WAIT, HE SAID WHAT?

In regards to Don Imus' statement about the Rutgers basketball team, I think John Rogers over at Kung Fu Monkey says it best in this post. It's a blog worth checking out, especially if you're, say, Peter of Nerdgasm! since Rogers is also the writer of the new Blue Beetle comic book for DC.

What I wonder about the whole situation is what Imus was thinking when he said "nappy-headed hos". He'd already called them, if I recall correctly, a rough looking bunch of girls with tattoos and cornrows. That should have been enough of a mental picture right there. But then to go on and call them nappy-headed? Who even says nappy-headed? I think I was out of college before I even knew that was a racial insult, that's how rare it is. Or maybe that's just my neck of the woods.

I could rattle off, sadly without much trouble, a dozen racial slurs for blacks that I have heard, and nappy-headed would never have even crossed my mind. So I have to wonder what went through Imus' head. Did his brain actually go through a mental list of every bad name he could think of?

"Think brain, think. I need something provocative to say about these black women... No, can't say that, that's an automatic game over. Not that one... they just throw basketballs. Not that one either... can't prove they have porches at Rutgers. Nope that won't work either, even I like watermelon... Think brain, think, curse you...Well their hair is kind of nappy... nappy... nappy-headed? Is that still an insult? Genius brain, Genius! Say it mouth!"

Maybe he thought that if he said something that obscure it would fly under the radar, I don't know. But the sheer work he probably went through to come up with that phrase means to me that he did it on purpose. And that's not right.

I don't think anyone is going to argue that Imus was right to say what he did. What you can argue is should he have lost his job over it? I don't know, but I do know this: I know Michael Savage said "You should only get AIDS and die, you sodomite" to a caller who told him his teeth looked bad on his MSNBC television show in 2003. He lost his TV show but continues to have a successful career with his radio talk show. Are the statements equally offensive? I guess that's a matter of opinion.