The Old Eighteen

Don Imus, still a racist

When Don Imus was given his microphone back a while ago, I figured that it would be a matter of time before he said something just as bad, if not worse, than what he had said to get himself fired in the first place, and that when this happened, he wouldn't get anything worse than a slap on the wrist - certainly wouldn't lose his job again.  True to form, Imus has made yet another racist remark, and it looks like he'll get away with it:

During an on-air conversation Monday about the arrests of suspended Dallas Cowboys cornerback Adam Jones, Imus asked, "What color is he?"

Told by sports announcer Warner Wolf that Jones, who used to be nicknamed Pacman, is "African-American," Imus responded: "There you go. Now we know."

Via Crooks & Liars, here's an audio recording (MP3) of the remarks.  Imus is trying to explain away his remarks after the fact, claiming,"I meant that he was being picked on because he's black."  And if you buy that, I've got a nice bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.  Apparently Imus's bosses are that gullible, or else they just want us to believe they are, because they aren't planning on holding his responsible for his remarks:

WABC and Citadel Broadcasting Corp. Vice President Phil Boyce said Imus would be explaining his comments on his Tuesday morning show and it was unlikely the broadcasters would take disciplinary action against him.

Boyce said Imus had explained his words in a private conversation Monday afternoon and the explanation was satisfactory.

"I think some people may be misunderstanding what he meant," said Boyce.

Yeah, that's all it is, just a big misunderstanding.  Like the time when he called Howard Stern a "Jew bastard" who "should be castrated" and "put in an oven."  Or the time he referred to publishers Simon & Schuster as "thieving Jews" (he "apologized" then too, saying the phrase was "redundant").  Or when he called African-American sports colmunist Bill Rhoden a "quota hire."  Or when he referred to another black journalist, Gwen Ifill, as a "cleaning lady."  Or when he used the term "Mandingo" to refer to Janet Langhart, the African-American wife of white former Clinton defense secretary William Cohen.  Or when he called Howard Kurtz as a "boner-nosed ... beanie-wearing little Jew boy."  Or the numerous times, both on and off the air, when he's used the words "nigger" (1,2,3), "raghead," "faggot," and "lesbo."

What I'm "misunderstanding" is why this rotten old fossil is given free pass after free pass to spew hate speech of the sort that you might hear on white supremacist web sites, or at Klan rallies.  Really, the only reason he got fired after his remarks about the Rutgers basketball team is because people began targeting his advertisers, and even then, there was a cadre of braying white jackasses like Craig Crawford, making excuses for him and crying about how unfair it was that he lost his job.

This is a free country, and people have a right to say what they want to, no matter how hateful and racist, but they aren't entitled to have their views broadcast over the airwaves, and by allowing people like Imus to do so, we lay the groundwork for bigots who want to turn back the clock on the progress that we've made over the last 50 years.  Imus should lose his job again, this time permanently.  And if he doesn't, the companies who advertise on his show should be asked why they give material support to the promotion of racism with their advertising dollars.  And when Imus's douchebag friends in the Beltway begin making excuses for him again, we should begin asking questions about them too.  No tolerance for bigotry.

Tim Russert remembered

The Daily Show web site has posted a tribute to Tim Russert on its Indecision 2008 blog featuring clips of several of his appearances on the show.

Yes, you can trivialize a presidential election!

Here's a hilarious clip from the Daily Show making fun of the Barack Obama Kia commercial which has been playing here in the DFW area:

RIP Tim Russert

Tim Russert
May 7, 1950 – June 13, 2008

Tim Russert has passed away after having a sudden heart attack, at the age of 58.  This is stunning news, and a tragedy compounded by the fact that Russert died at such a relatively young age.  I've been critical of Russert on a number of occasions for reasons that don't need to be rehashed at a time like this, but for better or worse he was one of the giants of modern journalism, and his loss will reverbate throughout the political culture of this country.  He was obviously loved by his colleagues, as attested to by the testimonials being given on MSNBC this afternoon.  My heart goes out to them, as well as to his other friends and especially his family.

Fox News, the Der Stürmer of American media

During their latest two-minute hate against Michelle Obama yesterday, Fox News reached a new low even by their own degraded standards, crossing over the line into overt racism and sexism:

Leave it to Fox to resurrect the ugly spectre of sexism just as it was fading from view. Via Salon, this evening, Fox ran a segment to remind its viewers why they should hate Michelle Obama. But they apparently weren't satisfied with the usual batch of distortions and lies, so they decided to unload a blatantly racist and sexist slur on the wife of the Democratic nominee. As Michelle Malkin and Fox anchor Megyn Kelley cordially ranted, a graphic was displayed at the bottom of the screen referring to Senator Obama's wife as his "Baby Mama."

Being someone's "Baby Mama" is slang for being the mother of a man's illegitimate child. According to Urban Dictionary, informal definitions include:

"The mother of a man's child when the parents are not married"

"The mother of one's child. The connotation is that mother and father do not and never did have any relationship beyond being sex partners. Contrast: ex-wife, ex-girlfriend."

"The mother of your child(ren), whom you did not marry and with whom you are not currently involved."

"A term used to define an unmarried young woman (but can be a woman of any age) who has had a child. As mentioned before in another definition, most of the time it is used for when it was simply a sexual relationship, compared to ex-wife or girlfriend. Usually this has a negative connotation, a lot of baby mamas are seen as desperate, gold digging, emotionally starved, shady women who had a baby out of spite or to keep a man. Sometimes they may act like this because of missed child support payments, unfulfilled promises by the father, or convenient sex by the father."

This is about one step away from calling her a 'ho.' It is nothing less than sexist slander, and the connotation, in my opinion, is clearly racist. I would say Fox News should be ashamed, but of course, we all know these people have no shame. Worse yet, I fear this is only the opening salvo of yet another effort to mercilessly smear and slander the wife of a Democratic nominee. We saw it with Theresa Heinz, we saw it with Hillary Clinton, and we saw it with Kitty Dukakis. Yet, year after year, our media allows it to happen. The only question is: how low will they go this time? We now have the beginning of an answer.

If Fox News had been around in the 1930's, they would have been publishing pictures of Jewish people with hooked noses and black sambos with bugged-out eyes and big lips, just like their ideological predecessors at Der Stürmer.  But they can't get away with being that overt these days, so instead they use code words.  Folks, this is going to be a long, ugly election season - we need to be prepared for stuff like this, and have no qualms whatsoever about being as dirty as we need to be in fighting back against it.

America is awash with secret Muslim terrorists!

That no-fly list has gotta be getting pretty cumbersome by now.  I always suspected Lieberman - I recommend that he be sent to Gitmo right away for (ahem) questioning.

Green City, USA

I was pleasantly surprised to discover recently that a new TV network has been launched called Planet Green, which is apparently being presented as the first network devoted to promoting eco-friendly living.  I found out about it via commercials for a new series that will be airing on the network about the city of Greensburg, Kansas, which was the scene of an epic disaster a little over a year ago - an F5 tornado swept through the city on May 4, 2007, flattening 95% of its homes and businesses.  The story of this city's rebuilding would be inspirational enough by any means, but the people have decided to live up to their name by remaking Greensburg as a "green" city, becoming the first city in the United States to require that all city building projects be built to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design's Platinum level standards.

This sounds like a really interesting series about a city that I hope becomes a role model for other communities throughout the country.  The series premieres on Friday night at 7 pm CST on the Discovery Channel, and will continue airing on Planet Green.

At long last, Fox News, have you no sense of decency?

Most normal, well-adjusted people, if they thought anything at all seeing Barack and Michelle Obama bumping fists during a recent campaign event, thought that it was nothing more than a cute, harmless gesture of cameraderie between a man and his wife.  Of course, we all know that if you're either normal or well-adjusted, you have no chance of getting an on-air job with Fox News:

During the June 6 edition of Fox News' America's Pulse, host E.D. Hill teased an upcoming discussion by saying, "A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently."

Of course, Mrs. ED didn't bother to cite any specific examples of someone who has actually referred to the Obama knuckle-touch as a "terrorist fist jab," but I'm sure that if you looked hard enough at Fox News's transcripts, or one of the right-wing web sites like Free Republic, or Little Green Footballs, or Stormfront, you'd probably find someone, somewhere, who used the words "terrorist fist jab."  Whether such a statement, coming as it surely did from a person who probably had drool trickling from their lips in a long stream as they said/typed it, constitutes "interpretation" is a different question entirely.  But not to worry, because the grand wizards at Fox News have consulted a "body language expert" to give us some real, honest-to-god "interpretation" of Obama's bewildering negro hand gestures:

HILL: OK, tell me about this whole thing. Let's start with the Barack and Michelle Obama, because that's what most people are writing about -- this fist thump. Is that sort of a signal that young people get?

DRIVER: I'm sure it is, without a doubt. And it's a connection that they have together. It's something just personal between the two of them, like "I'm proud of you." You know, my husband and I, if we're walking down the street and he's proud of me, we have our own little method. He squeezes my hand three times, which means, "I love you," and I squeeze his four times, saying, "I love you, too." It's something intimate between them, but I'm sure young people in this country are going to kind of like them kind of representing a little bit.

HILL: Uh-huh. Has our communication style changed as a culture in America?

DRIVER: Oh --

HILL: Will we have more of this nonverbal communication?

DRIVER: Absolutely, E.D. I mean, just even look in business women -- we're wearing suits today, pants suits. The generation from my mother's mother's era versus today -- it's always evolving and always changing, and that's just part of what we see. Obama -- it is kind of a hip gesture that they're making there with that little fist bump, and it's just a connection. It's something personal between them. You know, the mistake that a lot of body language experts make, E.D., is they say, "OK, arms are crossed, so it means you're bored and disinterested."

HILL: Uh-huh.

DRIVER: They pigeonhole one gesture into a certain meaning. That's not -- that's not -- that's unscientific. It's unscientific. The best thing to say is, "Obama, is there any reason why you guys did that? What did it mean?" And he'll tell you --

HILL: Uh-huh.

DRIVER: -- because we know what we're doing and what it means to others.

I'm not sure what's more absurd about this exchange, the fact that we have a woman younger than the age of 80 who has to have fist bumps explaned to her, or the fact that we also have a "body language expert" telling us, in pretty explicit terms, that what she does for a living is complete horseshit, and that the best way to ascertain what a person means by a particular gesture is to ask them.  If I were E.D. Hill, my next question at this point of the interview would have been, "Then why the fuck are we talking to you?"  Of course, if I were E.D. Hill, the whole segment would never have taken place, because I would have long since killed myself out of shame.

Fox News is either the worst news network not appearing in a George Orwell novel in world history, or the greatest piece of performance art since the death of Andy Kaufman.  For those of you with strong stomachs, here's video of the segment:

Bill Moyers lays the smackdown on O'Reilly minion

Here's a video of a true master at work - Bill O'Reilly sent one of his goons to harass Bill Moyers yesterday at the National Conference for Media Reform, so Moyers takes this hack and quietly, quickly, and with a minimum of effort, cuts him to pieces, and yanks his beating heart out of his chest for him to look at before he bleeds to death.  The man is a journalistic ninja!  Then to add insult to injury, O'Reilly's errand boy gets a little bit of his own medicine before he bolts out of the building.  I have a feeling Keith Olbermann is going to have some fun with this on Monday:

Seeing this video naturally made me think of the scene below from Friday:

::

(via Daily Kos)

Dallas South among 2nd round of bloggers credentialed for Democratic National Convention

Congratulations to Shawn Williams, who publishes Dallas South, for being named as a credentialed blogger for the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver.  In all, the DNC has added about 70 or so blogs to its list of credentialed blogs for the convention, for a total of 124 credentialed blogs.  The DNC appears to have made at least some effort to address the criticism of its previously released list of 55 state blogs, which did a poor job representing minority bloggers and especially African-American bloggers.  Whether or not that effort is sufficient to blunt the criticism remains to be seen, but skimming the list, in addition to Dallas South I recognized at least a few other African-American bloggers on the list, as well as Hispanic and Asian-American bloggers.

One concern for me, however, is that Texas bloggers appear to be underrepresented on the list - aside from Dallas South, the only Texas blog I saw that I recognized was Burnt Orange Report.  I may have missed one or more that I'm not personally familiar with, but I don't think that's the case.  Texas is the second-largest state in the country, and while we're not a blue state (yet), we do have a significant presence in the progressive blogosphere that I believe is being overlooked.  Beyond that, we're in the process of emerging as a battleground state, and Texas is going to be a significant part of the Democratic party's national strategy in the years to come.  If we really only have two Texas bloggers on the list, that's a disappointing oversight on the DNC's part.