This article will be published next week, as usual it will appear on my website first, for your enjoyment…your comments are always welcomed.

The Don Imus brouhaha... am I missing something?

By Robert  Amoroso

I usually stay away from stories of this nature, for fear of being labeled or misunderstood and depending on who one listens to, truth is almost always the first causality to fall by the wayside.

Perhaps I have a different vantage point on this then most, in that I’m a lot closer in age, skin color, and in culture to Don Imus then I am to Snoop Doggie Dog, and that’s where the similarities end. As a writer words to me mean things, and the word “ho” is as denigrating to me, coming out of the mouth of Snoop Dog as it would be for Imus and yet the Dog has been uttering those words and disrespecting women of color for years and years, and my question simply is, where’s the outcry?

Don Imus it seems as become the poster child for bad taste, the whipping post, (if you will) for a society that has long ago abandoned the moral ground for profit and greed. We now parcel out good taste and manners, based not on human values or ethic standards, but rather on how much money one can make and generate for a company and whose “privileged” is using such absurd language, such as “ho” or the dreaded “N” word.

Aside from being foolish, disliked and not to savvy in the ways of current trends, Don Imus is the perfect fall guy, in a society that pays homage (and lots of money) to bad taste, Don Imus simply isn’t in vogue, he’s a 66 years old, white guy, with bad hair, and a sullen look, whose seen better days, and of course he’s not one of the “privileged” few.

Before I go any further, let me make it clear, that I began my commentary by stating that I felt uncomfortable in writing this, for fear of being labeled or stereotyped, make no mistake, what Don Imus uttered to these young women is both shameful and hurtful, and no one should be subjected to that. However there seems to be a duel standard that needs to be addressed, and all one needs to do is tune in on any given day to MTV, or for that matter any “reality show” and you’ll see and hear the disrespect and denigration of women, both black and white (to various degrees), on a daily bases.

What’s more astounding is that both MSNBC and CBS hired Don Imus, and paid him millions of dollars in salary to do exactly what he did, being a “shock jock” and pushing the envelop. Of course once the preverbal “s—t hit the fan”, and several civil right leaders the likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson (who themselves have a lot of baggage), got into fray, those same corporate giants simply bailed out, leaving Imus do dangle in the breeze. Of course one will never hear the likes of these two esteemed civil right leaders take to task the leading presidential candidates Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama both of whom have courted the hip-hop community, and just two weeks ago a major find raising event was held for Hillary Clinton at the lavish Miami home of hip-hop mogul, Timbaland which brought in over $800,000 for Clinton’s campaign.

Sadly both race bating and racial bias has become part of the methodology within the mainstream media, and there’s little if any proportionality in reporting the news, in particular the New York Times (months ago) rushed to judgment and condemned three young man at Duke University, for rape, and for 13-months they were the subject of scorn and hate, not only by the media, but by their own university and facility

Ironically, within the last week or so (along with the Imus flack) these three young men once again became the focal point of the news media, however this time rather then being denigrated and dehumanized they were vindicated of all charges. However unlike what took place at Princeton, there were no apologies, and no recrimination by the university or the facility and by the very same media that now demands justice and decries intolerance, so much for the presumption of innocence

One may ask what does this have to do with verbally denigrating and using racial stereotypes in describing young black women, and my answer would be perhaps redundant in that “racial stereotyping” was the underlined link in both instances, and yet one was addressed almost immediately the other took over 13-months to resolve, and my question is why?

Of course one can make the claim that the judicial process needed to go through the process, and with that I have no argument. However when the case began to unravel there was no concerted effort to right the wrong in a timely way. From the onset their was a preconceived bias by the media, that played a key role in both these instances, in that both misdeeds were reportedly committed against predominately black women by powerful, and or privileged affluent white males and of course the mainstream media simply promoted those racial stereotypes.

Rather then ferreting out the facts, they simply accused these young men in their editorials with misleading allegations, and the New York Times once again, went so far as to suggest that there was undisputed evidence that a rape had taken place.

What truly astounds me, is that the woman who falsely accused these young men of a heinous crime will walk away without so much as an “apology” given, let alone serve any time, and of course the mainstream media doesn’t seem interested in pursuing this any longer, one can only ask again…why?