WHAT DOES THIS CONTROVERSY MEAN FOR BLACKS IN THE NEWS MEDIA?
All of this is exhausting. And honestyly, it's hard not to feel sorry for the guy. However as Imus himself said, "The chickens have come home to roost."
Check out John Ridley, screenwriter and commentator for MSNBC, on Scarborough Country:
"Let me go to what Joe asked me, however, about why it's these tempests in a teapot. I think it's actually unfortunate, because look at how many people of color that you've seen on television talking about these kinds of things over the last 24, 48 hours, and we're going to disappear - hopefully I won't completely.
But for the most part, there are other issues that are affecting Black America and, by extension, of course, all America.
And I think it's unfortunate that we get hot and bothered purely about these moments of race, when if we actually had more dialogues about the things that we have in common, as opposed to our differences, we probably wouldn't be having these Don Imus moments or the Mel Gibson moments or Isaiah Washington moments..."
The bottom line, this is an opportunity for the news media to go to other Blacks besides Al and Jesse. If this leads to the record and music industry re-evaluating the type of rap music it makes available to the masses; if it leads to more people of color appearing on daily as well as Sunday news programs, for a more balanced perspective, then this would have been all worth it.