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who keeps drinking, driving, killing people, apologizing - not just a repeat offender - a PERPETUAL offender. Take a look at the compilation below - it's just a dabbling of crap that goes on EVERY day - and has for DECADES. It's time for this sh*t to stop. And for the enablers, who live in their monied cocoons to STOP associating with this *sshole. ****** Why does Tim Russert associate with Don Imus' bigotry? Submitted by jonathan on 5 April, 2007 - 10:10pm. Media Literacy/Bias | Newswire Full Story:
If you're concerned about bigotry on the syndicated radio show Imus in the Morning, you should just "get over it."
That's what the show's star, Don Imus, told journalist Jeff Greenfield on CNN's Larry King Live last week (2/24/00). Greenfield was questioning Imus about recent columns in two prominent newspapers that documented a pattern of slurs by Imus and his on-air sidekicks against people of color, gay men and lesbians (Boston Globe, 2/23/00; Newsday, 2/22/00--see below).
Imus himself has referred to one African-American journalist as "a cleaning lady," another as a "quota hire," and tennis player Amelie Mauresmo as "a big old lesbo." Imus taunted another reporter as a "beanie-wearing little Jewboy," called a disabled colleague "the cripple," and has said that he picked one of his producers to do "nigger jokes" (60 Minutes, 7/19/98).
National politicians and beltway journalists have brought the Imus in the Morning show to nationwide prominence--the show is now carried by cable network MSNBC--by making Imus a regular stop on their media rounds.
One such reporter is NBC's Tim Russert--the same Tim Russert who, on his own NBC show, was unsparing in questioning George W. Bush about the candidate's appearance at Bob Jones University in South Carolina (Meet the Press, 2/13/00).
Russert wondered if Bush's appearance at a school with a history of anti-Catholic bigotry and racial discrimination was "giving affirmation to that institution." He asked Bush: "But people who know you and respect you and like you say, 'George W. Bush, Thomas Burch and Bob Jones III aren't your kind of people. Why are you associating with them?'"
ACTION: Ask Tim Russert whether his appearances on the Imus in the Morning show give "affirmation" to the kind of obvious racism that is featured on the program. Ask him whether the line of questioning he had for Bush applies to his own appearances on the "Imus in the Morning" show.
Contact: Tim Russertmtp@msnbc.com
The following is a column by journalist Philip Nobile, who has been monitoring the "Imus in the Morning" program. This column appeared in Long Island (N.Y.) Newsday on February 22.
Sick Relationship: Media Stars, Racist Imus
By Philip Nobile
It is not David Remnick's style to play ball with bigots.
Remnick is the editor of The New Yorker, a biographer of boxer Muhammad Ali, a friend of the legendary writer Ralph Ellison and a race writer of deserved renown. You would not catch him accepting a book award from a lug like John Rocker, even if it carried a large cash prize. Hypothetically again, he would refuse to plug the 75th anniversary of his magazine on Rocker's radio show, despite an audience of millions.
But high-end media create unexpected bedfellows--including Remnick and Don Imus, the Rocker of morning radio and MSNBC, who makes routine sport of race, sex and physical minorities, while buying off powerful, straight white journalists with lavish national air time to sell themselves and their products.
Among the cream of the press who regularly beat a path to Imus' golden door are Tom Brokaw, Tim Russert, Dan Rather, Cokie Roberts, Howard Fineman, Frank Rich, Jonathan Alter and Jeff Greenfield.
Since Imus paid Remnick $50,000 last year under the cover of the Imus Book Award, Remnick is compromised more than his peers. Still, it behooves one to wonder why he stooped to appear on Imus' show last week. Surely he knows that Imus is a lowbrow smear artist--far closer to Roy Cohn than H.L. Mencken--who revels in speech that would be banned from The New Yorker.
Remnick would never print a David Denby review comparing "the gorilla special effects in Instinct" to "the starting line-up of the Knicks." Nor would he permit his tennis correspondent to call Amelie Mauresmo a "a big old lesbo"* or the Williams sisters "two booma-chucka, big-butted women" or an Indian men's doubles team "Gunga Din and Sambo." If Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker's press critic, handed in copy scorning sports columnist Bill Rhoden as a "New York Times quota hire,"* PBS anchor Gwen Ifill as a "cleaning lady,"* and Talk as a magazine for "liberal homosexuals,"* Remnick would suspend him on the spot and maybe recommend therapy. Yet all the vile words quoted above were broadcast via Imus in the Morning (the asterisks indicate emanations from the host himself).
Remnick may believe that his hands are clean because Imus was polite to him.
Wisely, Imus knocks off calling the Knicks "chest-bumping pimps" with C-SPAM's Brian Lamb and stifles lesbian references to Hillary Rodham Clinton with Doris Kearns Goodwin. But when the respectables are out of the room, the hoods are donned.
For example, within minutes of Remnick's guest shot, Imus ridiculed a cable commentator at the Westminster dog show as a homosexual, not once but twice, and kidded his producer's propensity to mock blacks, as in the jibe, go "make fun of more Negroes." But the latter remark was no mere jibe. In 1997, Imus carelessly told a 60 Minutes staffer off-mike that Bernard McGuirk, his program producer, was tapped to do "nigger jokes." Mike Wallace exposed this incriminating usage in his 60 Minutes profile. Trapped in a Mark Fuhrman moment, what did Imus do? He lied, that is, he denied the staffer's word. When Wallace redoubtably called Imus' bluff on camera, Imus partially relented, insisting that his remark was off the record but nonetheless failing to apologize.
Regrettably, last Tuesday in these pages Noel Rubinton missed the real story behind Imus' red-hot role in presidential politics, which is: How does a shock jock who says "nigger" in private and analogizes blacks to apes in public, get White House aspirants like Bill Bradley, John McCain, Al Gore and Alan Keyes eating from his unclean hands?
In fact, each of the above moral leaders were faxed transcripts of Imus' un-American utterances before recent appearances on the show. Yet none was deterred, not even Bradley who is running on his puffed-up race and gay-rights record. All politicians are reputed to be scoundrels. So they have found their scoundrel time on Imus in the Morning. Coincidentally, Newsday employs the only clear-eyed Imus critic in the press.
Les Payne, columnist and assistant managing editor, has consistently accused Imus of slinging night soil on the least of the brethren. After lampooning Rubinton's valentine last week, along with previous softcore tributes in The New Yorker and Newsweek, Imus rendered Payne a backdoor compliment. "Who's the racist guy out at Newsday who always is attacking me?" he said. "Les Payne. I much prefer his columns because he's a flat-out racist. The guy accuses me, of course, of being one.... The guy retains some dignity, even though they're essentially racist columns, not essentially, they are racist."
Being labeled a racist by the I-Man--how sweet the sound! Too bad Payne is the only journalist in America to hear it.
Source URL:
www.fair.org/index.php?page=1751
http://reclaimthemedia.org/media_literacy_bias/why_does_tim_russert_associate=5094 |
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