Monday, April 09, 2007

RADIO SHOCK IMUS TO FACE AL SHARPTON

Al Sharpton is always ready for a good hookout !

American radio talk show host John Donald Imus, Jr., aka 'Don' Imus, is to appear on the Rev. Al Sharpton's radio show today, Monday, Sharpton and MSNBC announced yesterday.On Wednesday, April 4, he called the Rutgers University women’s basketball team "nappy headed hos" on his "Imus in the Morning." Imus and McGuirk described the black members of the team as "jigaboos and wannabees," making a reference to filmmaker Spike Lee’s movie "School Daze," in which Lee sought to highlight and deconstruct the light skinned-dark skinned tension among black people. Imus was and is constantly offensive to many categories of people. The swift reaction to his comments was also due to the preceding incidents in entertainment which have already irritated the African-American community. Meanwhile, Al Sharpton maintains his position unchanged: He wants Imus fired and intends to write the FCC about the racist remarks. "Somewhere we must draw the line in what is tolerable in mainstream media," Sharpton said Sunday. "We cannot keep going through offending us and then apologizing and then acting like it never happened. Somewhere we've got to stop this." Sharpton has said he will picket WFAN unless Imus is gone within a week."Somewhere we must draw the line in what is tolerable in mainstream media," Sharpton said Sunday. "We cannot keep going through offending us and then apologizing and then acting like it never happened. Somewhere we've got to stop this."The Reverend Al Sharpton, the National Association of Black Journalists and a handful of sports columnists will continue to loudly demand that MSNBC and radio stations fire Imus. Imus apologized on his radio show Friday morning, saying his remarks were "insensitive and ill-conceived." Mr. Imus suggested that everyone needed to relax and should not be offended by "some idiot comment meant to be amusing." He described himself Monday as "a good person" who made a bad mistake."We were kidding around, but that doesn't change it. That doesn't make it any less repugnant," he said Monday."I wasn't drunk. I'm not some angry raving nut on a nightclub stage, and I'm not a bad person. I'm a good person, but I said a bad thing," he said on his radio show."But these young women deserve to know it was not said with malice.""Whatever problem there was, I think that he took care of with his statement of Friday," said Mr. Oliphant, one of the guests scheduled for this morning, to NYT. "It was classic Imus. He said he screwed up and he was sorry. Bang. Bang. It was very much to the point, and did not offer any excuses."Imus in the Morning is a daily comedy, news, and political program produced by WFAN and syndicated by Westwood One in the United States and airs from 5:30 to 10am. Since September 2, 1996, the show is simulcasted on cable television network MSNBC from 5:30 to 9 a.m. (ET). The show's many guests include prominent politicians such as Mitt Romney, John McCain, John Kerry, Dick Cheney, J.D. Hayworth and Harold Ford, Jr., as well as reporters and columnists from Newsweek, NBC, MSNBC, and other media outlets. In 1997, Imus was named as one of Time magazine's "25 most influential people in America"; he was also on the cover of Newsweek in 1999. Imus was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1989. Imus won three Marconi Awards, two for Major Market Personality of the Year (1992 and 1997) and one for Network Syndicated Personality (1994).

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