Imus and Hip hop

[til661]

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Not sure what you guys think of this but it is something that has always conflicted me, where does irony stop and bigotry begin? Not particularly in the case of this Imus guy who just seems to be a loud-mouth but more generally. I think he also nails mainstream hip-hop well, because it does seem to be little more than macho chestbeating and uber-capitalist vulgarity.

More Taibbi Articles Here
And Here

[nekokate]

I think there is no thin line between irony and bigotry, rather a very wide gradient and different people stand at different points on it. Personally, not much offends me and sometimes I get exasperated at things that offend others.

It always helps if the subversive material is actually funny, though, otherwise one just looks desperate to offend.

Something that raised my eyebrows over the Don Imus thing is that he featured advertisements on his radio show for SickAnimation.com (a website I love) and after his supposedly racist comments, Marc M, the owner of SickAnimation.com, put an announcement on his site saying he'd pulled the adverts. The problem I have with that is most of Marc M's cartoons would probably be met with even greater outrage were they aired on American television, so surely scrapping the advert contract was just a "token" snub.

It worries me how eager broadcasting companies are to sack people who are judged to have offended someone. Then come the blanket snubs and token condemnations from every other direction just so everyone else can make sure they don't seem to be sharing any culpability. Surely the point of the Don Imus show was he is a loudmouthed jerk? Like you don't tune in to listen to Howard Stern expecting a gardening show.

[til661]

Totally agree Kate. When i say that it conflicts me it isn't that i find anything offensive per se more that I find myself questioning why I am laughing and at who. Am I laughing at the idiot character who makes the remarks or are we laughing at the guy in wheelchair/black guy/mexican delete as appropriate. You are spot on about the animator aswell, as Taibbi says in the article it becomes a gangbang with whole groups of unrelated people jumping on the bandwagon from both sides, who have no real interest in the defence of black women but are merely trying to make political capital out of controversy.
And yes it also helps if they are funny, hence why Jim Davidson and Carlos Mencia are retarded idiots and Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce are amazing

I do think he does bring up an important issue aswell when he says that it isn't actually what was said but who said it.

I suppose what it comes down to for me is that while I don't find things offensive and sometimes think, like you, why are these people upset it's just a TV show or whatever, at the back of my mind i'm reminded that it's very easy for me to say it because i'm a white male from western europe, a group with the greatest levels of privilege in the world who don't suffer discrimination, so maybe it's not my place to talk about what other people are upset by. I dunno really i suppose, was just throwing it out, haven't really got a fixed opinion on it all.

[nekokate]

[Colston]

I think it always worth considering the point of view of the person being spoken about... if they are offended then it is offensive.

Whether this would offend any other person making a judgement is immaterial. We all live in unique lifeworlds having experienced very different lives. We should do our best to be sensitive to others regardless of how 'tough' we are.

[nekokate]

[til661]

[Colston]

[Colston]

[til661]

I'm offended by your emoticon

But anyway, of course there is always the matter of what words you choose to argue your case but i'm not sure there is anything you can do outside personally refrain from using provocative language. In terms of broadcast media, comedians, writers etc would need to be federally regulated and I can't see a justification for making laws to deal with aggressive language. Remember language is only a tool it it the emotion behind the language which is the problem not the language itself. So unless you can regulate people's thoughts changing the language will do nothing except restrict the speech of those who are using it to satirize or deal with topics ironically.

[Colston]

[nekokate]

I remember a fantastic stand-up theater performance by Stewart Lee - the comedy writer responsible for Jerry Springer: The Opera - in which he said something along the lines of "Let's talk about religion. I think it sucks a big dog's cock, what do you think?"

Afterwards there were a huge number of complaints, but the fact was that his audience had paid money specifically to see him, were familiar with his work and expected that sort of thing. If he'd got a megaphone and stood on an orange box in the middle of a public square and shouted things like that to random passers-by, then it would be absolutely inappropriate and I would be happy for him to be arrested for it.

The fact is, it boils down to context. If you pay on the door to see a heavy metal band, then expect swearing from those on stage and crash-dancing from those in the audience. But if you're just innocently walking down the street and someone approaches you, waving their long hair around and shoulder-barging you in the manner you might expect at a heavy metal concert, then that's assault.

Don Imus's audience knew what sort of jerk he was, and the sorts of things he was likely to say, so I don't believe he should have been sacked. After looking at the case closer, it wasn't even a racial slur - he called those female basketball players "nappy-headed hos", and "nappy-headed", in American dialogue, refers to hair that is tangled and matted. At first I thought he meant nappy as in diaper - like one might racistly refer to someone from the Middle East as a "diaper head" because of the cloth they wear on their heads (absolutely pathetic and disgusting in my book), but this is clearly not the case. What he said was definitely derogatory, but one could call Paris Hilton a bow-legged ho and that would be equally derogatory.

We need to remember that he was/is a shock-jock and that's exactly the sort of sensationalist thing people listen to his show expecting him to say.

[til661]

[Colston]

[nekokate]