alone consulted to
participate in the discussion of the indefensible words which ought to bring
down the curtain on his career?
Either it�s ovah for Imus, or, as sister Sojourner Truth said so many years
ago, there must still be something out of kilter.

Lloyd Kam Williams is an attorney and a member of the bar in NJ, NY, CT, PA,
MA & US Supreme Court bars.

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