Via Brad DeLong…  Here’s one another black female target of Imus’ good ‘ol boy humor has to say…

Trash Talk Radio – New York Times: LET’S say a word about the girls. The young women with the musical names. Kia and Epiphanny and Matee and Essence. Katie and Dee Dee and Rashidat and Myia and Brittany and Heather. The Scarlet Knights of Rutgers University had an improbable season, dropping four of their first seven games, yet ending up in the N.C.A.A. women’s basketball championship game. None of them were seniors. Five were freshmen.

In the end, they were stopped only by Tennessee’s Lady Vols, who clinched their seventh national championship by ending Rutgers’ Cinderella run last week, 59-46. That’s the kind of story we love, right? A bunch of teenagers from Newark, Cincinnati, Brooklyn and, yes, Ogden, Utah, defying expectations. It’s what explodes so many March Madness office pools.

But not, apparently, for the girls. For all their grit, hard work and courage, the Rutgers girls got branded “nappy-headed ho’s” — a shockingly concise sexual and racial insult, tossed out in a volley of male camaraderie by a group of amused, middle-aged white men. The “joke” — as delivered and later recanted — by the radio and television personality Don Imus failed one big test: it was not funny.

The serial apologies of Mr. Imus, who was suspended yesterday by both NBC News and CBS Radio for his remarks, have failed another test. The sincerity seems forced and suspect because he’s done some version of this several times before. I know, because he apparently did it to me.

I was covering the White House for this newspaper in 1993, when Mr. Imus’s producer began calling to invite me on his radio program. I didn’t return his calls. I had my hands plenty full covering Bill Clinton. Soon enough, the phone calls stopped. Then quizzical colleagues began asking me why Don Imus seemed to have a problem with me. I had no idea what they were talking about because I never listened to the program. It was not until five years later, when Mr. Imus and I were both working under the NBC News umbrella — his show was being simulcast on MSNBC; I was a Capitol Hill correspondent for the network — that I discovered why people were asking those questions. It took Lars-Erik Nelson, a columnist for The New York Daily News, to finally explain what no one else had wanted to repeat.

“Isn’t The Times wonderful,” Mr. Nelson quoted Mr. Imus as saying on the radio. “It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House.”

I was taken aback but not outraged. I’d certainly been called worse and indeed jumped at the chance to use the old insult to explain to my NBC bosses why I did not want to appear on the Imus show.

I haven’t talked about this much. I’m a big girl. I have a platform. I have a voice. I’ve been working in journalism long enough that there is little danger that a radio D.J.’s juvenile slap will define or scar me. Yesterday, he began telling people he never actually called me a cleaning lady. Whatever. This is not about me. It is about the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. That game had to be the biggest moment of their lives, and the outcome the biggest disappointment. They are not old enough, or established enough, to have built up the sort of carapace many women I know — black women in particular — develop to guard themselves against casual insult.

Why do my journalistic colleagues appear on Mr. Imus’s program? That’s for them to defend, and others to argue about. I certainly don’t know any black journalists who will. To his credit, Mr. Imus told the Rev. Al Sharpton yesterday he realizes that, this time, he went way too far.

Yes, he did. Every time a young black girl shyly approaches me for an autograph or writes or calls or stops me on the street to ask how she can become a journalist, I feel an enormous responsibility. It’s more than simply being a role model. I know I have to be a voice for them as well. So here’s what this voice has to say for people who cannot grasp the notion of picking on people their own size: This country will only flourish once we consistently learn to applaud and encourage the young people who have to work harder just to achieve balance on the unequal playing field. Let’s see if we can manage to build them up and reward them, rather than opting for the cheapest, easiest, most despicable shots.

I’m old enough to remember when it was merely taken for granted that white males had the right to piss on everyone who wasn’t white and male.  That was in addition to having the right to piss on everyone who Was white and male and below them on the economic ladder.  Ever wonder why poor whites consistently vote republican against their better economic interests, especially in certain parts of this country?  It’s because racism gives them status, even over well-off people of color.  Without racism they’re just another face on the bottom of the pile.  The resentment these people feel, and have felt ever since the black civil rights movement began tearing down the walls of race segregation in America, are enormous and run very, very deep.  They feel as though they’ve lost their place, their status, Their Manhood, in a country that was once theirs…them and the rich white men holding them and everyone else down on the economic ladder.  Rich white men like Don Imus…but more to the point, his producers…the people that make his radio and TV platform possible with their money, and their radio and TV networks.

They give Imus his platform to play his Good ‘Ol Boy shtick, knowing full well who it plays to, knowing full well it allows that audience to imagine itself as part of the same privileged class as the rich white guys who own the airwaves.  They’d be escorted quickly to the door by well dressed butlers wearing gloves so as not to get their hands dirty if they ever showed up in any of the exclusive clubs and playgrounds the people who pay for Imus’ broadcasts enjoy.  But for a few moments listening to him going through his crude, racist, bigoted Good ‘Ol Boy patter routine, they can imagine that they’re all comrades in arms, all sharing the same bitter resentments toward the uppity darkies, women, and faggots who used to know their place.

So it’s spectacularly unsurprising to see the simple, straightforward reflex of Imus and his crew to spit in the faces of a group of young black girls who had succeeded where nobody thought they would.  That’s What They’re On The Radio For.  This gutter crawling racism on Imus’ part isn’t anything new…nor is it anything particularly out of place on Talk Radio.  That’s why talk radio has the large audience it does.

And that large audience, is why Talk Radio’s big names are held in high regard by the guardians of mainstream media opinion…why Rush Limbaugh and Imus and others of their kind can command the respect of the mainstream news media and its pundocracy, even as that pundocracy wags, wags, wags its finger at bloggers…well…progressive bloggers anyway…for being such an uncouth, uncivilized rabble.  There’s no double standard here.  No hypocrisy.  The moral standard is, as always, money.  How many of copies of our books can you sell? 

Thus we have the squeaky clean mild mannered Wally Cox of the pundocracy, Tom Oliphant, rising his fist in solidarity with comrade Imus…

OLIPHANT: What I thought would be instructive for people is to go back on the tape to a minute or so before this happens and see if you can see it developing. Now, believe me, as you well know, I don’t know beans about hip-hop culture or trash-talking, or what do you call those things where you run on forever? Riffs, or whatever.

But even I could see the beginning of what appeared to me to be a riff. And the train went off the tracks, which, you know, can happen to anybody. And, of course, what counts when the train goes off the tracks is what you then do. And that’s why I, you know, didn’t have a moment’s hesitation talking to this guy from The New York Times yesterday. Of course I didn’t think about reacting like that because I saw the whole episode in context, including your statements about it.

No Tom…the train didn’t go off the tracks.  It arrived at it’s destination on time, and on schedule.  And…oh look…you’re heading for that same destination too, aren’t you..?  

IMUS: A lot of friends of mine called, but I didn’t want to put up — put anybody on this morning who wasn’t scheduled, because I can make my own case, and it is what it is.

OLIPHANT: But to me, that only means that those of us who, through an accident, were scheduled, who know better, have a moral obligation to stand up and say to you, "Solidarity forever, pal."

Solidarity Forever…

IMUS: So, I watched the basketball game last night between — a little bit of Rutgers and Tennessee, the women’s final.

ROSENBERG: Yeah, Tennessee won last night — seventh championship for [Tennessee coach] Pat Summitt, I-Man. They beat Rutgers by 13 points.

IMUS: That’s some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and —

McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos.

Solidarity Forever…

IMUS: That’s some nappy-headed hos there. I’m gonna tell you that now, man, that’s some — woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like — kinda like — I don’t know.

McGUIRK: A Spike Lee thing.

IMUS: Yeah.

Solidarity Forever…

McGUIRK: The Jigaboos vs. the Wannabes — that movie that he had.

IMUS: Yeah, it was a tough —

McCORD: Do The Right Thing.

McGUIRK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Solidarity Forever…

IMUS: I don’t know if I’d have wanted to beat Rutgers or not, but they did, right?

ROSENBERG: It was a tough watch. The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the Toronto Raptors.

IMUS: Well, I guess, yeah.

RUFFINO: Only tougher.

McGUIRK: The [Memphis] Grizzlies would be more appropriate.

Solidarity Forever…

“Isn’t The Times wonderful,” Mr. Nelson quoted Mr. Imus as saying on the radio. “It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House.”

Welcome to the gutter Tom.  I hear book sales are pretty brisk once you get that initial sale of your soul taken care of…