I think people are forgetting here that in referring to the "nappy headed hos" or any hos in general, that he was talking about EIGHT INDIVIDUAL WOMEN and calling them whores ("ho" = "whore" said with a heavy Southern accent) ON NATIONALLY SYNDICATED RADIO!!! The only thing that he could have done that would have been more damaging is to name them by name. As it is you can simply look up the Rutgers women's basketball team and see pictures of teh women in question. It would probably not take much digging to find out their names from this site.

I am no lawyer, but it may be possible that teh wopmen and/or their families might get together and sue teh radio station for some kind of defamation. The station will want to cover it's tuchis.

In a way this is worse than someone like Michael Richards freaking out and screaming the dreaded N word over and over again on stage because it is directed at eight individiual women that he does not know and has never met and not an amorphous mass of millions of people with African ancestry in teh United States.

I saw on the news here in NY that the eight Black basketball players on the team are very hurt personally (wouldn't you be if someone called you not just a ho but a nappy headed ho in front of millions of people?) and the brothers of a Black fraternity on campus all gave them bouquets of roses. Part of the issue here is not only the dehumanization but specifically the racist defeminization of Black women in American culture. This is evidenced by the fact that these women were called "hos" (a word that due to the proliferation of gangsta rap, which has been controversial in the Black community for exactly this reason, is strongly associated with Black women)and not "women" or even "girls". The word ho was bad enough but the modifier "nappy headed" just made things worse and more racially specific in its defeminization. The fraternity brothers gave the flowers in hopes of helpinbg these wome feel like beautiful, special, desirable young women deserving of the respect that all women deserve and usually get when they are not Black.

Actually, I like electronica and some techno. At the gym I used to go to, they used to play a lot of R&B and soul from teh late 70s/early 80s. The new gym I go to has TVs with cable attached to all the cardio machines and I find watching TV to be even better for my workout because if soothing interesting is on TV, it will keep me from getting bored and therefore I will work out longer.

But really, in today's world of portable music and mp3 players with 30 and even 100GB memories, just bring your iPOd if you don't like teh gym's music.

Does this Sean Wilentz work for Hillary Clinton or something? Is this one of those Bush-like propaganda items masquerading as news? Just asking...