Imus Therefore I Blog

RACIAL COMMENTARY OF THE DAY: The I-MESS Etc.

OK, I’ve been besieged by work and oral surgery etc. but a few quick thoughts on the Imus mess are in order.

First off: He’s been making a living being a nasty insensitive shock-jock asshole for decades. Why drag him onto the carpet now?

Well, I think it was partly a function of the dazzlingly efficient offensiveness of his words. Indeed, with five memorable syllables he managed to viciously insult blacks, women and, in an implicit sense, lesbians—since many women’s basketball players are openly gay. In addition, his inane slur didn’t target the usual cast of public figures (world weary politicians and celebrities) but rather targeted young and innocent protagonists in a major cultural feel good story. He took these young women --who were not in the public eye and, as such, were sort of discursively off limits--and he just gratuituously pissed on their parade. But whatever. I don’t feel like getting too analytical about the perfect storm of factors that led to his demise. The guy is a pompous and unpleasant asshole and will not be missed. The only great misfortune is that we have to hear more more from the opportunistic infection that is Al “Tawana Brawley” Sharpton.

(Actually, hell with that. I’ve come to sort of like the shameless self-promoting bastard ever since his refreshing addition to the 2004 Democratic candidate debates.)

I did find it noteworthy however that when the Rutgers team had their big press conference, the main spokewomen were a stunningly beautiful caucasian woman (Heather Zurich) and a black teammate with perfectly straightened hair. Not a nappy head in sight! I wonder if that was by design? Wouldn’t it have been better to have an articulate Afro-headed woman respond to the gratuitously asinine comments than to relegate the Afro-featured members of the team to non speaking roles? Just struck me as subtly reinforcing the racism of the offending comments.

Or perhaps I'm mistaken. Perhaps all of the girls on the team in fact spoke at the conference but the media reinforced the anti African-American bias by selecting only the straight haired black girl and the beautiful white girl in their news reports on the assumption that they were more telegenic.

In either event: Not good.

Another interesting thing to note is the strange synchronicity between this story and the dropping of charges against the Duke Lacrosse players. There is a complex and interesting symmetry in the two scandals: In the one, a prominent white man commits a racially motivated (verbal) assault against black girls on a college sports team in the other the priviledged white members of a college sports team are cleared of charges that they committed a racially motivated (physical) assault against black girls.

One is tempted to make more of this than one should. Or at least I am tempted. But let it suffice to say that taken in their painful and untidy totality, the two cases suggest simply that race continues to be a highly charged, inadequately addressed and completely unresolved issue in America—as it has been since the founding of our nation.

Add to this the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s crossing the color line and you’ve got a nice little snapshot of race relations in America.

HEALING IDEA OF THE DAY:

You know if might be cool to have a charity event in which the Rutgers women's b-ball team plays the Duke men's lacrosse team in some neutral third sport--with the proceeds going to some inter-racial enlightenment organization. Obviously it would have to be clearly established that neither ethnic slurs nor rape allegations would be allowed.

LFAQs:

How many people are unconsciously singing Stevie Wonder’s “Looking back on when I was a little nappy-headed boy/Then my only worry was for Christmas what would be my toy?” as a result of this Imus story?

How soon before human beings are capable of creating designer weathers?

RACIALLY UNFORTUNATE ANECDOTE OF THE DAY:

A man with his little daughter at a street corner in NYC, waiting for the light to change. When the light finally changes to the familiar NYC crossing icon, he tells the girl “There’s the white man. Now, it’s safe.” --an utterance which is unfortunately timed to coincide with the approach of a group of black—and understandably taken aback—people.

RACIAL/CULTURAL P.S. OF THE DAY:

Someone on the NYT Op-Ed page today made the excellent point that while the Imus slur evoked lots of fully understandable and justifiable outrage, Ann Coulter's repeated slurs against Muslims have only earned her more appearances on TV. The writer claimed that as a practical rather than a moral matter this was terribly unsettling, since if anything Muslim/Judeo-Christian relations were even more volatile than black/white relations and that the fault line between the two cultures was even more likely to open up into a chasm.

So in the interests of managing that fault line with a little more sensitivity and of elevating the inter-cultural discourse in general, let me take this opportunity to say to Ann Coulter "Shut the f-ck up, you ugly bitch."

INANITY OF THE DAY:

I am filling out the medical and dental history questionairre at my new dentist's office. The form offers "Yes", "no" and "DK" (Dont Know) as the options. First question: "Do you wear contact lenses?" A DK here would be very concerning.

Incidentally, when I write my profession on these medical forms, it always feels like I'm talking about someone else. More and more so now with my name and birth date too.

(Transcen)DENTAL MEDITATION OF THE DAY:

In the dentist's chair. Listening to the office chatter. The air filled with shop talk. Professional jargon. Occlusal amalgams and the like. The esteem-lifting function of specialized vocabularies. The enworlding effect of sub languages. As I drift out of my chair under the influence of anaesthesia, I think of how John Lennon was shot across the street and, about how that personal tragedy seems quaint now in the face of the impersonal disaster of 9/11. Of a different era--when individual stories still mattered. Or at least mattered more.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

" We just soldiered on, in grim determination to procrastinate."

CULTURAL SYMPTOM OF THE DAY:

A popular new online video game called “Kill Yourself in 5 Mintues” in which office workers try to end their lives as quickly as possible. It is interesting to think about how much real work time is wasted in pursuit of virtual office suicide.

RECOMBINANT LINGUISTIC FELICITY OF THE DAY:

“I’m just messing with your leg.”

TEMPORAL CATEGORY OF THE DAY:

Now-ish

DEFINITION OF THE DAY:

Bone structure: The genetic determinant of how much shit we’re willing to put up with.

TECHNOLOGICAL BREAKTHROUGH WHICH I REGARD WITH SOME AMBIVALENCE OF THE DAY:

The ability to watch the Darfur Genocide on Google Maps.

PHENOMENON OF THE DAY:

The false bottom. As in the market thinking it has created a bottom from which to build upon, only for the floor to give way again in another round of panic selling. As in: My dentist, having warned me that the decay in my tooth might go all the way down to the root and hence necessitate a root canal telling me, mid drilling that it was looking like we had caught a lucky break and the decay did not in fact go that deep…only to change his tune moments later..with an “Oops…there’s a bit of the nerve exposed.”

POSSIBLE NEW NAME FOR THE BLOG OF THE DAY (If I started getting more comments!):

Textual Intercourse.

TAGLINE OF THE DAY:

Made with real cheese in mind.

MOVIE COMMENT OF THE DAY. (Contains partial spoilers)

Saw "The Lives of Others." Even though I saw the book tribute ending coming, I was still deeply moved by the intimate anonymity of the gesture. Its coded gratitude was much more emotionally satisfying than anything that could have ever been expressed face to face.

The writer actor--a cross between Pierce Brosnan and Bruno Ganz--was a bit too mannered and pretty for the role. The actress--a lovely blend of Angelica Houston and Julianne Moore--was quite good. The thematics: A bit too clean and pat. But the movie overall was quite affecting—largely because of the remarkably nuanced performance (and wonderfully expressive eyes) of the surveillance guy protagonist. It has really stayed with me.

RANDOM SINGLE SENTENCE PORTRAIT OF THE DAY:

He was open to anything except certainty.

Tags:   None

© All rights reserved.

Posted on 4/14/2007 ( Permanent Link )
Read 552 Times
 Send to Friend