MSNBC suspends Imus simulcast for two weeks

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a_priori said:
It is very easy for anyone to talk themselves into being offended about something. Imus and company offended me many times with their Catholic bashing and I’ve only been Catholic for less than a week so it goes way back.

Anyway, we live in a fallen world where the playing field is not level. There is no sense of right and wrong or even a sense of justice really. Society tends to be utilitarian about everything.

If we realize that this is not our home and that we are spending an extremely small period of time in our “earth suit” here on this cosmic motor lodge, things make more sense. Our citizenship is in Heaven. We are called to be faithful here on behalf of our Savior. Instead of sitting around and feeling offended we should realize that it is normal down here and go feed somebody.
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well said, believers in Christ have a higher standard we are not part of the world. Part of forgiveness, is growing beyond, and this could be a situation that could let people grow if we are humble and let God move and work in us.
 
Well the cards fall as the cards fall. I guess the ball is on your court. Are you settling for a hollow victory or are you going to go after those making a living off of saying those remarks?

And also remember whenever anyone says, “no there is not a double standard for rap, the situation is different…” Tell them you just described a double standard, if you have to say it is different you just created a dichotomy. A different situation is not the same. If situations are distinct, I don’t think it’s hard to conclude there is more than one situation. Basicily that arguement says to call people …s is not objectionable in itself, it depends on the context.
 
we still donated to the childrens funds, alot of people are giving. People can still give in the 24 hr telethon which ends with Imus show tommorow but i dont know if hes fired if he will finish the telethon. I guess it makes sense to shut down the cancer kids, sids telethon.:mad: Rev Al and Jessie marched in the studio and met with execs while the telethon was on. :mad: :mad:

I still say the team wanted Imus to get to know them and see how they were, I wonder if they will try to get to know Imus and see how he is.

But after being on Oprah and a tour Im starting to think not. Its funny until someone told those girls what he said they never would have known. I wonder if Al not so Sharpton has meet with them yet? Besides since when should those girls decide their worth based on a elderly mans opionion especially one they never heard of.

Now theres talk of taking down the next one. Rush is on the hit list. Oh and msnbc is considering diversity in programming. I wonder if there will be openings on BET. 😉 for diversity.

chip chip chip
 
EXCELLENT!

I just got done watching on MSNBC the reverend that helped moderate the meeting and who some of the women on the team’s reverend at the campus. I’m happy to know that they all handled themselves well. I still think the coach should have handled the first press conference differently.

It was nice to hear him say, he’s not trying to solve the worlds problems, but wants to resolve this situation. The women were did feel bad about the situation, but where getting bombarded with comments to say something. The coach felt she would have had problems recruiting. Although I still feel she’d have had more legs to stand if at that press conference she didn’t make her women sound as if they are victims. IMHO, I think she’d have done better, by saying “Imus’s comment couldn’t be further from the truth. No one on my team has anything to apologize for, and I wouldn’t recruite anyone who I wouldn’t respect and thought who could be a great athlete and student. Imus has done a lot of great work, especially in his camp, and probably knows that once you get to see some of those stories, each one can be awfully insperational. I invite Imus here, because if he gets to know our team members, he ought to be impressed by them as well.” But that’s just my opinion on what I think would have been a more effective press confrence.

It was nice to hear the reverend end by saying, when Imus and his wife left, Imus told him that he never knew the impact his words could have on another’s life. The Reverand also brought up how it compared to the Duke case. There is this rush on these people’s lives, that just throws their life into upheavel, which is too bad when it’s not justified.

I think I said, I didn’t respect Imus enough to comment on his comment. It’s really too bad that he is off the air, after that, if he realizes the impact of what he says, I might just have felt I respected Imus enough, to think I’d feel his comments were worth commenting on.
 
Update::: Imus has been fired from both his tv show and the radio show. It was announced yesterday. (4/12) I wonder who’s next?
 
I think he deserved to be fired. I hope other outrageous radio personalities will now learn to tone down their offensive remarks. Yes, Imus is free to say whatever he wants and not be thrown in jail, that’s what free speech means. It doesn’t mean that NBC or CBS has to employ him.

If we Catholics want the same consideration by the major media, we need to unite politically so we can have the same clout that the Black community has shown.
 
davy39 said:
Update::: Imus has been fired from both his tv show and the radio show. It was announced yesterday. (4/12) I wonder who’s next?
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Here’s a summary from the NY Times – it brings up one interesting point, Imus made his remarks on Good Friday and reporters were looking for something to fill up post-holiday airtime. I did notice one odd thing, the writer says:
He also picked on the wrong coach. C. Vivian Stringer protects her** posse**; her eloquent, aggressive defense of the team — and the obvious class of the players at the podium — made for riveting television with a great deal of emotional content. The Rutgers institutional decision to treat the affair as a teachable moment put Mr. Imus in an even deeper hole.
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Hey, Mr. Liberal! Would you refer to a bunch of white girls as a posse? Sheriffs and rappers have posses. Coaches have teams.

A few observations:
Imus has deserved to be fired for a long time. It’s the fact that it took this long that is disgraceful.

Les Moonvez’s statement firing Imus that he “was revulsed” * by his remarks was a lie. It doesn’t take nine days to be revulsed. If he was revolted by anything it was by sponsors bailing on him and the prospect that the bad publicity wasn’t going to just blow over.

The fact that other people are as bad, or worse, is irrelevant. It never cut any ice with my parents when I got caught doing something.

Lastly, the “Black leaders” criticising Imus are chosen by the same corporations that broadcast him in the first place and put out own the studios that create rap music and the radio stations that play it. So if Jesse and Al want to keep appearing on TV and keep the corporate sponsorships rolling in they know whom to knock and whom they shouldn’t.

The “African-American community” never elected Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. Sadly, you will never see on MSNBC or FoxNews the thousands of pastors who are preaching against rap, teen pregnancy and violence in the community. You likely won’t even see them very often on their local news – they’re not interesting enough and they’re probably too busy anyway.
 
didymus said:
Hey, Mr. Liberal! Would you refer to a bunch of white girls as a posse? Sheriffs and rappers have posses. Coaches have teams.
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Right on there, he should at least have the respect enough for the team to call it a team. Also, I’ll contest what the writer wrote, I don’t think the coach did a very good job ‘protecting’ her team. She did a fair enough of a job, but IMHO not the best.
 
Rev. Jesse & Al jump hammer Imus for one stupid remark( which I do not defend). Yet they say nothing about the rap/hip hop world which degrades women of their own race in horrible, horrible manners. What a joke, those two guys…
 
didymus said:
Les Moonvez’s statement firing Imus that he “was revulsed” * by his remarks was a lie. It doesn’t take nine days to be revulsed. If he was revolted by anything it was by sponsors bailing on him and the prospect that the bad publicity wasn’t going to just blow over.*This is interesting. Yes, the words themselves are highly inappropriate in a civilized society and Imus was definitely in the wrong.

It would be interesting to go back in time and go into the Rutgers lockeroom while they were on the court during the playoffs. Collect all the Ipods and do a study to determine how many times each of those offensive words can be heard.

These words are incredibly offensive to me as a Christian. But I fear that many people in the equation suffer from selective indignation.

Like someone said, Imus uses a word and gets fired. Another uses the same word and gets a Grammy. A pox on both their houses. They’re all bringing us a notch lower.

Hopefully the situation will end up with all people having more respect for each other.
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I have listened to Imus from time to time over the years. Much of what was said on the show forced me to change channels momentarily so I didn’t have to be subjected to certain things. I did like much of the political commentary and many of his guests though.

I was particularly annoyed by Bernard’s segments where he did impressions of the “Cardinal”.

Two days ago here on local radio a caller said “I’m Catholic and I think Bernard’s Cardinal imitation is hilarious!”. The host agreed. I’ve only been Catholic for weeks but I don’t think a lot of Catholics “get it”. This type of humor is blasphemous.
 
We all have to be measured in our sensitivity to what is offensive. We have to be measured in a response for those who abuse what is inappropriate. We have a right to free speech, but we also must try to avoid abusing it. If something might be deemed an abuse of it, one ought to at least have a good reason for it, putting the right to use and not rendering it an abuse.

There is a good reason to have free speech laws, sometimes the status que really isn’t good. Actually taking into account original sin, I’m sure there is never a time when there is something wrong with the status que. If everyone wants to jump on the “I’m offended and we’ve got to stop this,” bandwagon, we will lose our right to say something that other’s would deem offensive.

Case in point, when it comes to homosexuality there are things that can be said over the airwaves that are not supposed to in Canada. Do you want to lose the right to be able to make an apology against possible policies? Yes, we as Catholics will be mocked, but if our message goes way out of fashion we might not be able to spread it without going underground. The message of the Catholic Church is often offensive, sometimes it offends myself, but we still need to be able to have a conversation about what is right. If what is right offends me, I don’t want that voiced silenced, I want it to heard to challenge me. Will having that flexibility allow inappropriate things to be heard, yes it will, but that is where critical reasoning skills need to be taught and learned.
 
This indignation over Imus’ words and their consequences is just a manifestation of our denial of the real issues. As long as we focus on the comment, we don’t have to think about where it came from.

It’s just like the Richard’s “n” word debacle: people were more outraged about his use of the word than his professed yearning for the days of lynching!

True, we all say things we don’t mean sometimes, but when you look at the context of those incidents and the repetitiveness, you can’t escape the fact that the words simply reflect what’s in their hearts. The only difference between Imus and many, many people out their is that they have the sense to keep their mouths shut.

People like him need to rehabilitate their minds by actually interacting with real black people - not the stereotypes they have in their heads. They need to face the fact that you don’t have to be a KKK member to be racially prejudiced. My son learned that the first time a sweet, little grandma switched her handbag to the opposite side when he took a table next to hers at a restauant.

To diminish the wrongness of Imus’ comments by pointing to the use of similar words by rappers is just ridiculous. Rap music has been criticized by many public figures (not to mention parents) since it’s inception. What does that have to do with Imus? Has he been taking his inspiration from rap albums or is the implication here that rappers represent the black community?

I could go on, but what’s the point? Some people just don’t get it…
 
seekerz said:
People like him need to rehabilitate their minds by actually interacting with real black people - not the stereotypes they have in their heads. They need to face the fact that you don’t have to be a KKK member to be racially prejudiced. My son learned that the first time a sweet, little grandma switched her handbag to the opposite side when he took a table next to hers at a restauant.
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I wouldn’t doubt that Imus has interacted with real black people often. I’m sure he’s brought many black children who are quite sick over to his camp too.
 
You are so right! Some people just don’t get it! What Imus said does not have a darn thing to do with Rap.
 
jman507 said:
I wouldn’t doubt that Imus has interacted with real black people often. I’m sure he’s brought many black children who are quite sick over to his camp too.
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By interact, I don’t mean having someone on his show or helping some poor black kid. I mean casual, friendly, on-the-same-level kind of interaction like he’d have with his white social circle. Judging by the other off-color comments recounted on this thread, it’s difficult to imagine that he’s ever had that kind of interaction.

The sure cure for the foot-in-mouth disease, is to really see each person as a brother or sister (not just in a ‘pie in the sky’, figurative sense). There’s no way he would have gone on radio and made that comment about his own sisters.

That’s how we should judge each such incident: what if this had been said about/done to my mother, father, sister, son or daughter? That’s the same standard we should hold our own comments to.
 
Dale_M said:
I think the way he pronounces it is not uncommon among some portions of the African-American population. I heard it frequently from low-income blacks in the South Side of Chicago. As such, it is simply a linguistic variation similar to regional pronunciations. For example, people in some parts of Nebraska may say “warsh” instead of “wash”. Or, like President Bush, saying “nucular” instead of “nuclear”. I wouldn’t worry about pronunciation unless he spelled it wrong.
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I’ve been thinking about this post for a couple of days and it really bugs me. Mispronouncing words is a big deal to me. I like Pres. Bush, I voted for the man twice, but I can’t help but cringe when he says “nucular,” honestly, it makes him sound like an idiot, which he isn’t. The same holds true for saying “aks” instead of ask. Maybe it’s wrong of me, but I tend to assume someone who can’t get a basic word right (for whom English is their first language) is not very bright. Regional variations or words common to certain areas are fine for casual conversation, but for a radio show, a public speech, or other public forum, people need to speak English properly.
seekerz said:
To diminish the wrongness of Imus’ comments by pointing to the use of similar words by rappers is just ridiculous. Rap music has been criticized by many public figures (not to mention parents) since it’s inception. What does that have to do with Imus? Has he been taking his inspiration from rap albums or is the implication here that rappers represent the black community?
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This has everything to do with Imus. Why don’t Sharpton and Jackson go after black rappers who think it’s OK to call women whores? Unless they do that, their furor over Imus is just plain stupid. I don’t like the man, I didn’t listen to his show after I got a taste of it, but it still bothers me that black men can insult women but when a white man does it it’s the end of the world. What Imus did was wrong, but he’s symptomatic of the lack of respect and decency in our society.
 
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