Too Many Marbles

Well, the marbles have been working overtime these last several days, so hold on to your hat.

First. The Don Imus thing. You’ve got a guy who has made his living being rudely outspoken, whom many consider to be the Father of All Shock Jocks. He makes a truly tasteless remark on air, for which he should be ashamed and remorseful, and, because he directed his remarks at specific individuals, should seek forgiveness from them first and primarily.

Well, he has. The gracious young women of the Rutgers Basketball Team have accepted his apology, which proves that they are more mature than antbody else who has inserted themselves into this whole affair.

He’s also lost his job and, presumably, other people have lost their jobs, including those who had nothing whatsoever to do with what he said, and who likely didn’t agree in any way whatsoever with the deeply stupid characterizations he hurled out there on air.

The first word he used is in the title of one of the most wildly popular picturebooks for young African-Americans ever – Nappy Hair, by Carolivia Herron. I completely and totally get that the vantage point is different. I use the word Redneck mostly as an endearment, but when someone who isn’t from here uses it in a way intended to demean, I get my back up, too. It’s a matter of it being okay to use a word amongst my OWN people who understand the fullness of it, and it not being okay to be called that by somebody who is using it as invective.

But that second word, and the one I’m not even going to type here, is a word that was created in the past many years by rap and hip-hop artists. Does it fall under the same umbrella as “nappy” does? Maybe. But the word has spread beyond the community of color that first devised it. If Imus was trying to be hip or funny, it certainly failed, as it should have. The people who are most outraged by his words are mostly quiet about those who not only speak them but sell them to others by singing them over and over, ad nauseum.

I am as outraged by that as I am by what Imus said. Shame on all those who refer to women in this way. Period. No exceptions.

The punishment that Imus has suffered outweighs his stupidity, unless and until the same people who called for his head on a platter clean up their own act.

Maybe everybody – Imus included – would have been better served had Imus been persuaded to hold one of his radio-thons (which have raised millions of dollars for charity) to fund a charity of the Rutgers Womens’ Basketball Team’s choosing.


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