The Fall of Imus the Racist: A Tale of Viral Video, Word of Mouth and Bloggers

[misteroriginal]

I can't help but wonder if "Nappy headed hos" wasn't potentially damaging to all women's sports. That's why the advertisers pulled out, which cost Imus his job.

"Ho" is an ebonics "word" (too funny, as if ebonics is actually anything more than hideously bad English) which is supposed to represent 'whore' for the illiterate (just guessing here, but go along with me for a minute).

The overtone of what Imus said is that the women on the Rutgers basketball team were completely  undesirable for anything other than paid sex. Am I wrong? I don't see racism as much as sexism, and perhaps calling a spade a spade with respect to how sexy certain female athletes are.

Let's go down the list:
Turkish Weightlifting Team: "Nappy-headed hos"
Dutch Soccer Team: "Nappy headed hos"
etc

Where's the racial slur? Nappy headed??? Sorry, but it was a slam that fits wide world of women's sports with the exception of the 'traditional' ones like tennis, figure skating, gymnastics, etc.
etc

[mandy]

A related article:

Prior to CBS axing the Imus program, several major sponsors pulled their advertising from the show, which no doubt was a major factor in the network’s decision to pull it from the airwaves.

In an interesting spin, it appears that Google may also have pulled sponsored advertising from Imus-related searches as well. Current queries for the I-Man point to current promotion of a book discussing the subject of racist commentary as TMZ’s ongoing coverage of the even...

Haven't had a chance to verify this, but it certainly appears as if Google took a rapid and decisive step to un-associate their advertisers from the search term in the wake of the firing (and advertisers such as Verizon and American Express dropping their sponsorship of the show). Yahoo and MSN didn't do anything.

full article: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/0...d-keywords

[BellisimaJ.]

A relevant link.


Be forewarned; it is a long thread........ 


It also presents some very good arguments on both sides.