It's All Very Tiring

The recent uproar over Don Imus is rather silly. Where was the outrage when Richard Pryor jump started this downward spiral? It's sad but true that the average person thinks the world began when they were born; most people have no sense of historical or social perspective. Before Richard Pryor got going the most outlandish humorist was Lenny Bruce and he was hounded to his death because of his views.

After Richard Pryor got started the floodgates opened spewing foul language, racial and ethnic slurs from such notables as Eddie Murphy, Cedric the Entertainer, Chris Rock and a multitude of lesser lights. Oh the jokes were hilarious especially if you enjoy the terms nigger, bitch, ho, cracker, spick, and sexual references. Very funny indeed.

Of course hip hop lyrics were the next logical progression so why not? Things got so out of hand that Al and Tipper Gore, (remember Al Gore) got legislation passed that required warning labels on records and CDs. That was during the 1980s; my how time flies. Was this condition of American culture simply a result of outrage against the conditions of virtual apartheid that existed well into the 1970's? Such a thing might be expected after a couple of centuries of slavery and repression, but if it is the case how does one explain the acceptance of Emimim?

Don Imus is an idiotic badly behaved person whom society rewarded handsomely for being exactly that. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are basically extornists and self appointed world representatives of the African-American component of the United States. They have no shame and very little personal morality based on their public behavior. The majority of the US is afraid to confront these two clownish actors because whites cannot criticize blacks. As an example take the recent Duke Lacrosse team fiasco in Durham, North Carolina. Jackson and Sharpton were in the vanguard of the virtual lynching of the accused, a nice irony, and now that the entire case has been shown to be a complete lie they refuse to apologize for their actions and comments. Why is this the case?

Most likely it will take many more years for the racist social wounds to heal in the USA but at least some are trying; though the "Black leadership" is not among them. Hurricane Katrina is blamed on George Bush; Ray Nagin is not assigned any responsibility for his failure to lead his city. The majority of black politicians are quick to play the race card to absolve themselves from simple human failures when they are caught.

It is not all right for one African-American to call another African-American a nigger. This expression is common; so much so that it goes practically unnoticed. This acceptance of demeaning speech within the "hood" and the use of the "race card" robs the African-American population of its humanity, reducing them to mere cartoon characters. This is the true tragedy of the Don Imus case.

This is a liberal problem you will never hear a conservative talk show host use language of this sort.