What is the difference between Imus and hip-hop rappers?

Question

Both talk the same game... so why is one being single out. Don't tell me because he is white because right off the bat you have no clue. For example: Eminem to begin with.

Answer 1

A very good question. Now that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have gotten their way and Imus (of whom I'm not a fan) has been fired, when are they going to have consequences for convicting the Duke Lacrosse players BEFORE the trial, just because they were rich white boys? They are so racist it makes me sick!

Answer 2

Because of the advertising. Where hip hop is played and sold, they have advertisers that are catering to that crowd, a younger crowd, like Coke, iPod, etc.

With Imus, the advertisers are more conservative, like GM, and Glaxo-Kline. The forums are different, and thus, the advertising is different.

Its the same in sports. The NFL has Gatorade, XBox those types of commercials, but you would never see that during a golf tournament, because the viewer is generally older, and so you see advertisers like NY Life Insurance, Buick, etc.

Answer 3

Watched MSNBC...for Hardball, Oberman, then couple mornings flipped it on thinking I'd get some decent AM news, and there he was. I categorized MSNBC and his show as political/opinion (not comedy, not funny) and, as political/opinion, expect a higher standard for content and delivery. Freedom of speech I believe is to protect expression of ideas. Doesn't our culture by now have norm of not promoting racism?

He made an adult decision to make those comments, and should face consequences. No sympathy

I will contrast it with rap, is more than likely played on a rap channel, if you buy it, it's labeled, if it airs on radio, think FCC contains the language, doesn't it? Also, Music, as an art probably is afforded more freedom than a political opinion show. Would hope that there is a higher standard that all media can achieve...rap to political opinion.

Answer 4

According to Al Sharpton, that is the reason. As for me, I never listened to imus because he was an out of his mind Libby who hated the military and the government. However, he should be able to say the same thing tat Snoopy, Ludacris and Fat Joe says on the radio everytime I walk outside of my apartment and my son asks me what a cracker having a cap put in his *** means.

Answer 5

Imus can't hold a beat ,he's a white racist,he's 100 years old,he has never felt a nappy head and there was no music playing

Answer 6

in my opinion, i see hip hop because of the fact the custom and rap as its music. like quite a few different custom, hip hop has its own language, gown, style, music, etc. rap is only the music of that custom. yet like a number of you reported till now, it is been taken to point 2 diverse "genres" of an identical music. for example, hip hop meaning straight forward and kweli and rap meaning lil wayne or whoever makes use of a vocoder and considers it music. i think of that's what nas replaced into concerning while he reported "hip hop is ineffective". to me, the custom is amazingly plenty alive...it is the music it is not all there (yet it is yet another talk). i've got self assurance like there may well be a mild confusion on extensive wakeful rap as against mainstream, commercial rap...foremost all people to think of that hip hop and rap are 2 separate musics. yet in any case, have self assurance what you are able to desire to. it is only my handle it.

Answer 7

Race has nothing to do with it and I feel just as strong about the hate lyrics from rappers....sometimes, a little censorship can go a long way, for the better.

Answer 8

1990 anyone who selling 2 Live Crew's album As Nasty As They Wanna Get will be prosecuted.
In June the courts deemed As Nasty As They Wanna Get illegal. 2 Live Crew is arrested for performing a song from As Nasty As They Wanna Get at a club. 2 Live Crew takes the case to the supreme court and begings the "fight for your right of free speech" and they are ruled in favor of and banning the album is deemed unconstitutional as i violate freedom of speech.

C Delores Tucker, rallys groups infront of record stores that sold hip hop albums protested and smashed hip hop records.
C Delores Tucker criticizes Tupac Shakur and claims he is Misogynistic and attacks him through protest and media. After 2pac shakur is killed she makes the comment "the world was just realived of a heavy burden." argues with the NAACP's decision to nominate him to image award and sues the 2pac shakur estate.

Eminem is accused of being homophobic by the gay community and is heavily protested by gay rights activist. GLAAD boycotts grammys after Marshall Mathers LP turned out to be extremely sucessful. Eminem apalogized to the gay community and performed live with Elton John During the Benzino Eminem beef Benzino dug up tapes of eminem rapping about african american girls and using the N word, Eminem apologized to the black community and african american women. Eminem is accused of being Misogynistic and of encouraging violence towards women as well as domestic violence by critics and women activist groups.

June 19, 1989, N.W.A is arrested for performing the song "**** the Police" on stage. September 1989 the FBI sends N.W.A's record label a letter stating that "their department did not take kindly to the song **** the Police." September 1990 100 Miles and Runnin a album by the N.W.A is pulled for having sexually explicit lyrics. N.W.A as well as gangsta rap is publically criticized by activsit and civil rights groups.

bob could go on, but it wouldnt all fit if bob put all the times rappers were publically attacked on the media, by priest, black women, civil rights groups, gays, koreans, white people, politicians and everybody under the sun.

Al and Jesse can demand Imus be fired and apalogize because Imus and Imus's bosses do not want bad publicity such as this, most rappers and their record labels dont give a **** and Al and Jesse know that. That is why rappers do not get dropped from record labels for saying these things, but they sure as hell do get crucifyed by the media and many rappers were even legally crucifyed. So do not try to use hip hop as the rebound ***** for what Imus did and try to use the example that Imus is getting crucifyed for saying something racist when rappers say those same things and dont, because rappers do get crucifyed and they get it worst then he is.

Your fight is not with hip hop or Imus, its because you all think that certain ethnicitys can get away with saying things while others cant, bob supports your cause in an attempt to get equal rights. However stop using Hip Hop as a example and trying to pull hip hop down with Imus because in that exampel it just proves that the rappers actually get crucifyed worst then Imus is and does not help prove your point. All the times hip hop was crucifyed no one ever said hey look at what someone out of the hip hop community said and tried to bring them down with them cause that aint right or fair. Even if you dont like hip hop be respectful to the culture and stop trying to put it on the cross with Imus.

Answer 9

Apparently it was much worse than you realize:

Paying the Price
By BOB HERBERT
You knew something was up early in the day. As soon as I told executives at MSNBC that I was going to write about the “60 Minutes” piece, which was already in pretty wide circulation, they began acting very weird. We’ll get back to you, they said.

In a “60 Minutes” interview with Don Imus broadcast in July 1998, Mike Wallace said of the “Imus in the Morning” program, “It’s dirty and sometimes racist.”

Mr. Imus then said: “Give me an example. Give me one example of one racist incident.” To which Mr. Wallace replied, “You told Tom Anderson, the producer, in your car, coming home, that Bernard McGuirk is there to do ****** jokes.”

Mr. Imus said, “Well, I’ve nev — I never use that word.”

Mr. Wallace then turned to Mr. Anderson, his producer. “Tom,” he said.

“I’m right here,” said Mr. Anderson.

Mr. Imus then said to Mr. Anderson, “Did I use that word?”

Mr. Anderson said, “I recall you using that word.”

“Oh, O.K.,” said Mr. Imus. “Well, then I used that word. But I mean — of course, that was an off-the-record conversation. But ——”

“The hell it was,” said Mr. Wallace.

The transcript was pure poison. A source very close to Don Imus told me last night, “They did not want to wait for your piece to come out.”

For MSNBC, Mr. Imus’s “nappy-headed ho’s” comment about the Rutgers women’s basketball team was bad enough. Putting the word “******” into the so-called I-man’s mouth was beyond the pale.

The roof was caving in on Mr. Imus. More advertisers were pulling the plug. And Bruce Gordon, a member of the CBS Corp. board of directors and former head of the N.A.A.C.P., said publicly that Mr. Imus should be fired.

But some of the most telling and persuasive criticism came from an unlikely source — internally at the network that televised Mr. Imus’s program. Women, especially, were angry and upset. Powerful statements were made during in-house meetings by women at NBC and MSNBC — about how black women are devalued in this country, how they are demeaned by white men and black men.

White and black women spoke emotionally about the way black women are frequently trashed in the popular culture, especially in music, and about the way news outlets give far more attention to stories about white women in trouble.

Phil Griffin, a senior vice president at NBC News who oversaw the Imus show for MSNBC, told me yesterday, “It touched a huge nerve.”

Whether or not Mr. McGuirk was hired for the specific noxious purpose referred to in the “60 Minutes” interview, he has pretty much lived up to that job description. He’s a minstrel, a white man who has gleefully led the Imus pack into some of the most disgusting, degrading attempts at racial (not to mention sexist) humor that it’s possible to imagine.

Blacks were jigaboos, Sambos and Brilloheads. Women were bitches and, above all else, an endless variety of ever-ready sexual vessels, born to be degraded.

The question now is how long the “Imus in the Morning” radio show will last. Just last month, in a reference to a speech by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Selma, Ala., Mr. McGuirk called Mrs. Clinton a ***** and predicted she would “have cornrows and gold teeth” by the time her presidential primary campaign against Senator Barack Obama is over.

Way back in 1994, a friend of mine, the late Lars-Erik Nelson, a terrific reporter and columnist at The Daily News and Newsday, mentioned an Imus segment that offered a “satirical” rap song that gave advice to President Clinton on what to do about Paula Jones: “Pimp-slap the ho.” Mr. Nelson also wrote that there was a song on the program dealing with Hillary Clinton’s menstrual cycle.

So this hateful garbage has been going on for a long, long time. There was nothing new about the tone or the intent of Mr. Imus’s “nappy-headed ho’s” comment. As Bryan Monroe, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, told me the other night, “It’s a long pattern of behavior, and at some point somebody has to say enough is enough.”

The crucial issue goes well beyond Don Imus’s pathetically infantile behavior. The real question is whether this controversy is loud enough to shock Americans at long last into the realization of just how profoundly racist and sexist the culture is.

It appears that on this issue the general public, and the women at Mr. Imus’s former network, are far ahead of the establishment figures, the politicians and the media biggies, who were always so anxious to appear on the show and to defend Mr. Imus.

That is a very good sign.

Answer 10

The rappers are still employed.