If only Don Imus had told those Hoes to Get Low
Don Imus is all over the news. CNN, the radio, newspapers. Everywhere you turn you see Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton denouncing him, protesting him, making demands that he be fired.
It's because he called some basketball players "nappy-headed hoes." He's apologized, and now he's lost his radio show, but I don't blame Jackson and Sharpton for continuing to call for marches, punishment, and penalties. Imus has been around for a while and he should know by now that you don't go on the radio and call black women "nappy-headed hoes."
You call them bitches. And also hoes. And then you threaten them, and tell them to Get Low:
To the window, to the wall, (to dat wall) To the sweat drop down my balls (MY BALLS) To all these bitches crawl (crawl) To all skeet skeet motherfucker (motherfucker!) all skeet skeet got dam (Got dam)This is the appropriate way to refer to young black women on the radio. Lil Jon brought this to our attention (all the way from the dirty south) in his 2003 hit single, Get Low. This was the number 2 song in America. It was all over the airwaves then and if you turn on the radio now, you have a fair chance of hearing it today. If it's not on, just listen to the lyrics of whatever is hitting the top ten today. You'll get the same lesson. Okay, enough with the heavy-handed attempts at irony. The point is, this maelstrom of media coverage, the constant earnest pleas for justice, the 24-hour Al Sharpton news marathon - all of this is a huge load of crap. It is a waste of time. I don't care about Don Imus. I never really listened to him, so I don't really care if he has a show or not. I'm not really a Lil Jon fan, but I'm not calling any apologies from him either. My point is that if you are worried about racism, and you are worried about misogyny, then you should turn your attention to actual racism and misogyny. Imus calling some basketball players "nappy-headed hoes" is neither. It's a stupid joke- it's an old white guy trying to be funny by clumsily using outdated black phrases. It's the same stupid thing as the rapping granny: Listen, I've met real white racists. They don't say things like "nappy headed hoes." They say things like "If I see you with that guy again I will cut you off and kick you out of my goddamn house!" Real racists complain about the "animals" that tore out the copper wires from the housing project and then laugh about over-charging the city for rewiring. To a real racist it isn't stealing unless a brown person did it. To hear Sharpton and the various other spotlight-seeking pundits tell it, Don Imus personally insulted an entire race, and entire gender, as well as each individual black woman in the country. Sharpton even trotted out his daughter. No, she doesn't play for Rutgers. Listen, he made fun of some people on a basketball team. These are people who were on national television for their ability to put a rubber ball in a hoop. Now for all I know each and every one of them is a bio chem major who will some day find the cure for cancer. But that isn't what got them on TV. Being tall and strong and fast gets you on TV. Being attractive gets you on TV. Being rich gets you on TV. And once you're on TV, you should pretty much take it as a given that people will say mean things about you. If you really need something to protest, at least most rap lyrics are genuinely misogynistic. The different between Don Imus and Lil Jon is that Don made a lame joke and Lil Jon is honestly instructing men to treat women like objects. Do you know what skeet-skeet-skeet means? It's not like Sharpton is unaware of the problem. Sharpton will protest rappers who slap kids. He'll call for a ban on airplay for rappers who have recently shot people. And he will join a hip hop summit, and encourage rappers to be more positive:
You cannot turn on a television or watch a movie and not see the influence of hip-hop. Even suburban America has been bitten by the hip-hop bug. Unfortunately, much of what they're selling is a fraud. They spew hedonism, misogyny, and self-hate. They glorify the prison culture, the pimp culture, and drug culture. They tell the young that they're not worthy unless they're "rocking" Chanel, Gucci, or wearing platinum and diamonds. Not only is this message immoral, but it is also flawed. It's a lie. ... Despite my differences with them, I will continue to support the hip-hop community because I have faith that they will eventually reach their potential.I don't care about Don Imus, CBS can fire him or give him a gold medal for all I care. This isn't some lame "if black people can say it why can't white people say it" whine and it's not "political correctness out of control." Its superfluous distraction out of control. I just wish that the stupid crap like this, and Anna Nicole Smith's death, and Janet Jackson's boob, wasn't the stuff getting all the attention all the time. [youtube]sSh_Oc78A4o[/youtube]