[NYTr] Imus Is Snoop's Frankenstein Monster Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 14:38:55 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit sent by Bill Koehnlein Imus Is Snoop's Frankenstein Monster [Note: See the second article, below, about racism and sexism in the entertainment industry: "The Rev. Al Sharpton, among the loudest critics calling for Imus' termination, indicated that entertainment is the next battleground. 'We will not stop until we make it clear that no one should denigrate women,' he said after Imus' firing. 'We must deal with the fact that ho and the b-word are words that are wrong from anybody's lips...It would be wrong if we stopped here and acted like Imus was the only problem. There are others that need to get this same message.'"-BK] New American Media - April 13, 2007 http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=4e77edb5386bddb51d8d795ac84899be Imus Is Snoop's Frankenstein Monster by Earl Ofari Hutchinson Editors Note: CBS fired radio host Don Imus one week after he insulted the Rutgers women's basketball team with a racist and sexist remark. Rap stars should shoulder some responsibility for Don Imus' remarks, argues NAM writer Earl Ofari Hutchinson. Hutchinson's new book The Latino Challenge to Black America: Towards a Conversation between African-Americans and Hispanics (Middle Passage Press and Hispanic Economics New York) in English and Spanish will be out in October. ** LOS ANGELES -- Now that Imus is officially gone, the question is, will Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and the civil rights leaders, black professional and women's groups demand that the Interscope Geffen A&M record label pull Snoop Dogg's forthcoming album, The Big Squeeze? They should, and that means ignoring Snoop's loud protest that he's no Don Imus. He's not; he's worse. While Imus' "nappy-headed ho's" slur has been plastered all over creation, the 'B' and 'H' expletive-laced rant that Snoop unleashed against Imus has barely gotten any mention. His R-rated words are so vile they can't be printed in polite company. But here's the gist of what he said: Snoop gave veiled praise to the Rutgers women's basketball players as ladies of distinction. But that's only a ploy. To him, they're the rare exception among black women. Most are B's and H's, poor, hood-dwelling losers. In one grotesque sentence in his knock against Imus, Snoop managed to get in all the ancient stereotypes about black women. This is the same Snoop that strolled out of a courtroom moments after copping a no-contest plea on felony drug and firearm charges and being slapped with five years probation and community service. He then delivered his self-serving Imus and I "are two separate things" rant. This is the same Snoop that in the next few weeks will hit the road and promote The Big Squeeze, which has such good housekeeping titles as "We came to Bang Out," "Pop Pop Bang," and "Fuckin is Good for U." The album features some of Snoop's rap buddies and rivals and gives them a chance to be heard and, of course, bought. And you can be assured that these rap maestros offer a generous sprinkling of B's and H's and other endearing references to black women. And Snoop's corporate owners will bank millions off its sale. Unlike the 350,000 MSNBC viewers and the few hundred thousand more CBS radio listeners that cackled with, and at, Imus' inane trash talk, millions of young and not-so-young people will dance to, talk up, and delight in the rapper's skewed descriptions of black women. That talk will be embedded even deeper in the youth and adult lexicon. Snoop called Imus and other shock jocks that spew their on-air slurs "tired old white [men]." Imus paid the price and got canned for it. That only happened because civil rights leaders, black professional and women's groups, as well as legions of blacks picketed CBS, threatened to sponsor boycotts and threw mountains of enraged postings onto websites. Within hours of Imus ladling out his bile against the Rutgers women, my mailbox filled up with these postings demanding his scalp. Yet, I have not received one angry email since Snoop made his 'B' and 'H' dig against Imus. I haven't heard any outraged calls for Geffen to pull the album, or threats of a boycott if they don't. I've heard no denunciations from Sharpton, Jackson or the National Association of Black Journalists, and not a peep from women's groups about him. A few years ago the NAACP got called out for nominating some of rap's most vile women-bashers for image awards. The last straw was when the NAACP nominated R. Kelly, who was accused of sex crimes against underage girls. Though the NAACP voters back pedaled fast, and tightened the reins on who got nominations and awards, it set a subtle tone: it's better to ignore gangster rap groups than mount a full-court attack on them. Imus was a different matter. And many blacks have gone through tortured gyrations during the Imus furor to defend Snoop and claim that his offenses are different. But Imus on his own would not have slurred the Rutgers women with the pejorative term "nappy-headed ho's." He would have demeaned them with something like this: "They're some rough-looking broads" or "They're some funny-headed chicks." That would have drawn few squeals. But "nappy-headed ho's" -- that line is straight from the rapper's playbook. The day after Imus was officially canned by MSNBC, the shock jocks that thrive on on-air bashing and trashing minorities, gays, women, and Muslims, ran wild. They relentlessly played lyrics from the gangster rappers. This was damage control, and their insidious point was to cancel out the furor over Imus and deflect the finger of guilt from themselves. In a perverse sense though, they got it right. Imus paid the price for his bile. On the other hand, Snoop and his buddies simply have upped the price for their records. As long as the outcry from civil rights groups and blacks remains feeble, scattered, and disjointed, rappers will continue to ring cash registers while self-righteously defying anyone to compare them to Imus. Imus demeaned a basketball team. Snoop and his pals have demeaned a whole generation especially young black women and blacks have let them get away with it. That's why Imus is their Frankenstein. ** Associated Press via WINS radio - April 13, 2007 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IMUS_RAP?SITE=1010WINS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT With Imus Gone, Critics Turning to Rap by Marcus Franklin NEW YORK (AP) -- Fighting in vain to keep his job, radio host Don Imus claimed that rappers routinely "defame and demean black women" and call them "worse names than I ever did." That's an argument many people made as the Imus fallout intensified, culminating with his firing Thursday for labeling the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos." Now that Imus has been silenced (for the moment), some critics are moving down the radio dial to take on hip-hop, boosting the growing movement against harmful themes in rap. "We all know where the real battleground is," wrote Kansas City Star columnist Jason Whitlock. "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." "We have to begin working on a response to the larger problem," said the Rev. DeForest B. Soaries Jr., who as pastor of the Rutgers coach helped mediate the Imus imbroglio. Soaries announced Friday that he is organizing a nationwide initiative to address the culture that "has produced language that has denigrated women." The larger problem was alluded to by CBS President and Chief Executive Officer Leslie Moonves when he announced Imus' firing: "The effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society ... has weighed most heavily on our minds as we made our decision." Pointing out that the rapper Mims uses "ho" and worse epithets in his chart-topping song "This Is Why I'm Hot," columnist Michelle Malkin asked: "What kind of relief do we get from this deadening, coarsening, dehumanizing barrage?" The Rev. Al Sharpton, among the loudest critics calling for Imus' termination, indicated that entertainment is the next battleground. "We will not stop until we make it clear that no one should denigrate women," he said after Imus' firing. "We must deal with the fact that ho and the b-word are words that are wrong from anybody's lips. "It would be wrong if we stopped here and acted like Imus was the only problem. There are others that need to get this same message." It is a message that was spreading even before Imus' comments. After "Seinfeld" actor Michael Richards was castigated for a racist on-stage rant, the New York City Council passed a symbolic resolution banning the n-word, and other cities around the country have passed similar measures. Cultural critic, author and columnist Stanley Crouch, a longtime foe of rap music, suspected the Imus ordeal would galvanize young black women across the country. He said a key moment was when the Rutgers players appeared at a news conference this week - poised, dignified and defying stereotypes seen in rap videos and "dumb" comedies. "When the public got to see these women, what they were, it was kind of shocking," Crouch said. "It made accepting the denigration not quite as comfortable as it had been for far too long." Some defenders of rap music and hip-hop culture, such as the pioneering mogul Russell Simmons, deny any connection between Imus and hip-hop. They describe rap lyrics as reflections of the violent, drug-plagued, hopeless environments that many rappers come from. Instead of criticizing rappers, defenders say, critics should improve their reality. "Comparing Don Imus' language with hip-hop artists' poetic expression is misguided and inaccurate and feeds into a mindset that can be a catalyst for unwarranted, rampant censorship," Simmons said in a statement Friday. The superstar rapper Snoop Dogg also denied any connection to Imus. "(Rappers) are not talking about no collegiate basketball girls who have made it to the next level in education and sports," he told MTV.com. "We're talking about hos that's in the 'hood that ain't doing ---- that's trying to get a n---- for his money." Criticism of rap is nothing new - it began soon after the music emerged from New York City's underclass more than 30 years ago. In 1993, the rapper-turned actor Queen Latifah challenged rap's misogyny in her hit song "U.N.I.T.Y." That same year, C. Delores Tucker, who was chairwoman of the National Political Congress of Black Women Inc., led an organized movement - which included Congressional hearings - condemning sexist and violent rap. That same year, the Rev. Calvin Butts of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem drove a steamroller over a pile of tapes and CDs. In 2004, students at Spelman College, a black women's college in Atlanta, became upset over rapper Nelly's video for his song "Tip Drill," in which he cavorts with strippers and swipes a credit card between one woman's buttocks. The rapper wanted to hold a campus bone marrow drive for his ailing sister, but students demanded he first participate in a discussion about the video's troubling images. Nelly declined. In 2005, Essence magazine launched its "Take Back the Music" campaign. Writers such as Joan Morgan and Kierna Mayo and filmmaker Byron Hurt also have tackled the issue recently. T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, author of "Pimps Up, Ho's Down: Hip Hop's Hold on Young Black Women" and a professor at Vanderbilt University, said many black women resist rap music and hip-hop culture, but their efforts are largely ignored by mainstream media. As an example, the professor pointed to "Rap Sessions," the 10-city tour in which she's participating. She said the tour and its central question - does hip-hop hate women? - have gotten very little mainstream media coverage. "It's only when we interface with a powerful white media personality like Imus that the issue is raised and the question turns to 'Why aren't you as vociferous in your critique of hip-hop?' We have been! You've been listening to the music but you haven't been listening to the protests from us." Crouch said that change in rap music and entertainment likely won't come fast, because corporations are still profiting from the business - but it's coming. "I've been on (rappers) for 20 years," Crouch said. "I was in the civil rights movement. I know it takes a long time when you're standing up against extraordinary money and great power. But we're beginning to see a shift." ** WCBSTV.com - April 14, 2007 http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_104002437.html Sharpton Gets More Security After Death Threats National Action Network Cites Phone Calls, E-Mails [Note: The women of the Rutgers team are also receiving threats, coming from the Imus-type "constituency", devoted listeners to hate radio. While Imus' words eventually came back to bite him in the ass, the scum and cowards that are his loyal followers are trying to turn Imus' own bigotry away from him and instead transform the victims into the criminals. While the women on the basketball team have dignity and integrity while the Imus crowd has none, the sorry bottom line is that racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia are not sure to die a sudden death anytime soon. --BK] (CBS) NEW YORK - WCBSTV.com learned early Saturday that the National Action Network has increased the Rev. Al Sharpton's security due to a number of death threats in the wake of the firing of radio host Don Imus by MSNBC and CBS Radio. There will also be added security at the National Action Network's headquarters in Harlem. "We have no way of knowing the seriousness of these threats, but they have intensified greatly in the last two days as Rev. Sharpton was figured prominently in the firing of Don Imus," Attorney Charlie King said in a statement early Saturday morning. "Since Rev. Sharpton survived a personal assassination attempt where he was stabbed, we take any and all threats, especially at this volume, very serious. Therefore, all may be comfortable that we will not take the safety of our staff or that of our President lightly." Sharpton was stabbed in the chest by Michael Riccardi on Jan. 12, 1991, as the Reverend was leading a protest in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. Sharpton later filed suit against the city accusing the NYPD of failing to protect him. The two sides eventually settled. Sharpton took up the cause of the members of the Rutgers University women's basketball team after Imus referred to them as "nappy-headed hos" on his radio show last week. Sharpton told CBS 2's Marcia Kramer on Friday that just hours after he met with CBS Chairman and CEO Les Moonves on Thursday he got a call that Imus was getting fired. "I remember saying to Mr. Moonves, 'If you said it, you'd be fired. Does he have more rights than you?'" Sharpton said. Part of Sharpton's power and visibility comes from his National Action Network -- with its half a million supporters across the country, and his ability to mobilize both opinions and protesters. Despite toning down his flamboyant and combative style over the years, many still think Sharpton hasn't done enough to erase his controversial past. In an interview with CBS 2's Marcia Kramer, he admitted to making mistakes in the past. His most talked about misstep came two decades ago when he threw much-publicized support behind then-15-year-old Tawana Brawley. The black woman received national attention after claiming she was raped by half a dozen white men, including police officers, near Poughkeepsie, N.Y. The alleged incident soon became a media sensation, with Sharpton pulling all the strings. However, a grand jury investigated and in October 1988 said there was a lack of evidence that she had been abducted, assaulted, raped or sodomized. "He could be much more of a formidable force in this country, much more of a leader and respected across the board if he just said I apologize for my past. I did wrong. I'm sorry," radio host and columnist Armstrong Williams told CBS 2 on Friday. Sharpton told CBS 2 on Friday he does admit to past mistakes. "I think sometimes [I was] being flippant, shooting from the hip, sometimes letting your vanity outrun your sanity," Sharpton said in an interview with CBS 2's Marcia Kramer. In 1999, Sharpton came to the aid of the family of Amadou Diallo, an African immigrant who was shot to death by NYPD officers. Sharpton claimed that Diallo's death was the result of police brutality and racial profiling. Diallo's family was later awarded $3 million in a wrongful death suit filed against the city. More recently, Sharpton took up the cause of Sean Bell, an unarmed groom, who was shot dead in a hail of 50 police bullets on Nov. 25, 2006. Sharpton has been a fixture next to Bell's friends, Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman, who were wounded in the shooting. "I think I've grown. I think I've learned to talk to a broader audience in a way that I don't think everybody is the enemy so I'm trying to offend them," he said. -- Bill Koehnlein bill@toplab.org "My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." --George W. Bush, May 1, 2003 "...I told the American people that the road ahead would be difficult, and that we would prevail. Well, it has been difficult--and we are prevailing." --George W. Bush, June 28, 2005 "Our cause in Iraq is noble and necessary....America is engaged in a new struggle that will set the course for a new century. We can and we will prevail." --George W. Bush, January 10, 2007 "Prevailing in Iraq is not going to be easy." --George W. Bush, March 19, 2007 +U.S. military fatalities through May 1, 2003: 140 +U.S. military fatalities through June 28, 2005: 1743 +U.S. military fatalities through January 10, 2007: 3017 +U.S. military fatalities through March 19, 2007: 3217 +U.S. military fatalities as of April 14, 2007: 3297 (this figure exceeds the number of people killed in all of the incidents that occurred on September 11, 2001) +Iraqi civilian fatalities through May 1, 2003: 1982 +Iraqi civilian fatalities through June 28, 2005 (estimated by IraqBodyCount.net): 22,563 25,560* +Iraqi civilian fatalities through January 10, 2007 (estimated by IraqBodyCount.net): 53,101 58,704* +Iraqi civilian fatalities through March 19, 2007 (estimated by IraqBodyCount.net): 59,326 65,160* +Iraqi civilian fatalities as of April 14, 2007 (estimated by IraqBodyCount.net): 61,391 67,364* +Iraqi civilian fatalities as of July 2006 (estimated by The Lancet): 654,965 *These figures are based on the number of fatalities cited in various news reports and have been criticized, with much justification, for not giving an accurate assessment of the real civilian death count. A much more rigorous and statistically-reliable study, conducted by teams from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and Al-Mustansiriya University, and published in The Lancet (the British medical journal) in the Fall of 2004, put the figure at around 100,000 civilians dead. However, that data had been based on "conservative assumptions", according to research team leader Les Roberts, and the actual count at that time was credibly assumed to be significantly higher. For example, The Lancet study's data greatly underestimated fatalities in Fallujah due to the surveying problems encountered there at that time. Most recently, a second Lancet study, released on October 10, 2006, now indicates that 654,965 "excess" deaths of Iraqi civilians have occurred since the outbreak of the aggression and genocide committed by the United States against the people of Iraq. Sources: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ http://icasualties.org/oif/ http://www.zmag.org/lancet.pdf http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1338749,00.html http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/Iraq_war.html http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php4?article_id=6271 http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20041025/008279.html http://www.thelancet.com/webfiles/images/journals/lancet/s0140673606694919.pdf * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================