Who/What is responsible?
jeffry gagnon
"Don Imus Gets Oprahcized"
By Bernard Chapin
Apr 17, 2007
In Chicago, one must pity the atheists. Imagine how difficult it is
to argue that Heaven and Hell are a fairy tale when one of the Devil's
chief operatives makes daily broadcasts from a fashionable address in
the West Loop.
Of course, the operative I refer to is none other than the
phenomenally successful multi-billionaire, and supposedly oppressed
person, Oprah Winfrey.
Today, the talk show host applied her fantastically ignorant mind to
the question of Don Imus. The episode was called, "Oprah's Town Hall:
Now What?" The now what must be truly perplexing because she has
dedicated tomorrow's show to the subject as well. Her angle is not
difficult to discern as it provides her with yet another fabricated
opportunity to cast shame upon men and Caucasians in general.
As most readers already know, Don Imus is a person and not merely a
question. The sixtyish shock jock recently got fired by both CBS and
MSNBC for calling the Rutgers female basketball players, "nappy-headed
hos." To the normal person, his statement was strange and
inexplicable.
When the actual telecast is viewed its context becomes clearer.
Imus attempted to make light of the toughness of the player's physical
appearance. He thought they looked like a bunch of tattoo scarred
thugs. Imus (unwisely) compared them to gangstas in the language of
the street. Everyone then assumed that his intent was racist, but
that's far from certain - even though perpetual PC dupes like ESPN have
no doubts.
"Nappy headed ho" by itself, while admittedly dumb and in poor taste,
does not only refer to black women because many white youths of both
sexes Africanize their hair. Making one's straight hair kinky appears
to be in style at the moment. As far as humor goes, his attempt
missed the mark by many miles, but I see no hatred in his words.
If anything, what he said seemed to be more of a class comment as the
Tennessee team to which he compared the Rutgers girls is unquestionably
racially integrated. Their team picture depicts seven black players
and four white players who share a feminine appearance and are devoid of
brands or tattoos. This could have been easily clarified by Imus but
he was too busy apologizing and making-out with the feet of race
shysters to find the time to do so.
Reaction to his faux pas was not immediate. Just as with all
politically correct crusades, momentum built slowly before reaching a
level of hysteria. The story only reached Shandra Levy proportions
after the usual band of jackasses was recruited to harass Imus's
employers and assault the American psyche. With Jesse Jackson, Al
Sharpton, Oprah Winfrey, and the mainstream media, any life or career
can become forfeit in just a few hours time.
This was all unfortunately brought to my attention today as I sat in
the doctor's office at 9 am. His TV was set to "The Oprah Winfrey
Show" and the program was stocked with all manner of luminaries from
various parts of the left side of the political spectrum. One of the
most offensive was a psychologist named Robin Smith who talked about
Imus "embodying the sickening racism and systematic oppression that is
so rife in other parts of the world but suspiciously absent from the
United States".
Well, actually, that wasn't what her position. Her version of
reality, issued as she sat upon a perch of privilege, focused only on
America and purposely avoided any mention of the greater world.
Oprah placed on her website the supposed theme of the show. She
asked viewers as to whether or not there is "a double standard in this
country?" I'm glad she did because there are a myriad of double
standards in this country. The most obvious one on display here is
that only a white American can get fired for making what someone
somewhere construes to be a racial comment about somebody else.
Nothing like that ever happens to black or Hispanics because they are
the chosen mascots of political correctness. A case in point comes
from only a few traffic lights away from where I now type, in the person
of Ozzie Guillen. He still manages the White Sox despite his calling
a sports columnist a "fag."
Pariah status is reserved for white males offenders alone in our
anti-intellectual PC society.
Another double standard is that most words of hatred are only words
of hatred when they are spoken by Caucasians. A shock jock of a
different color could have gotten away with what Imus said and there
would have been no drama at all. Had his ancestors hailed from Kenya
or Mozambique, Imus could have even said the N-word. White people
have numerous words with which they're not allowed to say and many of
them we don't even know about until after we say them (recall the
infamous "niggardly" incident).
Everyday it seems as if there are more and more words that result in
our being condemned by some kind of ism. For the last twenty years, I
always thought that the "N-word" was the only one truly off limits.
Last month, I discovered that faggot has also been added to the list,
while today Oprah informed her audience that "bitch" and "ho" are words
of devastation as well.
Here we see yet another reason why PC is so pernicious. In the
case of all these words, arbitrary distinctions have been made in an
attempt to control our actions and dominate our speech. In my
opinion, there should be no words whose utterance automatically equates
with an individual having some sort of psychological condition -
particularly not ones as mundane and overused as "bitch" and "ho"
[rather delicious it is that "ho" stands for "whore" but is now referred
to as the h-word].
Here, yet again, is another double standard because there are all
sorts of words which men are not allowed to call women, such as the
c-word, the h-word, and the b-word, but there are _none_ for which women
are not allowed to call men. A woman can say anything she wants to
about a man and get away with it.
The reason for this is that women are yet another privileged class in
America today. Our society is loath to hold them responsible for
anything that they might say or do. They are the most comical of PC
mascots as their heartiness and extended lifespan make a mockery out of
their supposed sensitivity and vulnerability.
Here we come to another double standard within a double standard as
there's absolutely no equality in Oprah's treatment of women on show.
They allegedly are the superiors of men yet their beings can be torn
asunder after being called a few banal, uncreative names. Its absurd
to pretend that women are more loving, empathic, efficient, complete,
wise, and intelligent than men when so many believe they should go
ballistic after hearing a colorful word or two. No superhero in
history ever shattered like porcelain after being called a name.
As a society, all of our citizens must learn to deal with criticism
or being insulted without having to conduct witch hunts, town hall
meetings, and therapy sessions. Instead, defending oneself or
refusing to associate with those who demean you is the best practice.
It's a good habit to get into even if you don't happen to be a member
of a PC mascot class. Let's consider for a moment what would happen if
your narrator was placed in the position of those Rutgers girls and a
guy like Tavis Smiley called me a "bald-headed cracker" on his program.
Obviously, no one would be too bothered by this - although there really
isn't much of a parallel here as Imus used no terms of racial derision.
My way of dealing with it would be first to grant out that I was
bald-headed, and then to inquire if the person had any idea where the
next International Brotherhood of the Crackerazzi Convention was going
to be held. Please note that I suspiciously left out of my response:
"I'm going to call you an ism."
Whenever I argue something like this in print someone usually claims
that it isn't an accurate comparison because "white people are bothered
by stuff like that," but the fact is that nobody is really bothered by
much of anything unless society tells them that they should be. Being
called a name is not a "nuclear weapon" of interpersonal interaction,
and it doesn't "dehumanize" anyone. It's just a name, and, unless one
has a criminally inflated sense of self-esteem, it doesn't mean much.
America's true sickness isn't racism; it's the evil therapism society
tries to interpose upon our relations with others. If self-righteous
social engineers just stayed out of our way and left us alone we'd
probably all get along.
The major mission of political correctness is to subjugate our
thoughts, feelings, and words within a dungeon of sterility - wherein
the definition of being human is morphed into "never saying anything
wrong or offensive about anyone." Human beings simply aren't like
that. We frequently get mad or angry and say things we don't really
mean.
That's what happens when blood rather than oil courses through our
capillaries. Every time somebody says something that we don't like it
doesn't equate with their being abnormal and some kind of "ism." I
wish the American population would save their resentment for the
self-glorifying buffoons demanding our eternal repentance rather than
pouring it on a self-glorifying buffoon trying to entertain us.
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Bernard Chapin is a writer living in Chicago. He is the author of
"Escape from Gangsta Island", and is currently at work on a book
concerning women. He can be contacted at veritase...@gmail.com.