Imus, Rutgers Situation

Dedicated to the TWN known as Matt.

I'm a little behind the current date of this whole ordeal, but that's good, because this isn't a news blog it's an "attempted reason" blog, which means we are trying to find out the reason behind the mistakes and assign the blame to each party. (I call this the Mione Degrees of Responsibility scale...more on that later)

Parties involved:
Don Imus
Rutgers (team and admin)
All the Media conglomerates involved (MSNBC, Radio, Imus's Supervisor)
and I'm going to add special guest Barack Obama

Mistakes:
Don Imus - Not knowing the consequences of name calling college athletes. (yes, that's his only mistake)

Rutgers - 1. Giving a shit about what Don Imus says. 2. Making soooooo many public statements that they actually care (because this just creates publicity for Imus). 3. Having a team vote on whether or not to accept an apology? What the fuck is that....you can't vote on something like that. Each person needs to make their own decision and move on. (go figure...more people not thinking for yourself) And what if they voted not to accept the apology...what bit of difference is that going to make honestly...he already lost his job, and you already gave him publicity.

Media - 1. To all the "advertisers" that pulled out from the show I say....YOU ARE COWARDS. I don't believe for one second you pulled your money because you honestly cared he said "nappy-headed ho's." You pulled your money because you were afraid of public outlash at your company, and if you stayed in, and another company pulled out, you would get criticized.....and that's cowardness. 2. To the supervisor of Don Imus I say....this is primarily your fault....you hired him, you were aware of his capability to say these kinds of things (and I would guess at one time, that's why you gave him the job in the first place to some degree) and you could have pulled the plug (there is a 7 second delay many times on live feeds where you can pull the plug if something like that is said....it's usually used for accidental swear words, but it can be used for anything you don't want said). 3. To the general media I say....nothing new, you try to make stories out of everything....nobody should be surprised, but stop it...stop making stories out of crap like this...it just makes someone else do something just as stupid.

Barack - I still like you....but you dropped a notch on my belt...there is no reason to get involved in this...you are one senator...not a president yet. Keep your mouth shut unless it directly involves you. You're not on the board of directors at Rutgers, and you're not Imus's or the radio's spokesman. I'm afraid you are pushing for press to fast at this point...we'll see.

Finally, my disclaimer...I don't condone calling anyone names, but also, I don't think that comment should have been taken as racist. He called the "team" nappy headed ho's...there are blacks and whites on that team, and the words "nappy", "headed", or "ho's" do not single out any race. Look up the definitions if you don't beleive me.