Letters to the Editor
kansasgirl
Published Letters: 101 Editor's Choice: 14
-
I think the headline is misleading
[Read the article: Firing Imus was the right thing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]By reading the headline, I thought Imus had been fired from his job. He has not. MSNBC can't fire Imus. They don't employ him. They dropped his radio program. CBS employs him and they have not fired him (at least not yet, according to the latest news), though they have suspended him for 2 weeks.
-
The rap debate
[Read the article: Firing Imus was the right thing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Personally I'm finding all the rap comparisons very interesting. I don't listen to Don Imus or rap, but after reading what Imus said and a sampling of rap lyrics over the past couple of days, I'm far more offended by the rap lyrics.
I'm also interested in all the posters who state that mostly white people buy rap, without relating that number back to population. According to the 2005 Census statistics, 75% of the U.S. is white and 12% is black. So I don't find it that surprising that whites make up the majority of rap buyers. I never expected that only blacks buy rap.
However I wanted to know the statistics, so I've been doing some searching online tonight. It turns out there's some oft-cited statistic about 70% of rap consumers being white. It's rarely mentioned that 70% white rap consumers under-indexes 75% of the white population. But what's even more interesting is that nobody can figure out where the 70% statistic came from. At least I couldn't with some extensive searches, though I did find a couple of sources that also say they can't figure out where the statistic is from.
I know this is a tangent from the whole Imus debate, but I'd like to see some data about who buys rap music, and some discussion about why the same groups that were up in arms over Imus's comment aren't organizing letter-writing campaigns and boycotts of stations that play rap. Not that I think they should....personally I think if you don't like a station, you should change it instead of making it your mission to fire the host or cancel the program, but that's another issue that others have covered far more eloquently than me in previous letters. But these rap comparisons....who does buy rap music? How does it compare to the U.S. population as a whole? Why aren't these same groups outraged by these lyrics, if Don Imus's relatively mild comments are deemed so offensive?
For more information, here are a couple of great sites I found that explored the demograhics (or lack of) of rap consumers:
http://poplicks.com/2005/06/who-buys-hip-hop.html
http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0526,kitwana,65332,22.html
-
philliejoe
[Read the article: Firing Imus was the right thing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I second what he said.
-
rappers not responsible for their misogyny?
[Read the article: Black rappers made him do it!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Let me get this straight....you're giving rappers a pass because it's not their fault: "they didn't invent sick notions of black women as sexual objects." But you're going to call for Imus to be fired (despite your previous headline, he has NOT been fired) because of "hundreds of years of misogyny of white men *like* Imus and McGuirk"?
So it's not rappers' fault they're misogynistic because they're just doing what the white man taught them, but Imus is responsible for his remarks, because he's just doing what the white man taught him.
Maybe we don't have "Snoop Dogg Country" on MSNBC, but I would bet that rap music reaches *far* more listeners throughout the country than Imus does. Maybe Jeezy doesn't have a morning show, but I can guarantee that rap music is played on morning shows all over the country every day, and during drive time and every other radio daypart. Then there's MTV and YouTube and wherever else the kids go to watch videos nowadays. Rap and hip hop have a far greater reach in this country than Imus can ever hope to.
-
Urge CBS not to fire Imus
[Read the article: Black rappers made him do it!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For those of you who are dismayed as I am by the puritanical need to punish anyone who's deemed offensive, I urge you to write to CBS and ask them NOT to fire Imus. You know they're getting tons of emails from NOW and Feminist Majority "action alerts." I know because I got email from NOW and the Feminist Majority. I clicked through the links, deleted their form letters and wrote my own letters, asking that Imus not be fired.
Here are the links:
http://www.capwiz.com/now/issues/alert/?alertid=9602971&type=CU
http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/feministmajority/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=7209
Then I wrote to NOW and the Feminist Majority and asked them to remove me from their mailing lists. I am a feminist, but I think it's a slippery slope when we start boycotting and calling for the removal of talk show hosts, television shows and radio shows that offend us. I'm just as angry when conservatives try to ban the Dixie Chicks from country radio as when liberals try to get Imus fired. It's a bad precedent to set and a distraction from real solutions to racism and sexism in this country.
-
Xrandadu Hutman
[Read the article: Black rappers made him do it!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think "supposedly independent radio stations that were owned and controlled by Clear Channel" is an oxymoron. If they're owned by Clear Channel, they're not independent.
Clear Channel blacklisted the Dixie Chicks because of their political stance. Don Imus was fired by his bosses, but he was fired after a political firestorm spearheaded by Jackson and Sharpton. Also he hadn't been fired when I wrote my comment, or at least I hadn't heard about it yet. Regardless, I don't think anyone honestly believes he was fired for the specific comments he made a few days ago. I don't listen to Imus and I know his reputation for saying offensive language regularly. If his bosses were worried about it they would've fired him long ago.
That said, I think the situations are parallel, In both cases, people were kept off radio (though in different ways) because what they said offended people, and the offended parties started a fuss big enough to get the attention of the people in charge.
By the way, I wish I had a nickel for every time I got the "you're not in Kansas anymore" line.