Advance Force: The anti-Imus Crusaders
By Erik Rush (04/16/07)
Young black multimillionaires on television news, talk shows and press conferences decrying institutional racism and how their nation is devoid of opportunities for minority individuals...
Only in America.
The press conference at Rutgers University on April 10 was positively surreal; it was in length and tone the sort you’d see after half the team had been killed in a light plane crash. C. Vivian Stringer, the women’s basketball coach opined: “We have all been physically, mentally and emotionally spent, so hurt by the remarks that were uttered by Mr. Imus. But, you see, we also understood a long time ago that, you know what? No one can make you feel inferior unless you allow them, that we can't let other people steal our joy.”
The statement was obviously profoundly contradictory. It immediately occurred to me that they already had let their “joy” be “stolen” by virtue of her words.
But who pays attention to reality anymore – even when it is in stark, glaring evidence ..?
Don Rickles couldn’t succeed with the comedy he used to do in the ‘Sixties and ‘Seventies, when the legendary comedian was at the height of his popularity. If you went to one of Rickles’ stand-up shows and you caught his eye – lookout. Whether it was your height, weight, hair (or lack thereof), eyes, nose, ears, clothes, companion, surmised sexual preference or race, you were going to get picked on. Thing is, no one got offended, because it was all in context; that’s what Rickles’ shtick was. Everyone expected the barbs – some of which could really sting. There was even a classification of comedy at the time called “ethnic humor,” and as long as it was the a context of entertainment, everyone laughed and stuck the joke in their own bag of ethnic jokes, the only concern being the hope they could recall it accurately enough to bring it off passably when they told it. The same goes for Buddy Hackett, who used the same kind of acerbic humor, though his was often more risqué and invective-laced than Rickles. Mel Brooks couldn’t produce his now classic (and frequently “edited for content”) comedy “Blazing Saddles” in 2007.
PC (Political Correctness) killed all of that, and turned us into a society of eggshell-walking, thought-policed paranoiacs. The term “racist” has been redefined. It no longer merely means someone who is an avowed racist, or someone who has a history of acting the part but won’t admit it; these days, a slip of the tongue, one insensitive remark, one questionable association and one is damned.
There are two reasons radio “shock jock” Don Imus’s remarks about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team were foolish and imprudent: One, because assuming he was aware of the unfortunate change in our social climate (or zeitgeist), he should have known that it wouldn’t play well coming from a white man. Two, because it provided fodder for the Poverty Pimps and validation for those who have been indoctrinated into their culture of victimhood.
“See?” professional race-baiting Poverty Pimps Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson cry. “America is indeed an institutionally racist nation!” – thereby justifying their own craven, avaricious, opportunistic existence.
Some commentators on, and writers and callers to news outlets were quick to point out the hypocrisies of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton playing the race card. Jackson, who once referred to New York City as “hymietown” has been revealed as little more than a racketeer over the last few years. Sharpton’s claim to fame (if you were living in New York when he was coming up in the world and know what he’s really about) is his attempt to frame white police officers for an assault on a teenaged black girl.
It was too evident for America to deny the tangled web of associations relative to the corporations that keep Imus and Sharpton on the air and Jackson in the green stuff ultimately convict them as well, since they also promote gangsta rappers and other purveyors of spirit poison far more racist and sexist than anything which emanated from Don Imus’s lips. Discussions on the air an in the blogosphere were rife with Americans who recognized that hypocrisy as well. Then there’s the fact that Imus’s words were all in context; that’s what his shtick is and has been for 30 years.
What changed? Timing. Nothing else. The Poverty Pimps had been waiting to pounce for awhile, only this time, to employ an unprecedented degree of audacity, hypocrisy, vengefulness and histrionics.
Another ironic hypocrisy: The Poverty Pimps answer to white Progressive power brokers whose agenda is to neutralize the Constitution via the “divide and conquer” method, plain and simple. Sharpton’s call for measures to be taken to determine what may and may not be said on the airwaves is a programmed response from a programmed individual who defers to a monolithic government solution.
The Poverty Pimps (who include not only men like Jackson and Sharpton, but thousands of left-leaning black activists, hundreds of black journalists and dozens of black politicians on Capitol Hill) are among the worst kind of scum. Not because they’re calling for a punishment that doesn’t fit the crime in the case of Don Imus, but for their vigorous furtherance of a cultural scam that allows them to prosper on the backs of their so-called “people” in exchange for their cooperation in keeping said people in a state of learned hopelessness, a sense of entitlement, unaccountability, mediocrity, resentment and abject ignorance.
“This has never been about Don Imus,” said Sharpton. “…This is about the use of public airwaves for bigoted, racist speech. … We cannot afford a precedent established that the airwaves can be used to commercialize and mainstream sexism and racism.”
Constitutional implications notwithstanding: He’s got to be freakin’ kidding…
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said: “He [Imus] fed into some of the worst stereotypes that my two young daughters are having to deal with today in America.”
Oh, boo-hoo, Senator Obaby. Let’s completely overlook the fact that Obama and Sharpton do the same thing every day by virtue of their belonging to a political party that helped to create and continues to defend the self-destructive subculture from whence phrases like “nappy-headed hos” came.
In a sense, Sharpton is right when he says it has never been about Imus. The deeper meaning, and the most important take-away from all this is what the actions of the Poverty Pimps and the media amount to: The eradication of any speech – and ultimately any thought – which the far Left finds objectionable. It is no coincidence that black activists are the ones bringing this molehill of an issue to the fore. Since they’re black, they’re unassailable even if they are blatantly hypocritical, so atremble are many whites over being branded racists, and even moreso after the Imus crucifixion. The Poverty Pimps will now advocate legislative measures which will first severely scrutinize, then systematically target and eradicate all dissent (talk radio being a major primary target). The Democrat-controlled Congress, which supports all things intrusive and perverse, will surely go for it.
It may have become obvious to some readers by now that I could not care less what people say about me; the Poverty Pimps and their acolytes attack conservatives of color who speak out with even more venom than they do errant white shock jocks. Yet, because I am a person of color, I can get away with calling Sharpton and Jackson nappy-headed pimps. The mind boggles.
What people think of me is simply none of my business. If I spend time and mental energy on what is in other people’s heads, I consider it trespassing. If someone chooses to act on their thoughts in a way that will impact my life, liberty and pursuit of happiness or that of anyone else – like the Poverty Pimps propose with their demands for thought policing and supporting self-destructive subcultures – then I consider it my business. Sharpton wants to “detoxify the airwaves.” I would suggest a great start would be relegating him, Jackson and gangsta rappers to obscurity.
Finally, a note from someone who is in a position to understand. Don Imus struggled with alcoholism and cocaine addiction for some time. As has been reported (and admitted by the radio personality, he sought treatment in 1987, and has been clean and sober for almost 20 years. After initiating his recovery, he modified his radio show to include political issues and charitable causes. I know why Imus was able to humble himself before the repugnant and odious Sharpton. I know why he met with the Rutgers women’s basketball team. I believe that his remarks were simply an unconscious, unthinking result of identification with our pop culture. I know why his contrition is sincere and, to him, an imperative.
Ironically – though his remarks merited some form of restitution – Don Imus has shown more character since this unfortunate event than all of the Poverty Pimps and jabbering activist meat suits who subsequently crawled out of the woodwork and onto media venues. But none of that matters, now; we must throw anything good he’s done – I’d maintain far more than all the Jacksons and Sharptons in America combined – by the wayside. You see; even if Rutgers’ coach and every member of the women’s basketball team forgive him and become lifelong friends, he’s a racist now.
I cannot stress strongly enough how important it is for people like you and me to defeat these Poverty Pimps and disinfect America of their works like the unholy mold that it is, through education of minorities and fearless grass-roots pressure. They must be marginalized to the degree that American white supremacist leaders have been marginalized. Constitutionally-minded whites and minorities cannot afford to be cowed invertebrates. Using Don Imus as their weak excuse of a catalyst, these parasites have suddenly become much more than dangerous activists: They have become the advance force, the first captains of the Thought Police.
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