Don Imus

[Seeker]

Seriously, is there anyone who could interpret "nappy-headed hos" as anything but an insult?

Or to put it another way, is there anyone who could think that he didn't actually mean it and was just making a joke? You see, this is the essence of humor. Like a frog, it dies when you dissect it. The key thing to consider is Imus' emotional state. Was it positive or negative? Joyful or hateful? Light-hearted or heavy-hearted? Playful or angry? To evaluate his remarks intelligently demands a sensitivity to feeling: not just the words he used, but the complexities of personality, emotion, timing, emphasis, voice intonation, laughter, rapport with co-hosts, and so on that set the total context of what he said. In that context I found his feeling to be one of playful amusement, and that makes all the difference. Was he ripping on them? Of course. Was he super-serious? As in, "those damned nappy-headed ho's, I really hate their guts!"? In my opinion, he was not - and a serious evaluation of the issue demands that we keep that distinction in mind.

Edited April 12, 2007 by Seeker

[Korthor]

Most people, even those calling for his firing, admit that he was trying to make a joke. This doesn't change the fact that what he said was hurtful and insulting to innocent young women, and it was completely appropriate that he apologize. I just can't understand why some on this forum feel the need to defend the content of his comments. My best theory is that they hate Sharpton. OK. But I'm not going to vivisect puppies on my front lawn just because it pisses off antimal-rights activists.

[softwareNerd]

But I'm not going to vivisect puppies on my front lawn just because it pisses off animal-rights activists.

Though, for a "shock jock" -- e.g. Stern -- one would think it's his job to "vivisect" a few cuddly animals, to tickle his audience's nihilist funny bone. Edited April 12, 2007 by softwareNerd

[Seeker]

Most people, even those calling for his firing, admit that he was trying to make a joke. This doesn't change the fact that what he said was hurtful and insulting to innocent young women, and it was completely appropriate that he apologize.

That is the contradiction though: that Imus did not intend to hurt them, while at the same time he did intend to hurt them. The Law of Identity won't allow it to be both!

Now you might say "his intentions don't matter, what matters is that their feelings were hurt". But this is another contradiction: that even with the knowledge of his benign intentions, their feelings could justly be hurt.

Edited April 12, 2007 by Seeker

[Korthor]

That's not a violation of identity. You can say something you mean as a joke that nonetheless hurt someone else. You should then apologize. Why is that hard to understand?

This is especially likely to happen when the speaker and the speakee don't know each other personally, as happened in this case. The fact that Imus, by all indications, does feel genuinely bad about what he said proves my point.

Edited April 12, 2007 by Korthor

[Thoyd Loki]

Most people, even those calling for his firing, admit that he was trying to make a joke. This doesn't change the fact that what he said was hurtful and insulting to innocent young women, and it was completely appropriate that he apologize.

Please! Hurtful and insulting? In this day and age? Is this because it wasn't said by a black man or against the background of a mind-numbingly monotonous beat? "Yo-yo nappy headed- hoes, make you my bitch, you be strippin' in shows. Yo-yo nappy headed hoes....[ad nauseum]."

No one was insulted by this. This is power play pure and simple; played by two of biggest bigots of our time (and race pimps) Sharpton and Jackson. Can't get some innocent white Duke boys into a prison? Fry this shriveled old guy who showed a hair on his ass.

[Korthor]

Please! Hurtful and insulting? In this day and age? Is this because it wasn't said by a black man or against the background of a mind-numbingly monotonous beat? "Yo-yo nappy headed- hoes, make you my bitch, you be strippin' in shows. Yo-yo nappy headed hoes....[ad nauseum]."

No one was insulted by this. This is power play pure and simple; played by two of biggest bigots of our time (and race pimps) Sharpton and Jackson. Can't get some innocent white Duke boys into a prison? Fry this shriveled old guy who showed a hair on his ass.

The young women addressed by this felt insulted. So your argument is that lots of people are saying bad things, so we should say more bad things? How was it a "power play" on their part? Have you seen their press conference? They reacted with reason, dignity, and maturity, and are planning to privately discuss the issue with Imus. If it was a "power play," they would go publicly on the Sharpton radio show and blast his ass.

Once again, we must distinguish between those who are using this incident for their own political agenda (Sharpton), and the talented, beautiful, and mature young women who were hurt by his comments but reacting in the best way they know how.

I also feel terrible about how the Duke lacrosse players were treated, but these women weren't one of the 'nappy headed hos' that made the false rape accusations against the Duke players. Why does one wrong negate the other?

Edited April 12, 2007 by Korthor

[Toolboxnj]

I'd add to the thread, but I've been covering the situation at Rutgers fairly closely in my OO.net blog.

[Thales]

[

What was wrong with their "behavior" or "grooming"? Were they behaving badly?

I was assuming according to the conversation provided by Antonio. I’m not the one who made the claim.

However, for the sake of this argument, let’s say that Imus did have bad intent, and really wanted to belittle these girls based on race. If that’s the case, then it’s disgusting, and I’m against it.

However, it’s not the end of the world.

Why is not having straight blonde Nazi hair bad grooming?

I like straight blonde hair, but I have no use for Nazis. Why are you conflating the two?

So black people are OK as long as they look and act like white people?

That’s the perfect postmodernist argument you just gave. If this were a liberal forum I could understand that sort of rhetoric, but I'd expect a bit more rationality around here.

Just to unwrap what you said, the "act white" notion is a racist idea right out of postmodernism. It's racist for two reasons:

1> It vilifies people because they are white, and

2> It applies a behavior, presumably rationality, to whites and not to blacks.

You've just attacked people based on race, both white and black.

There is no such thing as “acting white”.

I'm glad Imus made his comments so all the racists would out themselves.

The person here who has come across most that way is you. Nobody here is promoting racism, quite the contrary. Racism is a very backward view point, which if you hold to it will be harmful to you.

This doesn't change the fact that what he said was hurtful and insulting to innocent young women, and it was completely appropriate that he apologize.

Maybe. Give people credit for having a little more strength than that. People make comments about people all the time that aren't nice. It's pretty normal. If I come across an unjust remark (as some of yours were), then I will criticize it appropriate to the level of the statement, as best I can judge the facts.

Frankly, the girls in this case aren’t really even the main issue.

I just can't understand why some on this forum feel the need to defend the content of his comments.

The concern is growing pcism, and the out of proportion response. Not just a little out of proportion, but WAY, WAY out of proportion. This raises red flags, because there is an underlying ideology which is very dangerous to our very lives at work here, and this is the concern. In my prior posting I made note of other events which were much more serious, and got much less coverage. This is a way of analzying the cultural response to different things.

Freedom of speech is a vitally important thing.

Just last year the baseball announcer Jeffery Lyons lost his job because someone in the audience thought he was attacking Hispanics. His comments in no way did, but he lost his job. Lyons is a good person as far as I can tell who was tarred and feathered unjustly. I consider that a bad sign. These sorts of things are getting out of control.

I'll address this last point...

I also feel terrible about how the Duke lacrosse players were treated, but these women weren't one of the 'nappy headed hos' that made the false rape accusations against the Duke players. Why does one wrong negate the other?

You’re right, but the point is the response, not the basketball players. The response has been out of proportion in these cases. In the later case there was a big injustice which was racially motivated, in the former case there was a minor injustice an alleged racial epithet. We’re focusing on the responses from the media.

If they are really sweet girls, then what Imus said can't be justified at all, and I'd have more of a problem with his comments, although I wouldn't consider it the end of the world. I've heard Howard Stern say terrible things about people, for instance, Chevy Chase, that pissed me off, but I still wouldn't take his license away or condemn him. I just don't listen to the guy.

[Thoyd Loki]

The young women addressed by this felt insulted. So your argument is that lots of people are saying bad things, so we should say more bad things? How was it a "power play" on their part? Have you seen their press conference? They reacted with reason, dignity, and maturity, and are planning to privately discuss the issue with Imus. If it was a "power play," they would go publicly on the Sharpton radio show and blast his ass.

Once again, we must distinguish between those who are using this incident for their own political agenda (Sharpton), and the talented, beautiful, and mature young women who were hurt by his comments but reacting in the best way they know how.

I also feel terrible about how the Duke lacrosse players were treated, but these women weren't one of the 'nappy headed hoes' that made the false rape accusations against the Duke players. Why does one wrong negate the other?

What I am saying is that a culture that saturates themselves with such crap sounds ridiculous when screaming about something like this. Therefore, it must be acceptable in certain circumstances. You have to be black (and then you talk about blond-hoes and all the white chicks too) and you can do it against a beat. This way people like the slimy Snoop Dog can find his respectable self in my living room pushing family products on me before he gets back to smoking his blunt and chillin' with his bitches. Or you can be a race-pimp and say whatever you want about any race - as long as you are black.

Hypocrisy is what they called it in sane times.

Once again we must read a post as it was written. I said it was a power play by the 2 bigots, not the girls. But, how do you suppose they got into a press conference in the first place? There has to be a stink before there is a conference. Frankly I don't think they would have been quite so "hurt" if the fire hadn't been made so big. And since when did talented, beautiful, mature young women care what some shriveled old stroke dampered hag blubbers between his sagging lips? I'd bet half of them didn't know who he was before this happened.

I seriously doubt they were "hurt".

Do you think Imus could have got away with calling the stripper a "nappy headed hoe"? I don't think so!

I do not even know what this next sentence means.

Why does one wrong negate the other?

Can you explain this, for the life of me I don't know what you mean. What I meant is that the last effort of the bigot race pimp team (Al and Jesse) to get those Duke boys thrown in jail was obviously failing, but here comes shriveled Imus and his dumb ass to make sure we are still staring at the most boring topic in our era "race-relations". Snoooze.

[Toolboxnj]

I blame the Rutgers Administration for blowing the situation out of proportion. The University prides itself on being the "most diverse" in the country (Newark campus) and is using the firestorm for political reasons. The university president (McCormick) must go.

[Qwertz]

In re the offensiveness of 'nappy,' now comes Qwertz the Pedant with his massive OED:

nappy ('næpı), a. 1 Now rare. Also 5-6 noppy, 7 nappie, 8 knappy. [ad. MDu. noppigh (Du. noppig), or MLG. noppich, f. noppe NAP sb. 3]

1

. Having a nap; villous, downy, shaggy.

[Attributions from 1499-1901 omitted, -Q]

2

. Fuzzy, kinky; used colloquially and freq. derogatorily of Negroes' hair. So

nappy-head

, a Negro;

nappy-haired

, -

headed

adjs

.

U.S.

1950

A. Lomax

Mister Jelly Roll

(1952) 80 Light-skinned Downtown shared the bandstand with 'real black and nappy-headed' Uptown.

1956

S. Longstreet

Real Jazz

xviii. 150 To call a man '

nappy

' is to say his hair is kinky - a real insult.

1962

E. Cleaver in A. Dundes

Mother Wit

(1973) 16/1 Good hair, bad hair, nappy hair.

1966

K.L. Morgan in

Ibid

. 606/2 They would come up with black nappy-haired babies.

1967

J. Taylor in A. Chapman

New Black Voices

(1972) 175 One of the new breed of nappy-haired, bangle-wearing nationalists.

1968

J. Pullman in P Oliver

Screening Blues

iii. 92 Joe Pullman's high-pitched 'black gal, black gal, what makes your nappy head so hard?'

1971

Black World

June 71/2 Her hair . . was in the bushy style that the freedom riders had brought. They called it 'natural'; Bojack called it nappy.

1973

Ibid

. Apr. 63 All them ol' nappy-heads runnin' up there tryin' to pull his clothes off.

There is no applicable entry under "ho."

So it appears 'nappy' fell out of use as a descriptor for fabrics (though 'nap' still applies in this context) about the beginning of the 20th Century and was replaced by the (according to the OED) now more dominant usage to refer to hair, specifically that of blacks. At least, in the US Being attested in this context only from 1950, it doesn't have quite the pedigree of other racially charged terms, and thus is not evocative of American slavery. Of course, the fact that the word may have a racially-specific meaning isn't what's causing the ruckus here. It's the double standard. Who is 'allowed' to use such words? The 1950 attribution is from a biography of Jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton, written by Alan Lomax:

[F]or the first time since reconstruction, Creoles were compelled to accept blacks as equals and this was bitter medicine. As the mulatto group had been forced down, it's [sic] cast prejudice had mounted. "The mulattoes were actually more prejudiced than the white people at that time," dark-skinned Johnny St. Cyr somberly remarked, and his comment was confirmed every time a Creole opened his mouth. Invariably, in describing someone, a Creole would begin, "He's kind of light brown . . " or, "He's real black, got bad (kinky) hair . . " or, "he's a real nice-lookin light fellow. . . " A man's pigmentation was his most significant human attribute in new Orleans.

Light-skinned Downtown shared the bandstand with "real black and nappy-headed" Uptown. There was fear and hate on both sides; but jazz demanded cooperation. Jelly Roll, as sporting-house soloist, side-stepped the dilemma. But the stories of other oldtimers demonstrated that his drama of competition and collaboration, played against the nightmarish backdrop of Storyville, had wrung their hearts-

I suggest that the derogatory usage began among blacks (or, more accurately, among blacks and other minority groups of mixed heritage and with intermediate skin tones). In this way, it differs significantly from other racial slurs. It is not a word historically used by whites to denigrate blacks. My question for the Reverend Mr. Sharpton is whether he would be more upset by a 'light-skinned black person' using 'nappy' to refer to a 'dark-skinned black person.' I do not think he would be. My conclusion from all this is that the words don't matter. They're just convenient media bait that people like the Rev. Mr. Sharpton take advantage of in order to 'prove' that 'white America' is still 'oppressing' 'black America.' All that matters (to the Rev. Mr. Sharpton) is who used the words, not what words were used. Consequently, I wouldn't expect Sharpton to be fazed by the use of 'nappy' by a prominent black shock jock. He isn't concerned with eradicating racism; he's concerned with winning reparations from 'white America.'

-Q

[Seeker]

That's not a violation of identity. You can say something you mean as a joke that nonetheless hurt someone else. You should then apologize. Why is that hard to understand?

Because as I said (with emphasis added):

But this is another contradiction: that even with the knowledge of his benign intentions, their feelings could justly be hurt.

So that when we examine his actual remarks and see that, in context, they were not intended maliciously, we understand that it follows that there is no just basis for feeling hurt - and a rational person would not feel hurt and feel no need of an apology. Similarly, a rational person would understand that no hurt was intended or conveyed, and feel no need to apologize.

The fact that Imus, by all indications, does feel genuinely bad about what he said proves my point.

Or perhaps he simply doesn't understand the principles involved (as indeed I expect most people don't -- most people have been guilt-ridden to the point of providing unjustified apologies in a whole range of circumstances).

[Korthor]

So Seeker...

If you accidently shoot me in the face, are you saying that it wouldn't be "just" or "rational" for me to be pissed off? I would at the very least expect an apology.*

Do you apologize if you accidently bump into someone? Do you apologize if you make an honest mistake calculating your share of the check and underpay? Or do you lash out the people hurt by your carelessness as "irrational" people?

Jeeze, we're trying to have a society here people! It's OK to be civil beyond the bare requirements of justice--it won't hurt that much.

*Although in Cheney's case, the shootee actually apologized to Cheney for inconviencing him by getting in the way of the shot. I think this perhaps more accuratley reflects Seeker's line of thinking.

[hunterrose]

If Al Sharpton humorously called Ayn Rand a "paleface ho" on his radio program, would anyone here say that Sharpton was simply calling her on her behavior and lack of sunshine? Would anyone here say such a comment wasn't necessarily improper just because Al's intention wasn't malicious? Or compare insulting Rand to rap?

I would find such comments about Rand distasteful and worth getting fired for. But I guess that would make me a postmodernist.

Edited April 13, 2007 by hunterrose

[Seeker]

So Seeker...

If you accidently shoot me in the face, are you saying that it wouldn't be "just" or "rational" for me to be pissed off? I would at the very least expect an apology.*

Do you apologize if you accidently bump into someone? Do you apologize if you make an honest mistake calculating your share of the check and underpay? Or do you lash out the people hurt by your carelessness as "irrational" people?

Jeeze, we're trying to have a society here people! It's OK to be civil beyond the bare requirements of justice--it won't hurt that much.

*Although in Cheney's case, the shootee actually apologized to Cheney for inconviencing him by getting in the way of the shot. I think this perhaps more accuratley reflects Seeker's line of thinking.

Were those disanalogies intended as a comedy routine? On Internet forums I try to stick to the general rule that since emotion cannot be conveyed, sarcasm is to be avoided. To your point - I suppose that everyone who has willfully misconstrued Imus' remarks should offer an apology to him for their carelessness and the damage they have done - although it would be hard to characterize much of their reactions as an honest mistake.

[Korthor]

Seeker...

You said "So that when we examine his actual remarks and see that, in context, they were not intended maliciously, we understand that it follows that there is no just basis for feeling hurt - and a rational person would not feel hurt and feel no need of an apology. Similarly, a rational person would understand that no hurt was intended or conveyed, and feel no need to apologize. "

I took that to mean that you were making the argument that if you accidently hurt/insult/injure/kill someone, then because your intent wasn't "malicious," you don't owe an apology. Maybe I missed your point. Perhaps you would care to clarify?

[Korthor]

Frankly, the girls in this case aren’t really even the main issue.

The concern is growing pcism, and the out of proportion response. Not just a little out of proportion, but WAY, WAY out of proportion. This raises red flags, because there is an underlying ideology which is very dangerous to our very lives at work here, and this is the concern. In my prior posting I made note of other events which were much more serious, and got much less coverage. This is a way of analzying the cultural response to different things.

Freedom of speech is a vitally important thing.

Just last year the baseball announcer Jeffery Lyons lost his job because someone in the audience thought he was attacking Hispanics. His comments in no way did, but he lost his job. Lyons is a good person as far as I can tell who was tarred and feathered unjustly. I consider that a bad sign. These sorts of things are getting out of control.

I've kept to a simple line of reasoning that what Imus said was bad and it was good that he should apologize (I didn't say anything about firing). Nonetheless, many people go off in a "Sharptonesque" fashion to say that the injury to the girls "wasn't even the main issue" and then cite their favorite examples of injustice (the Duke players also come to mnd). Don't you realize that you sound exactly like Sharpton, exploiting the issue for your own political agenda?

The quesstion of whether Imus should apologize has NOTHING to do with the PCification of culture. It was a question of whether he caused harm, and whether he sould apologize for that harm.

I agree that the media circus that has arisen does raise important issues about PCification. I love free speech (nigger nigger nigger), and am somewhat disgusted myself. But the fact that Sharpton is bad doesn't make what Imus said right.

[Seeker]

I took that to mean that you were making the argument that if you accidently hurt/insult/injure/kill someone, then because your intent wasn't "malicious," you don't owe an apology. Maybe I missed your point. Perhaps you would care to clarify?

It might help more if you could clarify what you think the basis of the individuals' grievances is. I have tried not to speculate about that because many of the reasons I can think of would actually reflect very badly on them. So I have stuck to the actual remarks by Imus and noted his feeling to be one of playful amusement and that his remarks were not intended maliciously, and as such, no basis for hurt feelings actually exists.

Edited April 13, 2007 by Seeker

[Thales]

I've kept to a simple line of reasoning that what Imus said was bad and it was good that he should apologize (I didn't say anything about firing).

Nonetheless, many people go off in a "Sharptonesque" fashion to say that the injury to the girls "wasn't even the main issue"

"injury"? There was no injury. There was an insult. I've been insulted worse many times (by you in this thread!). I assure you, I survived easily. It's not the main issue. If it were the main issue, the response would not have been as out of proportion as it's been. Frankly, I shouldn't have even heard about this issue, it's so trivial, but somehow I have.

and then cite their favorite examples of injustice (the Duke players also come to mnd). Don't you realize that you sound exactly like Sharpton, exploiting the issue for your own political agenda?

No, because I'm trying to identify the underlying philosophical cause. By doing so, I can better fight it. Toolboxnj says that the Rutgers faculty is responsible for hyping this. This falls exactly in line with my point about postmodernism being the root problem here.

The quesstion of whether Imus should apologize has NOTHING to do with the PCification of culture.

Yes, on a pure question of manners, it doesn't. But, the fact that this comment was isolated, zoomed in on with an electron microscope and made to look like the Empire State building is a result of the pc culture. The fact that a man can have a forty year career on the radio, without any track record of racism, and get fired without being given the benefit of the doubt is a result of the pc culture.

It looks to me like these people are disloyal back stabbers with no principles. These are not people I'd want to be around.

It was a question of whether he caused harm, and whether he sould apologize for that harm.

He didn't cause any "harm". Shouting fire in a crowded building can cause harm. This was at most a bad thing to say.

Thoyd Loki made note that rap lyrics are often worse, and they do it to a beat, selling millions of copies no doubt.

I agree that the media circus that has arisen does raise important issues about PCification. I love free speech (nigger nigger nigger), and am somewhat disgusted myself. But the fact that Sharpton is bad doesn't make what Imus said right.

Yeah, well, Sharpton is another side show to me. My concern are the intellectuals spear heading this. They hide in the shadows for the most part.

I've tied all of this to the pomo intellectuals, because they are at war with Western society, and this is just part of that war. It's not me who made this "political". That was done by leftists who have been pounding on this for more than a week. It's me, and others, who are identifying it for what it is.

Reasoned responses to comments like Imus', fine, but *this* loonyness? It can't be tolerated. Their cure is far worse than the disease, and in this case the disease is a minor head cold, and the cure is cutting off the patient's arm. These people have taken a sledge hammer to a gnat, and beaten it over and over again. I assure you, they’d do the same to you if they had half a chance and could make political hay out of it.

[Korthor]

To Thales, with insult...

My warrant for the claim that there is "harm" or "insult" is that the young women said they felt insulted in the press conference. Were they lying? Imus meant to be funny, but was misunderstood as being insulting. After all, it easy to misunderstand the accusation of being a "nappy-headed ho" as an insulting one.

And to be clear, I have no problem with insulting people. I just have a problem with insulting "civillians" like the Rutgers women, especially by nationally syndicated radio hosts. What's worng with an apology? Must the Rutgers women be "collateral damage" in this larger cultural war?

And I don't think "postmodernism" is the issue here. I would characterize the worst elemeents of the Imus-haters as being very confident in both their epistemological and moral claims. After all, one of the main criticisms of postmodernism/poststructuralism by the anti-racist/feminist left was that it undermined the basis for the truth claims of oppression made by those like Sharpton.

If you want to be a foot soldier in the Kulturkampf, you should get better intelligence reports on the enemy. Next thing you know, you'll be promising that the modernists will greet us as liberators.

Also, I loved the idea of "intellectuals hiding in the shadows." It made my day. So are Cornell West and Catherine MacKinnon pulling the strings here? I'm sure they'd be flattered.

Finally, in your rush to fight the intellectual postmodernist leftists running this scandal from their secret underground bunkers in Berkeley, you have missed perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this affair. Conservatives (e.g., Scarborough) are jumping onto the idea put forth by Sharton et al that we need a broader crusade for "decency" targeted against "offensive" culture like hip hop, MTV, etc. The conservatives have realized that the PC-left has given them a tactical opening to crack down on offensive speech. The same thing happened with the alliance between feminists and conservatives against porn in the 1980s. However much you hate the intellectuals and Sharptons that constitute the cultural Left, they are Lilliputians compared to the American cultural Right.

My prediction: O'Reiley will soon start sounding peculiarly like Al Sharpton on this issue.

Edited April 13, 2007 by Korthor

[RationalBiker]

I love free speech (nigger nigger nigger), and am somewhat disgusted myself.

This isn't a "free speech" issue. There is no call for government sanction involved in this that I'm aware of (though I may have missed it). Don't think that "free speech" entitles one to say whatever shocking thing one wants on someone else's private property... namely this forum.

[Seeker]

Imus meant to be funny, but was misunderstood as being insulting.

A quick rewrite will reveal: "Imus meant to be funny, but the young women misunderstood him as being insulting". We might reasonably wonder whether their response should have been to apologize to Imus for misunderstanding what he said, but at least we can say that the most he needed to offer was a clarification, whereupon there would have been a few backslaps, whoops and maybe even some turnabout (as though Imus himself doesn't have his own share of hair problems!). After all, we're all happy adults with healthy senses of humor about ourselves and about life, right? We're not twisted subhuman creatures who look askance at comedy as some impenetrable alien phenomenon, right? We all can take a joke, can't we? We don't put our self-esteem and happiness in the hands of others, do we?

[in my opinion, a very real psychological problem reflected in our culture is the inability to take a joke. When you can't take a joke, your only recourse is to burn down the other fellow's house. This doesn't mean setting aside what's really serious, but having a proper sense of humor in dealing with things is essential. Whatever else may characterize the overreaction to Imus' three words, the lack of humor should really concern us - seriously.]

And to be clear, I have no problem with insulting people. I just have a problem with insulting "civillians" like the Rutgers women, especially by nationally syndicated radio hosts.

Everything in life is fodder to the humorist as well as the philosopher. Those young women became fodder for jokes - for all of us, not just Imus - by simple virtue of coming to our attention. We all have our soapboxes. The only difference with Imus is that more people happened to have paid attention to his.

Edited April 13, 2007 by Seeker

[LaszloWalrus]

NOT everything is a proper target for humor; the evil and the insignificant are, but not the good. Imus's joke (even without the racist component) was wrong.

(I do find it strange that some of the players' feelings were hurt; I understand being insulted, but having one's feelings hurt?)

[Seeker]

NOT everything is a proper target for humor; the evil and the insignificant are, but not the good.

Well this is where it can get a bit dicey, because the targets of humor are often multifaceted and possess a mixture of qualities. Furthermore, there are at least as many types of humor as there are proper targets of humor, and its psychological function extends as well to the relief of tension and the momentary victory over repression (saying what otherwise couldn't be said), and is in fact something that appears even today to be the subject of much debate. Which is to say, there is much, much more to understanding humor and its role in man's life than can be conveyed by a single bromide. In any event, I take the "nappy-headed hos" comment to be of a particular variety of silly throwaway comment meant simply to amuse; it was not intended to be significant at all (and definitely not to this absurd degree).