Post by goddessoflight on Jul 8, 2007 13:39:46 GMT -5
Gangsta Rap is so popular largely because the white-controlled media, which defines Black America for its consumers, finds that image of black life easier to sell than the culture represented by those straight-A students from Rutgers or by Ryan Christopher Clark, the straight-A black student who was one of the first casualties of the Virginia Tech massacre. Predictably, Clarke's heroic role was barely noticed by the media.
The New York Times covers the violent precincts of rap music so extensively one expects that one day they'll have a daily supplement devoted to Gangsta Rap. As I told a Hip Hop panel, whose panelists were on an average forty years younger than I, people your age might be creating the songs, but people my age are making all of the money from them.
White men.
Imus defender David Gregory responded weakly to Dyson's body blow. "I was asking whether the same level of commitment was made to standing up to Hip Hop as was made in standing up to Imus." Of course, how can anyone determine the degree of commitment of those black individuals and institutions to challenge Gangsta Rappers, if there are no media present to cover it.
As journalist Richard Prince wrote recently,
"Sharpton and Jackson have spoken out against offensive rap music for years. At James Brown's funeral on Dec. 30, Sharpton recalled that Brown asked him, 'What happened that we went from saying, I'm black and I'm proud' to calling us niggers and ho's and bitches. I sing people up and now they sing people down. Tell them we need to lift the music up to where children and grandmothers could sit and listen to music together.'
"When C. DeLores Tucker, the anti-gangsta rap crusader who founded the National Congress of Black Women, died in 2005, Barry Saunders of the Raleigh News & Observer wrote, "During the 1970s, while he still had a claim to moral leadership, the Rev. Jesse Jackson attacked sexually suggestive songs and urged performers to clean them up. Singers reacted angrily then, too, accusing Jesse of self-promotion at their expense. None of the performers took the reverend's name in vain the way Tupac Shakur and others did Tucker's, although that may be because they couldn't think of an insulting sobriquet to rhyme with 'Jesse.'
"On the NABJ e-mail list, one member said, "I think the real issue is not whether Jackson and Sharpton have criticized the negative aspects of hip hop culture, but that mainstream media were not particularly receptive to the conversation when it was happening primarily among African-Americans."
During another panel, an African-American woman tried to educate Gregory about the varieties of Hip Hop, including the kind that is positive (I listen to Gospel Rap on satellite radio Channel 33 every day), but Gregory wasn't paying attention. He gave most of the panel over to Armstrong Williams, who launched into yet another lengthy tirade against Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. And following the MSNBC playbook, Williams tried to connect the firing of Imus to the Duke LaCrosse rape case. Apples and oranges. Seriously, does anybody believe that the prosecutorial misconduct in that case is the only sort that happens in North Carolina? Anybody want to review the cases of all of the poor blacks and whites and Hispanics in North Carolina jails? Anybody? MSNBC? CBS? CNN? What would have happened if the students had been black and the strippers, white, and one of the students threatened to penetrate the strippers with a broomstick? That act alone would have gotten all of the black students some serious time--forget about rape.
On the 13th when Gregory again substituted for Matthews, the reporter reached back to the 19th century newspaper style that Chesnutt wrote about. He incited and merchandized the racial divide that's proved such a big money maker for the cable networks. Gregory pronounced that the white people were for Imus and the black people for were against Imus, with no polling data to back up his incendiary comment. His assessment ignored the fact that NOW, a largely white organization, cast it's lot with the black protestors. Imus disciple Joe Scarborough echoed Gregory by dividing the controversy into Team White and Team Black. Meanwhile, over on CNN, Paula Zahn was busy stirring up white mobs against Korean-Americans following the Virginia Tech massacre.
A poll by CNN Opinion Research appeared on April 14th. It showed that the majority of whites (55%) and of blacks (68%) agreed that Imus' remarks were offensive. More whites than blacks found his remarks to be inappropriate. Only 6% of whites and 7% of blacks felt his remarks were not offensive. Other polls show that most blacks and whites are ahead of the politicians--on health care, the Iraq war and gun control--who use race as a wedge issue and apparently ahead of newsmen like Gregory who seek to market what the media calls "a racial divide." (On April 20th, appearing on "Air America, " Senator Bernie Sanders cited a poll that had 66& of Americans agreeing that there should be a redistribution of wealth).
Big shot journalists like Tom Oliphant, who seemed to be calling for mob protest against Imus' firing, and David Gregory, were just trying to start something as a way of besting their competitors, like those turn of the last century editors that Chesnutt wrote about. During All-Imus week, the true divide was between the pro-Imus commentators reporters, and producers, those who booked guests that were friendly to the talking points established by Imus; and the black and white media employees whom we don't see on camera, and the black executives of the companies that sponsored Imus and the thousands of black consumers and stockholders.
The Imus boosters in the media were in a panic. They were seeing their monopoly over American opinion fading away. Still on Saturday April 14th, Imus' friends at CNN awarded him a moral victory. In all day programming which included the stupidest comments about Rap and Hip Hop culture to date, Imus was presented as a victim of a double standard. This changing the subject back to Hip Hop gave the cynical producers an opportunity to recycle Hip Hop video footage in which young black women were seen cooperating with their degradation and willingly subjecting themselves to cheap hooker choreography. Even so, one of Imus' prime sponsors was Nutri-System, whose ads portray one bikini clad middle-aged white woman boasting about her "smoking, hot body" and another referring to herself as her husband's "trophy wife."
Yet, it became the consensus of the white talking heads that the Hip Hoppers should be punished in the same manner as Imus, as though these children had even a fraction as much sway with the American establishment as Imus. An establishment, members of which have confessed that Imus says publicly what they say in private. Imus even received some good reviews in that Friday and Saturday's New York Times. Instead of the paper's Public Editor conducting a public soul-searching about why some of the Time's top columnists co-habited with Imus' bigotry for a number of years, the paper printed op-eds by two writers who seemed to be suffering from protest envy. Instead of joining the coalition that was standing up against Imus' attack on the Rutgers team, a gay writer in an April 13,Op-ed suggested that blacks lacked the moral high ground to criticize Imus because of homophobic comments made by one African-American television star, the kind of collective blame that's been aimed at this writer's group since the time of the Romans.
In the other op-ed, appearing on April 14, in which a rosy picture of Muslims in America was drawn, and where another cheap shot was taken at Sharpton, the writer concluded that the real fault-line in America was between Muslims and Americans and not blacks and whites. Apparently, nobody has informed this man that there are hundreds of millions Muslims both here and abroad who have African ancestry. Moreover, since this writer,Robert Wright, is connected to the Neo-Con New American Foundation, this could be seen as an effort by Neo-Cons and the far right American Enterprise Institute to direct the American Muslim point-of-view.
Another tactic that Imus' groupies used to distance themselves from Imus' racism was to cite their favorite blacks. On April 18th, Tom Freidman tried to weasel away from Imus by spending most of his column praising Barack Obama, a tactic also used by David Brooks and David Gregory. Gregory's favorite negro was Jackie Robinson! Finally in the last paragraph of his column, Freidman also tried to couple Imus' power with that of the Hip Hoppers. Imus, mind you, owns a 30 million dollar home in Connecticut, a New York penthouse, and a 4,000 acre ranch in New Mexico. One of his fans is George Bush the First, who has been interviewed on his show.
If the media continues to award white men and women commentators hours at a time to referee a "National Dialogue on Race" in America, shouldn't they at least acquaint themselves with the cultural and political trends in the different communities? Shouldn't they read Hispanic, African-American, Native American magazines and newspapers? I do. Why doesn't C-SPAN, which is as close as American television has come to a daily town meeting on the air, read from ethnic newspapers, such as Indian Country Today, and The Amsterdam News, or Asian Week, as well as from The Washington Post and The Washington Times?
I didn't see Michael Eric Dyson participating in the "National Dialogue on Race" after he challenged Gregory. Maybe the producers at MSNBC thought that Dyson was impudent. It would be smart for MSNBC to give Dyson as much time as they do those blacks with whom they are comfortable. Dyson is one of the most powerful advocates of African-American aspirations since Malcolm X and, yes, I knew Malcolm X. MSNBC execs are comfortable with their regulars, black Republican operatives like Amy Holmes, a former speech writer for Senator Bill Frist, and Joe Watkins, a fomer aide to Vice President Cheney. They are the kind of people whom former football great Jim Brown would refer to as "good negroes." People who are not likely to make the white members of their audience uncomfortable.
Instead of Dyson continuing to participate in MSNBC's "National Dialogue", they brought on their old reliable Armstrong Williams. By the end of the week, Williams had stepped up his attacka on Rap music, Sharpton and Jackson. At one point, Williams, who shrilly opposed the firing of Imus, said that the free market should determine the flow of opinion. This is a man who was handed $240,000 to promote Bush's "No Child Left Behind" policy without revealing that he was being paid by the government. According to USA Today (10/17/2005): "Congressional auditors last month found that the $240, 000 contract violated a ban on 'covert propaganda' and said the Education Department should ask for some of the money back. The Education Department has acknowledged that it is working with the U. S. attorney's office in Washington to investigate the Bush administration's contract with commentator Armstrong Williams. That suggests civil or criminal charges could be filed, according to Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N. J."
Armstrong Williams took the money and didn't even do the work. How do we know that his denouncement of Jackson and Sharpton wasn't part of another "covert" propaganda effort? Also, one wonders why Williams didn't object to Imus' gay baiting.
Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were risking their lives on behalf of the Civil Rights Movement, while Armstrong Williams was running errands for segregationist Strom Thurmond. As a result of the Imus' media collaborators ganging up on Sharpton, in the same manner that Chestnutt's editors used to get people lynched, Sharpton was soon receiving death threats. So was the Rutgers team.
While newsmen like Brian Williams groveled before Imus, Howard Kurtz returned from time to time to lap up abuse from Imus, who called Kurtz a "boner-nosed beanie wearing Jewboy. "
Imus also called the book publishers Simon and Shuster, "thieving Jews." Yet, the publisher of Simon & Schuster, David Rosenthal, told the Times that, "It would be a shame if Mr. Imus lost his job. I think he has been a fantastic forum for authors and for people with interesting ideas." Imus smeared his CBS bosses as "Money grubbing Jews."
On January 28, Kurtz denounced Gray's Anatomy's star Isaiah Washington for his homophobic remark on his "Reliable Sources," the corporate media's idea of media criticism. But three days later on Jan 31, Bernard McGuirk used the word "faggot" on the Imus Show and it didn't seem to bother Kurtz. In fact, he appeared on the show later that week after fresh from criticizing Isaiah Washington as a gay-baiter.
Following the lead of Imus and his media posse, on April 15, 2007, Howard Kurtz grumbled about Imus being a victim of a double standard. Using fellow collaborator Gregory's word, Kurtz complained that Hip Hopper were subject to the same "intense" standard as Imus. Once again a guest had to remind an Imus defender that blacks have protested misogynistic rap lyrics for years, but CNN, Fox and the gang were not there to cover it. Another guest, Anna Marie Cox, had to remind Kurtz that he was a regular visitor to the Imus Show. (She excused her own appearance on the show to her desiring to run with the big boys.) Obviously nervous, Kurtz at one point called his guest Clarence Page, Clarence Thomas! Kurtz lied when he said that he didn't know what was going on during Imus' show. He lied again when he said that nobody ever asked him why he was a guest on the Imus Show in light of the disparaging remarks that the shock jock has made about different groups. According to TomPaine.com, journalist Phil Nobile has been asking Kurtz this question for years.
"For many moons I have urged Howard Kurtz to cover the recurring media scandal known as 'Imus in the Morning' in his Washington Post column. Yet Kurtz has resisted every tip, scarcely hiding his contempt in icy telephone exchanges. The frost continued when we met on an Imus remote at the World Trade Center in Manhattan a few days before the New York GOP primary last March. He was following John McCain, who was appearing once again on the show. I was tracking McCain, too, intending to inquire into his affinity with a man who ridiculed people like his adopted Bangladeshi daughter as "dothead, " "Gunga Din," "Sambo, " and "Punjab.
"Kurtz was standing in a restricted press section when I introduced myself across the rope. He seemed less than thrilled. I extended my hand. He shook it with the same enthusiasm that Israeli prime ministers display in photo opportunities with Arab heads of state. In a quick parting gesture, I gave him a photocopy of my Newsday op ed (February 22) ripping David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, for slumming with the man who lampooned Tina Brown's Talk as 'a magazine for liberal homosexuals. ' More than a glorified guest, Remnick was in Imus' pocket to the tune of $50, 000 as winner of the now defunct Imus American Book Award. Though an ardent race writer and friend of Ralph Ellison, Remnick was oddly silent about Imus' racist repertoire.
"If you don't start covering this stuff, " I said to Kurtz, referring to my Newsday essay, 'people will start thinking conflict of interest. ' (According to Newsweek, Imus turned Kurtz's Spin Cycle into a bestseller in 1997. ) But my jab neither affected Kurtz's composure, nor his column.
"Subsequently, he ignored five weekly 'Imus Watches' posted on TomPaine. com between March 24 and April 28."
When Gay and Lesbians complained about Imus' homophobia, Imus invited them to "Eat Me." Relentless jokes were made about Hillary Clinton's sexual proclivities often in detail, even describing the odor that they imagined occurred after lesbian sexual intercourse.
On Monday, April 9, Donald Trump, one of the many giants of capitalism with whom Imus associated, and to whom most Rappers have little access, delivered a message from Ms. Clinton: "Hillary really wanted to get on your show. She has a lot of respect for you, but it doesn't seem to be reciprocal. She'd do your show gladly, but you don't seem to want her on." But Ms. Clinton's request was treated with disdain by Imus. She became just another powerful political player humiliated by the I-Man. He responded by discussing Mrs. Clinton's husband receiving a "blowjob" in the oval office. The Rappers never had that kind of influence!
Finally, Maya Angelou who was constantly mocked by McGuirk, on a show where white authors promoted their books and blacks were cast as illiterate, might have the last word about Imus and his crew and the crude manner in which blacks and Africans continue to be depicted in newspapers, cable and television networks. On Thursday, April 19, WFAN announced that McGuirk had also been fired. It's poetic justice. She wrote:
"You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise. "
from "Still I Rise,."
This essay will appear in Ishmael Reed's forthcoming book, Mixing It Up: Taking on the Media Bullies, to be published this summer by Thunder's Mouth Press.
Ishmael Reed is a poet, novelist and essayist who lives in Oakland. His widely-accalimed novels include, Mumbo Jumbo, the Freelance Pallbearers and the Last Days of Louisiana Red. He has recently published a fantastic book on Oakland: Blues City: a Walk in Oakland and Carroll and Graf has recently published a thick volume of his poems: New and Collected Poems: 1964-2006.
Copyright, 2007, Ishmael Reed
The New York Times covers the violent precincts of rap music so extensively one expects that one day they'll have a daily supplement devoted to Gangsta Rap. As I told a Hip Hop panel, whose panelists were on an average forty years younger than I, people your age might be creating the songs, but people my age are making all of the money from them.
White men.
Imus defender David Gregory responded weakly to Dyson's body blow. "I was asking whether the same level of commitment was made to standing up to Hip Hop as was made in standing up to Imus." Of course, how can anyone determine the degree of commitment of those black individuals and institutions to challenge Gangsta Rappers, if there are no media present to cover it.
As journalist Richard Prince wrote recently,
"Sharpton and Jackson have spoken out against offensive rap music for years. At James Brown's funeral on Dec. 30, Sharpton recalled that Brown asked him, 'What happened that we went from saying, I'm black and I'm proud' to calling us niggers and ho's and bitches. I sing people up and now they sing people down. Tell them we need to lift the music up to where children and grandmothers could sit and listen to music together.'
"When C. DeLores Tucker, the anti-gangsta rap crusader who founded the National Congress of Black Women, died in 2005, Barry Saunders of the Raleigh News & Observer wrote, "During the 1970s, while he still had a claim to moral leadership, the Rev. Jesse Jackson attacked sexually suggestive songs and urged performers to clean them up. Singers reacted angrily then, too, accusing Jesse of self-promotion at their expense. None of the performers took the reverend's name in vain the way Tupac Shakur and others did Tucker's, although that may be because they couldn't think of an insulting sobriquet to rhyme with 'Jesse.'
"On the NABJ e-mail list, one member said, "I think the real issue is not whether Jackson and Sharpton have criticized the negative aspects of hip hop culture, but that mainstream media were not particularly receptive to the conversation when it was happening primarily among African-Americans."
During another panel, an African-American woman tried to educate Gregory about the varieties of Hip Hop, including the kind that is positive (I listen to Gospel Rap on satellite radio Channel 33 every day), but Gregory wasn't paying attention. He gave most of the panel over to Armstrong Williams, who launched into yet another lengthy tirade against Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. And following the MSNBC playbook, Williams tried to connect the firing of Imus to the Duke LaCrosse rape case. Apples and oranges. Seriously, does anybody believe that the prosecutorial misconduct in that case is the only sort that happens in North Carolina? Anybody want to review the cases of all of the poor blacks and whites and Hispanics in North Carolina jails? Anybody? MSNBC? CBS? CNN? What would have happened if the students had been black and the strippers, white, and one of the students threatened to penetrate the strippers with a broomstick? That act alone would have gotten all of the black students some serious time--forget about rape.
On the 13th when Gregory again substituted for Matthews, the reporter reached back to the 19th century newspaper style that Chesnutt wrote about. He incited and merchandized the racial divide that's proved such a big money maker for the cable networks. Gregory pronounced that the white people were for Imus and the black people for were against Imus, with no polling data to back up his incendiary comment. His assessment ignored the fact that NOW, a largely white organization, cast it's lot with the black protestors. Imus disciple Joe Scarborough echoed Gregory by dividing the controversy into Team White and Team Black. Meanwhile, over on CNN, Paula Zahn was busy stirring up white mobs against Korean-Americans following the Virginia Tech massacre.
A poll by CNN Opinion Research appeared on April 14th. It showed that the majority of whites (55%) and of blacks (68%) agreed that Imus' remarks were offensive. More whites than blacks found his remarks to be inappropriate. Only 6% of whites and 7% of blacks felt his remarks were not offensive. Other polls show that most blacks and whites are ahead of the politicians--on health care, the Iraq war and gun control--who use race as a wedge issue and apparently ahead of newsmen like Gregory who seek to market what the media calls "a racial divide." (On April 20th, appearing on "Air America, " Senator Bernie Sanders cited a poll that had 66& of Americans agreeing that there should be a redistribution of wealth).
Big shot journalists like Tom Oliphant, who seemed to be calling for mob protest against Imus' firing, and David Gregory, were just trying to start something as a way of besting their competitors, like those turn of the last century editors that Chesnutt wrote about. During All-Imus week, the true divide was between the pro-Imus commentators reporters, and producers, those who booked guests that were friendly to the talking points established by Imus; and the black and white media employees whom we don't see on camera, and the black executives of the companies that sponsored Imus and the thousands of black consumers and stockholders.
The Imus boosters in the media were in a panic. They were seeing their monopoly over American opinion fading away. Still on Saturday April 14th, Imus' friends at CNN awarded him a moral victory. In all day programming which included the stupidest comments about Rap and Hip Hop culture to date, Imus was presented as a victim of a double standard. This changing the subject back to Hip Hop gave the cynical producers an opportunity to recycle Hip Hop video footage in which young black women were seen cooperating with their degradation and willingly subjecting themselves to cheap hooker choreography. Even so, one of Imus' prime sponsors was Nutri-System, whose ads portray one bikini clad middle-aged white woman boasting about her "smoking, hot body" and another referring to herself as her husband's "trophy wife."
Yet, it became the consensus of the white talking heads that the Hip Hoppers should be punished in the same manner as Imus, as though these children had even a fraction as much sway with the American establishment as Imus. An establishment, members of which have confessed that Imus says publicly what they say in private. Imus even received some good reviews in that Friday and Saturday's New York Times. Instead of the paper's Public Editor conducting a public soul-searching about why some of the Time's top columnists co-habited with Imus' bigotry for a number of years, the paper printed op-eds by two writers who seemed to be suffering from protest envy. Instead of joining the coalition that was standing up against Imus' attack on the Rutgers team, a gay writer in an April 13,Op-ed suggested that blacks lacked the moral high ground to criticize Imus because of homophobic comments made by one African-American television star, the kind of collective blame that's been aimed at this writer's group since the time of the Romans.
In the other op-ed, appearing on April 14, in which a rosy picture of Muslims in America was drawn, and where another cheap shot was taken at Sharpton, the writer concluded that the real fault-line in America was between Muslims and Americans and not blacks and whites. Apparently, nobody has informed this man that there are hundreds of millions Muslims both here and abroad who have African ancestry. Moreover, since this writer,Robert Wright, is connected to the Neo-Con New American Foundation, this could be seen as an effort by Neo-Cons and the far right American Enterprise Institute to direct the American Muslim point-of-view.
Another tactic that Imus' groupies used to distance themselves from Imus' racism was to cite their favorite blacks. On April 18th, Tom Freidman tried to weasel away from Imus by spending most of his column praising Barack Obama, a tactic also used by David Brooks and David Gregory. Gregory's favorite negro was Jackie Robinson! Finally in the last paragraph of his column, Freidman also tried to couple Imus' power with that of the Hip Hoppers. Imus, mind you, owns a 30 million dollar home in Connecticut, a New York penthouse, and a 4,000 acre ranch in New Mexico. One of his fans is George Bush the First, who has been interviewed on his show.
If the media continues to award white men and women commentators hours at a time to referee a "National Dialogue on Race" in America, shouldn't they at least acquaint themselves with the cultural and political trends in the different communities? Shouldn't they read Hispanic, African-American, Native American magazines and newspapers? I do. Why doesn't C-SPAN, which is as close as American television has come to a daily town meeting on the air, read from ethnic newspapers, such as Indian Country Today, and The Amsterdam News, or Asian Week, as well as from The Washington Post and The Washington Times?
I didn't see Michael Eric Dyson participating in the "National Dialogue on Race" after he challenged Gregory. Maybe the producers at MSNBC thought that Dyson was impudent. It would be smart for MSNBC to give Dyson as much time as they do those blacks with whom they are comfortable. Dyson is one of the most powerful advocates of African-American aspirations since Malcolm X and, yes, I knew Malcolm X. MSNBC execs are comfortable with their regulars, black Republican operatives like Amy Holmes, a former speech writer for Senator Bill Frist, and Joe Watkins, a fomer aide to Vice President Cheney. They are the kind of people whom former football great Jim Brown would refer to as "good negroes." People who are not likely to make the white members of their audience uncomfortable.
Instead of Dyson continuing to participate in MSNBC's "National Dialogue", they brought on their old reliable Armstrong Williams. By the end of the week, Williams had stepped up his attacka on Rap music, Sharpton and Jackson. At one point, Williams, who shrilly opposed the firing of Imus, said that the free market should determine the flow of opinion. This is a man who was handed $240,000 to promote Bush's "No Child Left Behind" policy without revealing that he was being paid by the government. According to USA Today (10/17/2005): "Congressional auditors last month found that the $240, 000 contract violated a ban on 'covert propaganda' and said the Education Department should ask for some of the money back. The Education Department has acknowledged that it is working with the U. S. attorney's office in Washington to investigate the Bush administration's contract with commentator Armstrong Williams. That suggests civil or criminal charges could be filed, according to Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N. J."
Armstrong Williams took the money and didn't even do the work. How do we know that his denouncement of Jackson and Sharpton wasn't part of another "covert" propaganda effort? Also, one wonders why Williams didn't object to Imus' gay baiting.
Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were risking their lives on behalf of the Civil Rights Movement, while Armstrong Williams was running errands for segregationist Strom Thurmond. As a result of the Imus' media collaborators ganging up on Sharpton, in the same manner that Chestnutt's editors used to get people lynched, Sharpton was soon receiving death threats. So was the Rutgers team.
While newsmen like Brian Williams groveled before Imus, Howard Kurtz returned from time to time to lap up abuse from Imus, who called Kurtz a "boner-nosed beanie wearing Jewboy. "
Imus also called the book publishers Simon and Shuster, "thieving Jews." Yet, the publisher of Simon & Schuster, David Rosenthal, told the Times that, "It would be a shame if Mr. Imus lost his job. I think he has been a fantastic forum for authors and for people with interesting ideas." Imus smeared his CBS bosses as "Money grubbing Jews."
On January 28, Kurtz denounced Gray's Anatomy's star Isaiah Washington for his homophobic remark on his "Reliable Sources," the corporate media's idea of media criticism. But three days later on Jan 31, Bernard McGuirk used the word "faggot" on the Imus Show and it didn't seem to bother Kurtz. In fact, he appeared on the show later that week after fresh from criticizing Isaiah Washington as a gay-baiter.
Following the lead of Imus and his media posse, on April 15, 2007, Howard Kurtz grumbled about Imus being a victim of a double standard. Using fellow collaborator Gregory's word, Kurtz complained that Hip Hopper were subject to the same "intense" standard as Imus. Once again a guest had to remind an Imus defender that blacks have protested misogynistic rap lyrics for years, but CNN, Fox and the gang were not there to cover it. Another guest, Anna Marie Cox, had to remind Kurtz that he was a regular visitor to the Imus Show. (She excused her own appearance on the show to her desiring to run with the big boys.) Obviously nervous, Kurtz at one point called his guest Clarence Page, Clarence Thomas! Kurtz lied when he said that he didn't know what was going on during Imus' show. He lied again when he said that nobody ever asked him why he was a guest on the Imus Show in light of the disparaging remarks that the shock jock has made about different groups. According to TomPaine.com, journalist Phil Nobile has been asking Kurtz this question for years.
"For many moons I have urged Howard Kurtz to cover the recurring media scandal known as 'Imus in the Morning' in his Washington Post column. Yet Kurtz has resisted every tip, scarcely hiding his contempt in icy telephone exchanges. The frost continued when we met on an Imus remote at the World Trade Center in Manhattan a few days before the New York GOP primary last March. He was following John McCain, who was appearing once again on the show. I was tracking McCain, too, intending to inquire into his affinity with a man who ridiculed people like his adopted Bangladeshi daughter as "dothead, " "Gunga Din," "Sambo, " and "Punjab.
"Kurtz was standing in a restricted press section when I introduced myself across the rope. He seemed less than thrilled. I extended my hand. He shook it with the same enthusiasm that Israeli prime ministers display in photo opportunities with Arab heads of state. In a quick parting gesture, I gave him a photocopy of my Newsday op ed (February 22) ripping David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, for slumming with the man who lampooned Tina Brown's Talk as 'a magazine for liberal homosexuals. ' More than a glorified guest, Remnick was in Imus' pocket to the tune of $50, 000 as winner of the now defunct Imus American Book Award. Though an ardent race writer and friend of Ralph Ellison, Remnick was oddly silent about Imus' racist repertoire.
"If you don't start covering this stuff, " I said to Kurtz, referring to my Newsday essay, 'people will start thinking conflict of interest. ' (According to Newsweek, Imus turned Kurtz's Spin Cycle into a bestseller in 1997. ) But my jab neither affected Kurtz's composure, nor his column.
"Subsequently, he ignored five weekly 'Imus Watches' posted on TomPaine. com between March 24 and April 28."
When Gay and Lesbians complained about Imus' homophobia, Imus invited them to "Eat Me." Relentless jokes were made about Hillary Clinton's sexual proclivities often in detail, even describing the odor that they imagined occurred after lesbian sexual intercourse.
On Monday, April 9, Donald Trump, one of the many giants of capitalism with whom Imus associated, and to whom most Rappers have little access, delivered a message from Ms. Clinton: "Hillary really wanted to get on your show. She has a lot of respect for you, but it doesn't seem to be reciprocal. She'd do your show gladly, but you don't seem to want her on." But Ms. Clinton's request was treated with disdain by Imus. She became just another powerful political player humiliated by the I-Man. He responded by discussing Mrs. Clinton's husband receiving a "blowjob" in the oval office. The Rappers never had that kind of influence!
Finally, Maya Angelou who was constantly mocked by McGuirk, on a show where white authors promoted their books and blacks were cast as illiterate, might have the last word about Imus and his crew and the crude manner in which blacks and Africans continue to be depicted in newspapers, cable and television networks. On Thursday, April 19, WFAN announced that McGuirk had also been fired. It's poetic justice. She wrote:
"You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise. "
from "Still I Rise,."
This essay will appear in Ishmael Reed's forthcoming book, Mixing It Up: Taking on the Media Bullies, to be published this summer by Thunder's Mouth Press.
Ishmael Reed is a poet, novelist and essayist who lives in Oakland. His widely-accalimed novels include, Mumbo Jumbo, the Freelance Pallbearers and the Last Days of Louisiana Red. He has recently published a fantastic book on Oakland: Blues City: a Walk in Oakland and Carroll and Graf has recently published a thick volume of his poems: New and Collected Poems: 1964-2006.
Copyright, 2007, Ishmael Reed