Let’s stop the hypocrisy
Thank goodness for Don Imus.
After 25 years of gutteral lyrics in the name of entertainment, none of which was protested, banned, boycotted or demonstrated against by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the Imus faux pas has finally brought trash music to a level of national outrage where it should have been long ago.
I, for one, cringe when I hear a boom box at local park, blasting lyrics by Eminem, Snoop Dog, Bow Wow and R. Kelly, rapping words like:
Ima b pimpin
I don’t be slippin
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We Americans, not just the kids, make heroes out of these people. And we make them rich. We give them awards. We should be giving them jail sentences.
A plethora of gutter lyrics using the “N” word, and now the “H” word, has saturated the music industry. Where is the outrage among prominent African-Americans? Where are the street protests and signs posted against recording companies and thug “artists” who are poisoning the minds of our kids?
Well, let’s just slam Don Imus.
ACLU, where are you?
American kids and profiteers revere these legalized “criminals” who earn millions at the expense of morality among our youth. Pundits cry out that it’s free expression, protected under the Constitution as free speech, merely entertainment. Yet, when one white man utters the words on radio, in a context of humor (albeit poor), he is excoriated and left jobless by producers and sponsors who now consider him an immense liability. I wonder how many of those sponsors and producers and behind-the-scenes complainers go home and listen to the same crapola on their car radio.
Perhaps, now, recording companies, radio stations and Grammy Awards shows will begin re-evaluating their own levels of morality and start their own campaign of firing bigots of all racial makeups and castigating everyone and anyone who utters words of denigration toward blacks and, more particularly, black women.
Don Imus was stupid. Don Imus was wrong. But if Imus deserves public censure, so do Jesse and Al. After all, no one loves a hypocrite, except maybe, the media. One cannot forget Jesse referring to Jews as “Hymies,” that New York is a “Hymietown,” which never resulted in an apology to anyone. He also said, “You can’t trust Jews. I have never trusted those people.” Who ever forced him to defend those remarks?
And what of his admission that he used to spit in white customers’ food when he worked as a waiter. Why does the media give this man one iota of credibility? And do we see America censuring Jesse? Do we see America banning him from the air waves? Shame on cable and network stations for constantly giving them a national spotlight.
Al Sharpton is enough to make one puke. This is the man who went to bat for a black woman, Tawana Brawley, in 1988, in accusing six white men of abducting and raping her. All for no other reason, than the racial equation: White on black. If the equation was reversed, he would never have cared. Truth is, it never happened. Never mind that the ratio of white men raping black women in this country is far disproportionate to the reverse. Where were the apologies from Sharpton?
Where is the team of Jackson and Sharpton in condemnation of Mike Nifong in the malicious prosecution of innocent young men in the false claims of raping a black woman at Duke University?
What we need is Don Imus back on the air, post apologies, to bring all the hypocrisy to light and ignite a grassroots movement across all America, transcending all races, in putting a stop to the rap garbage that is infecting America’s kids with a brand of disrespect for woman, mothers and cops that is unprecedented in the history of this nation.
I was never a fan of Don Imus. But this is his moment. He has a chance to do a lot for America.
(Marshall Frank is retired Metro Dade homicide detective and a novelist. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)
