Off Color

From The New York Sun: After Grilling by Sharpton, Imus Is Suspended.

There was a different tone in [Don Imus's] voice yesterday during his nationally syndicated morning show, "Imus in the Morning."

Not only did he spend much of his airtime giving a lengthy apology for describing the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy headed hos," but he vowed to permanently change the nature of his show. ...

By day's end, he had been grilled on-air by the Reverend Al Sharpton and suspended by MSNBC for two weeks starting April 16. ...

One of Mr. Imus's most vocal critics in the last days, Rev. Sharpton, said that he accepted Mr. Imus's apology, but still wanted him to resign.

"You could be fired and the nicest guy in the world, but you ought to be fired," Rev. Sharpton told him during a conversation on "The Al Sharpton Show." Meanwhile, the Rev. Jesse Jackson rallied outside the headquarters of NBC in Chicago and called on the company to fire him. ...

During his on-air conversation with Mr. Imus, Rev. Sharpton said: "I'm not going to call you a bigot. I'm going to say what you said was racist. I'm going to say what you said was abominable. I'm going to say you should be fired for saying it."

Mr. Imus argued that it was "an ill-informed decision" to call for his resignation because people didn't know what was "in his heart."

David Horowitz at FrontPageMag.com had some strong criticism for Sharpton: The Imus lynching:

Don't you just love the fact that Al Sharpton is leading the Imus lynch squad? There's a certain appropriateness of course in that Sharpton is America's most successful racist, having personally incited the lynchings of eight people, not counting the half dozen whose lives were ruined by Tawana Brawley's lies.

From CNN: Rutgers players describe how Imus' remarks hurt.

UPDATE I: IBD Editorials has more on Sharpton and double standards: Imus And Andy.

What struck us was that his most vocal accuser, the Rev. Al Sharpton, on whose show Imus begged forgiveness, is hardly the poster child for racial sensitivity. Big Al rose to fame back in 1987 by charging that New York prosecutor Steve Pagones "on 33 separate occasions" had "kidnapped, raped and abused" Tawana Brawley.

Brawley was a 15-year-old black girl who went missing and was found four days later covered in dog feces with racial slurs written on her body. She claimed six white men, one of them carrying a badge, had raped her repeatedly in a woods in upstate New York. Sharpton accused Pagones.

Pagones sued and won a $65,000 judgment for defamation. In 1988, a grand jury concluded Brawley "was not the victim of forcible sexual assault" and the whole thing was a hoax. In 2002, when Sharpton was asked if he'd apologize to Pagones, Sharpton replied: "Apologize for what? For believing a young lady?"

In 1991, a 7-year-old black child was killed in a Crown Heights (Brooklyn) traffic accident when a car driven by a Hasidic Jew went out of control. Sharpton showed up to lead protests, calling Jews "diamond merchants" and saying, "If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house." A young Talmudic scholar would later be surrounded by a mob and stabbed to death. Sharpton paid no lasting price, but then liberal Democrats rarely do.

UPDATE II -- April 11: From The Kansas City Star: Imus isn’t the real bad guy.

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 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.

Posted by Forkum at April 10, 2007 05:13 PM