Bruce Gordon, former head of the NAACP and a director of CBS Corp:

“He’s crossed the line, he’s violated our community,” Gordon said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “He needs to face the consequence of that violation.”

Ok. Now, how about R. Kelly and Young Jeezy and Mims and the Crime Mob?

Let’s stipulate: I have no love for Don Imus, Al Sharpton, or Jesse Jackson. I repeat: A pox on all their race-baiting houses.

Let’s also stipulate: The Rutgers women’s basketball team didn’t deserve to be disrespected as “nappy-headed hos.” No woman deserves that. I agree with the athletes that Imus’s misogynist mockery was “deplorable, despicable and unconscionable.” And as I noted on Fox News’s O’Reilly Factor this week, I believe top public officials and journalists who have appeared on Imus’s show should take responsibility for enabling Imus—and should disavow his longstanding invective.

But let’s take a breath now and look around. Is the Sharpton & Jackson Circus truly committed to cleaning up cultural pollution that demeans women and perpetuates racial epithets? Have you seen the Billboard Hot Rap Tracks chart this week?

The number one rap track is by a new sensation who goes by the name of “Mims.”

The “song” is “This Is Why I’m Hot.” It has topped the charts for the last 15 weeks. Here’s a taste of the lyrics that young men and women are cranking up in their cars:

This is why I’m hot
Catch me on the block
Every other day
Another bitch another drop
16 bars, 24 pop
44 songs, nigga gimme what you got…

… We into big spinners
See my pimping never dragged
Find me wit’ different women that you niggas never had
For those who say they know me know I’m focused on ma cream
Player you come between you’d better focus on the beam
I keep it so mean the way you see me lean
And when I say I’m hot my nigga dis is what I mean

Here’s the video:

Let’s move down the Billboard list, shall we? The number two rap track in the nation this week is by rappers Bow Wow and R. Kelly (yes, the same R. Kelly who was indicted five years ago on a raft of child-porn charges and is still awaiting trial). The “song” is called “I’m a Flirt” and it’s been on the charts for 12 weeks:

I’m a b pimpin
I don’t be slippin
When it come down to these hos
I don’t love em
We don’t cuff em
Man that’s just the way it goes
I pull up in the Phantom
All the ladies think handsome
Jewelry shining, I stay stuntin’
Thats why these niggas can’t stand em
I’m a chick mag-a-net
And anything fine I’m bag-gin it
And if she got a man, I don’t care
10 toes and I wanna be, cause I gotta have it

The final line:

Now the moral of the story is cuff yo chick,’ cause hey,
I’m black, fresh , and I rap, plus I’m rich, and I’m a flirt.

Al Sharpton, I am sure, is ready to call a press conference with the National Organization for Women to jointly protest this garbage and protest the radio stations and big pimpin’ music companies behind it.

Or perhaps the New Civility Squad is not convinced yet that the Billboard chart toppers I’ve highlighted are representative? Let’s proceed to number three on the Billboard rap charts this week (and on the charts for the past 13 weeks): “Go Getta” by a rapper named “Young Jeezy” with a special appearance by R. Kelly (again!). Here’s the “chorus:”

You know we trap all day
Play all night
Dis Is Da Life Of A Go Getta (Ey) Go Getta (Ey) Go Getta (Yea)
U In Da Club
U C A Bad Bitch
Point Her Out (Oh)
Yea U Damn Right Ima (Ey)
You Damn Right Ima Go Getta (Ey) Go Getta (Ey) Go Getta (Yea)

Here’s the video:

The number four song on the Billboard Rap Tracks charts is “Throw Some D’s” by “Rich Boy featuring Polow Da Don” (it’s been on the charts for 18 weeks).
Here’s the chorus:

Rich Boy sellin’ crack
F*k niggas wanna jack
Sh*t tight no slack
Just bought a Cadillac (Throw some D’s on that bitch!)
Just bought a Cadillac (Throw some D’s on that bitch!)
Just bought a Cadillac

Here’s the video:

The lyrical rap poet known as “Unk” has the number five spot with “2 Step.” On the charts for nine weeks, here’s a taste of his dope rhyme:

I See You Got It Right
Beat My Wrist Ice
Colder Than A Bud Light
Now I’m a Take My Time
Where The Gangsters At
And You Can Still Post The Wall Nigga Holla Back
Grey Goose And Yak
Blunt Filled With Kush
I’m Getting Jiggy With It
Smoking On That George Bush
Step

Here’s the video, which features children:

And at number six is “Rock Your Hips” by “Crime Mob.”

Here are the full lyrics:

Lil’ Jay, on the track,nigga, aye & you already know, its ya boi lil scrappy
we finna have the whole M-F world, rockin’in dis bitch,
look at shawty check her out. southern smokin

I like it she when she rock her hips then take it low
She grab the towel and wipe the pole
Oh oh shawty got it goin on , its just me and her
And im in my zone, check out her rack,
Shawty got a fat ass watch her throw dat shit back
They say she sweets like snacks
Betcha put her on da track everyday
Youn eatin lunch coutin muthafuckin stacks

One dumb radio/television shock jock’s insult is a drop in the ocean of barbaric filth and anti-female hatred on the radio.

Imus gets a two-week suspension. What kind of relief do we get from this deadening, coarsening, dehumanizing barrage from young, black rappers and their music industry enablers who have helped turn America into Tourette’s Nation?

***

Update: Imus is out. MSNBC cancels radio simulcast.

Update: Snoop Dogg attacks critics who compare him to Imus because, as he told MTV:

“It’s a completely different scenario,” said Snoop, barking over the phone from a hotel room in L.A. “[Rappers] are not talking about no collegiate basketball girls who have made it to the next level in education and sports. We’re talking about ho’s that’s in the ‘hood that ain’t doing sh–, that’s trying to get a n—a for his money. These are two separate things. First of all, we ain’t no old-ass white men that sit up on MSNBC [the cable network home to Imus] going hard on black girls. We are rappers that have these songs coming from our minds and our souls that are relevant to what we feel. I will not let them mutha—–as say we in the same league as him.”

Translation: Only black rappers can call women hos and bitches. Only black rappers can call black people niggas. Because it’s coming from their minds and souls, *&^&)#*&@!!!!

Rush spoke the truth. Sports writer Allen Barra weighed in and his piece in Slate in 2003 is worth re-reading:

Rush Limbaugh didn’t say Donovan McNabb was a bad quarterback because he is black. He said that the media have overrated McNabb because he is black, and Limbaugh is right. He didn’t say anything that he shouldn’t have said, and in fact he said things that other commentators should have been saying for some time now. I should have said them myself. I mean, if they didn’t hire Rush Limbaugh to say things like this, what did they hire him for? To talk about the prevent defense?

Imus wasn’t offering any profound social critique or commentary when he called Rutgers basketball players “nappy-headed hos.” It was verbal diarrhea.

So: Stop. Comparing. Rush. To. Imus.

***

Imus genuflects before Rev. Demagogue’s altar.

A pox on both of these losers. Ugh.

***

More: Imus supporters say he ain’t stupid, he’s just “edgy.”

Boston Herald’s Jessica Heslam:

Earlier today on Imus in the Morning, heard locally on WTKK (96.9 FM), Imus said he was “embarrassed” by his remarks. He first apologized on his show Friday – two whole days after making the on-air insults.

“I’m not a bad person. I’m a good person, but I said a bad thing,” Imus said today. “But these young women deserve to know it was not said with malice.”

Imus brought up the Imus Ranch, a working cattle ranch in New Mexico for kids with cancer and serious blood disorders — and he pointed out that ten percent of the kids who visit the ranch are black.

“I’m not a white man who doesn’t know any African-Americans,” Imus said.

Please.

Imus, and some of those who appear on his show, have a history of spewing racial insults. As the NABJ points out, Imus called PBS anchor Gwen Ifill a “cleaning lady” and New York Times sports columnist William C. Rhoden a “a quota hire.”

A host of politicians that include Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and former Gov. Mitt Romney have eagerly appeared on Imus’ show.

On Friday, I contacted spokespeople for both politicians and specifically asked whether Kerry or Romney would appear on Imus’ show in the future.

Neither responded to the question.

Ed Morrissey reviews Imus’s history of racial tone-deafness.

Angela Winters, a blogger/writer who writes from the perspective of a black centrist, says:

“Imus and his co-horts continued to compare the rivalry between Rutgers girls to Tennessee girls to School Daze, the Spike Lee movie that depicts the rivalry between light-skinned and dark-skinned women. Jigaboos and Wannabes were the names they threw at each other.

There really isn’t much you can say about this. Imus is an equal opportunity insulter, but this is harsh even for him. He has ridden that mean, old man who hates everyone and everything for a long time. I hardly ever watch the show, but when I have I’ve only heard him say good things about blacks, including the terminally ill black children that come out to his ranch every summer.

As a black woman, I was offended by the term nappy-headed. Because he has called everyone, including First Ladies, hos. If he had kept it like that, no one could say anything. But by adding the nappy-headed part, he was insulting their blackness. The School Daze reference was completely out of line, but it’s just icing on the hate cake.

Shay at Booker Rising, a center/right blogger, weighs in: “My response: Damn. Foul. Low-class, but not surprising coming from [Imus]. Although I disagree with Angela, as I find the ho part of the comment even more offensive than the nappy-headed comment.”

Juliette O. at Baldilocks examines the “Nap Standard:”

I don’t think it was racist; however, it was a cultural bias in favor of the prevailing standard of beauty, one to which many black men subscribe as well. And, to drive home my point, it seems that it is the adjective ‘nappy-headed’ that is perceived in many quarters as the more insulting part of the phrase.

So now Imus is making an “apology tour” among notable black American people; he will meet with the Rutgers women and their families. And irony on top of irony (for many reasons) he will go on Al Sharpton’s radio show to apologize. Yes, the Al Sharpton of Tawana Brawley fame and, applicable to this incident, the Al Sharpton who is among the tiny minority of black men who straighten their hair (I think that minority was halved when James Brown died). How’s that for crazy?

If I were one of the Rutgers players, I’d want to kick Imus’s crusty, creaky a** for the unequivocally offensive epithet ‘ho.’ After all, Imus is implying that he has some person knowledge of these girls’ alleged “ho-dom.” And I’d call an allegation that I had had physical relations with him a particularly heinous form of slander.

Baldilocks points us to Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ rumination on beauty, discrimination, and human behavior:

the answer to these issues regarding deleterious words used to put down others, is not some school-marmish, ‘You shouldn’t call people names; bad bad.’ Neither is it a laconic, ‘Well, some people make their money by being inhumane.’ It isn’t an issue of, ‘By gosh, anyone has a right to call anyone whatever they want according to the First Amendment.’ Nor is it a matter of political correctness which is far too often really just a version of ‘free speech for me, but not for thee” regardless of who is crying uncle. And the answer to these issues is also not an after-the-fact, “Aw come on, it was just a joke.” By my lights as a long-standing visiting diversity scholar, neither is it an issue of ‘diversity.’

In fact there is no answer at all. Because it’s not an answer that’s needed. It’s a set of questions that’s needed. And the first question is one of humanity: How shall we live with one another? How shall we live with one another with best grace and most hope?… What shall be our code of conduct with one another? How to knit being a humane person deep into the roots of all our cultures? These questions and more, are not modern issues. How to be ser humano, a full human being, is an ancient issue, and one that requires in our time, new level-headed and unruined-heart responses to be imagined and lived out…

Here’s Pat Dollard’s pointed take.

50 Cent rants about the “Je-Je-Je-Jews.”

Hello, Tolerant Left? Anyone home?

“That skank has to spend three hours with makeup in the morning … Who’s she kidding? . . . Plus, she’s dumber than dirt … Oh, my God, what a pig. But I was willing to cut her some slack and not say anything, you know, until – in fact, I didn’t say anything . . . That’s why they have those big double-doors there at MSNBC, you know, so they can get her fat ass in makeup.”

Advantage: Brewer.

Apparently Imus will neither be fired nor sanctioned for these over-the-line remarks about a colleague. An MSNBC spokesman told the New York Post:

Contessa Brewer is a valued and respected employee. While Don Imus’ humor is often brilliant and provocative, we believe that this morning’s comments about Contessa went over the line. We have expressed our displeasure to Don.

Seems to me that MSNBC needs to remove a lot more than “MS” from the network to improve its image.