I want some but do I want them bad enough to drive to Walmart to get them? The answer is probably no, especially since it's Saturday and there'll be a crowd. I hate people.Radio talk show host Don Imus got himself in trouble this week when he called the Rutgers women's basketball team “nappy headed hos." Now, Al Sharpton and others are demanding that he resign.
In an editorial titled "Imus Is Us," Newsweek columnist Mark Starr said:
We encourage these “entertainers” to walk a tightrope along the limits of good taste and then, with unrestrained glee, pounce when they, inevitably, fall off. Gotcha Imus, gonna make you squirm. Of course, not all are “gotchas” are quite as righteous as that one. Indeed “gotcha” can be a rather cynical game. Earlier this week CBS basketball announcer's Billy Packer was targeted, much like Imus, for comments he made in a TV interview with Charlie Rose. After Rose joked about wanting to carry Packer's bags at the Final Four, Packer retorted that he had heard it before from Rose, adding “You always fag out on that one for me.”
Critics ... excoriated Packer for his use of a slur against homosexuals. I am not quite as old as Packer, but old enough to be familiar with a verb that he used correctly—a British-rooted expression that means “to tire” and that has nothing at all to do with sexual preference ...
The flap was reminiscent of one that forced the resignation of a white aide to the black, former mayor of Washington D.C. after he used—correctly also—the word “niggardly”, which means stingy ... The problem with such indiscriminate sanctimony on our part is that it diminishes the power and legitimacy of our outrage when a Mel Gibson or a Michael Richards crosses the line from funny and outrageous to genuinely hateful.
It also reminds me of the time Howard Cosell got in trouble for saying, "Look at that little monkey run." The football player in question happened to be black and Cosell was run off Monday Night Football because his remark was perceived as racist.
My dad and my grandma used to called us "little monkeys." And nobody in our family is black.
But I just can't get excited about anything right now. Not even Cadbury Cream Eggs.
Turn ons: Orange jelly beans
In an editorial titled "Imus Is Us," Newsweek columnist Mark Starr said:
We encourage these “entertainers” to walk a tightrope along the limits of good taste and then, with unrestrained glee, pounce when they, inevitably, fall off. Gotcha Imus, gonna make you squirm. Of course, not all are “gotchas” are quite as righteous as that one. Indeed “gotcha” can be a rather cynical game. Earlier this week CBS basketball announcer's Billy Packer was targeted, much like Imus, for comments he made in a TV interview with Charlie Rose. After Rose joked about wanting to carry Packer's bags at the Final Four, Packer retorted that he had heard it before from Rose, adding “You always fag out on that one for me.”
Critics ... excoriated Packer for his use of a slur against homosexuals. I am not quite as old as Packer, but old enough to be familiar with a verb that he used correctly—a British-rooted expression that means “to tire” and that has nothing at all to do with sexual preference ...
The flap was reminiscent of one that forced the resignation of a white aide to the black, former mayor of Washington D.C. after he used—correctly also—the word “niggardly”, which means stingy ... The problem with such indiscriminate sanctimony on our part is that it diminishes the power and legitimacy of our outrage when a Mel Gibson or a Michael Richards crosses the line from funny and outrageous to genuinely hateful.
It also reminds me of the time Howard Cosell got in trouble for saying, "Look at that little monkey run." The football player in question happened to be black and Cosell was run off Monday Night Football because his remark was perceived as racist.
My dad and my grandma used to called us "little monkeys." And nobody in our family is black.
But I just can't get excited about anything right now. Not even Cadbury Cream Eggs.
Turn ons: Orange jelly beans
Turn offs: The black ones
1 comment:
I love your blog. I stumbled on and read the entire thing through. Keep writing. And keep living. For now at least. I totally get what you mean about dying. I have known in a very calm resigned way that I will at some point commit suicide. Small children have complicated the
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