Open mouth, insert foot.....

[poltr1]

Last week, NYC radio personality Don Imus really put his foot in it. While discussing the Rutgers womens' basketball team with his producer, Bernard McGuirk, Imus referred to its members as "nappy-headed hos". (McGuirk had called them "hard-core hos", to which Imus responded with his remark.) (Story here, along with an excerpt from the show.)

Imus has since apologized for his remark, and -- this just in -- has now been dropped by MSNBC. WCBS has suspended him for two weeks without pay.

Although the intention of the banter may have been humorous (or so was claimed), it was insensitive, hurtful, and put womens' college basketball in a bad light. These women worked hard to achieve what they did -- the NCAA championship game, only to lose to Tennessee.

But what gets me is that gangsta rappers can get away with saying what Imus said, and not feel any repercussions or get any flak. There's a double standard out there. Black-on-black dissing is OK; white-on-black dissing is not. The great Stevie Wonder can sing about himself being a nappy-headed boy, but I can't even say those words and not be thought of as a racist.

I'll admit that there are some things I don't get because I'm not part of the subculture. This is one of them.

Comments

One more thing...

[athenawindsong.livejournal.com]

"But what gets me is that gangsta rappers can get away with saying what Imus said, and not feel any repercussions or get any flak."

I wouldn't be so sure about that. Rap tends to swing between racial slurs and gender slams to more socially conscious issues and back again. The problem is that the rap industry shot itself in the foot with creating a multitude of one-hit wonders, thus trends come and go in the blink of an eye. Ice Cube had alot to say about this. Notice Snoop Dogg is less about the ho/pimp cup and more about the cameo appearance and car commercial because he isn't generating as many record sales as he once did (and he needs to support his recreational drug habit).

Back to the point. There are just as many in-culture protests about the misogynistic comments regarding black women as there are up and coming rappers who use it as a cultural reference and a way to shock their way onto the radio, I would suspect. But what the hey - if it weren't for the gansta rappers, we wouldn't get such linguistic gems as "badonkadonk." ;o) Eh, we're all subject to the whim of the industry's money-making schemes anyway.