Echoes in Eternity

Sorry if I'm beating a dead horse...I wasn't planning on mentioning the Imus stuff again, but this MSNBC interview of Jason Whitlock, the sportswriter I linked to last week, is great. The best part: he calls the Revs. Sharpton and Jackson "terrorists" for their role in stirring up racial hatred. I'm not sure if I would use that particular word, but they are guilty of race-baiting and other evils. They are modern day Pharisees, judging everyone else's twigs while ignoring their own ocular timbers.

Steyn weighed in this week on the Don Imus hullabaloo. As always, his wit nearly outshines the subject matter. He could write about how to properly peel a turnip and still he would have me rolling out of my seat. Side note: I am likely going to have the good fortune of listening to Mr. Steyn speak in person tomorrow afternoon, as he will be in town to speak at the University of St. Thomas. I will post a synopsis of his talk on here later this week.

What was it Martin Luther King dreamed of? A nation where men would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their characterizations?
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It's a good rule of thumb in American scandals that, no matter how big an idiot someone is, the outrage over him will always be more idiotic.
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Needless to say, [CBS chairman Les] Moonves fired Imus after first meeting with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton. I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where a white guy can be fired for racist remarks without his employers having to prostrate themselves before clapped out professional grievance mongers and shakedown artists. But dream on. Two men who slandered the Duke lacrosse players not just as racists but as rapists (by the way, has the Rev. Jackson come through on his promise to pay for the "victim" to go to college?) are the go-to guys when it comes to judging rhetorical excess in respect of varsity sports teams.
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And saddest of all were the Rutgers basketball gals themselves. Almost a century and a half after the abolition of slavery, 40 years after the civil rights era, a group of young black women who've achieved great success went on TV and teared up because of a cheap crack by an over-the-hill shock jock.
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Only in America: a team of champions who think they're victims, an old white fool who talks like a gangsta rapper and multi-millionaires grown rich on race-baiting who promote themselves as guardians of civility. Good thing there are no real problems to worry about.

A friend of mine forwarded me this article by Jason Whitlock, a black sportswriter for The Kansas City Star and former contributor to ESPN's Sports Reporters show. In it, Whitlock bemoans the racial (double) standard that applies to Don Imus' racially-charged comments but apparently to none of 50 Cent's lyrics.

Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.

You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.

You’ve given [head coach] Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor.

Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.

The bigots win again.

While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’s or Young Jeezy’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos.

I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don’t have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.

It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.

This column ranks up there with Bill Cosby's "Pound Cake" speech for speaking powerful truth to a deaf culture.