Don Imus Gets Fired - TV and Radio!!! Options

[burd]

I never saw his TV show. I never listened to his radio show.
But he referred to players of the Rutgers women's basketball team as "nappy headed hos".

Al Sharpton called for his termination from NBC & CBS broadcast companies. Advertisers pulled out ... and Imus is now unemployeed! I can't believe it.

I think the comment on the surface was rude, but I don't know if it was taken out of context or not. I've heard every fucking news commentator repeat those words, but I haven't heard one true soundbyte from Imus. Was he serious? Was he joking?

I think a guy old enough to roll over & die any minute should be allowed to keep his mildly rated talk show. I think if you don't want to hear it, you don't have to listen to it. I think there are much worse things being said in lyrics, shown in movies, written in books ... but they have to pick on the little old guy so the big corporate machines won't piss off more advertisers (and won't have to deal with the annoyance of defending themselves against Al Sharpton).

What do you think?

This post has been edited by burd: Apr 12 2007, 5:33 pm

[Trathena]

Here's the complete quote:

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

SID ROSENBERG: Yeah, Tennessee won last night, seventh championship for Pat Summitt, I-Man. They beat Rutgers by thirteen points.

DON IMUS: Some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they've got tattoos and --

BERNARD McGUIRK: Some hardcore hos.

DON IMUS: That’s some nappy-headed hos there, I’m going to tell you that. Man, that’s some -- ooh! And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so -- like kind of like a -- I don’t know.

BERNARD McGUIRK: A Spike Lee thing.

DON IMUS: Yeah.

BERNARD McGUIRK: The Jigaboos versus the Wannabes --

DON IMUS: Yeah.

BERNARD McGUIRK: That movie that he had?

DON IMUS: Yeah, it was a tough --

CHARLES McCORD: Do the Right Thing.

BERNARD McGUIRK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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

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

DON IMUS: Well, I guess, yeah.

LOU RUFFINO: Only tougher.

I heard a tape of this verbal vomit, and yes, he and McCord both meant it. This isn't a "freedom of speech" issue. Don Imus doesn't have freedom of speech on his job. None of us has freedom of speech on our jobs. Don Imus has always been a sexist bigot, so I'm not sure why anyone is surprised by this. But, yeah, the company he works for is well within its right to fire him if he's costing them money or legitimacy. He belongs on Fox, where this kind of thinking would be welcome. He's an asshole. This couldn't happen to a better guy.