meet the nappy-headed hos

it's awkward, isn't it, when the rabble get all tetchy?

In that forgiving light, let's be especially grateful for Mr. Oliphant, of the Boston Globe, who took the trouble to fill us in on what the boundaries of acceptable discourse are

OLIPHANT: Good morning, Mr. Imus, and solidarity forever, by the way.

IMUS: Thank you.

OLIPHANT: That's pretty easy. You know, I don't know if you know this, but yesterday, The New York Times tried to put me and [Newsweek assistant managing editor] Evan Thomas -- who was on earlier -- on the spot. Did you know that?

IMUS: No, sir.

OLIPHANT: This guy -- David Carr, who writes a pretty good media column on Mondays --

IMUS: Right.

OLIPHANT: -- calls up, and the first question he asks me is, "Are you thinking about not appearing on Imus?" And for once in my life, I answered a direct question with a direct answer. I said, "No, I'm not." And he says, "Well, why not?" And I said, "Because, being the world's most boring person, I had taken the trouble to go all the way though this episode from about two minutes before you said what you said last Wednesday, and then all the way through the statement you made spontaneously on Thursday and then the more prepared one you made on Friday, and I said that's it. That took care of it as far as I'm concerned."

And -- but it was a cute little trick to see if your constituency would falter, and I was very happy to say no.

IMUS: Well, I appreciate that. I don't think your loyalty is misguided or that I am --

OLIPHANT: No.

IMUS: -- unworthy of it, but I do.

OLIPHANT: Well, you know, one of the things that you're condemned to do in my racket is if you know something in a situation like this, you have a moral obligation to say so. And this is one of those occasions where, as you said earlier, fairness and accuracy and context matter. And what -- for what it's worth, what I really appreciated was the fact that, No. 1, you understood how important it was to get across to those wonderful athletes on the Rutgers basketball team what was really in your heart.

And secondly, I have this understanding that you understand the really dangerous moment in these episodes. And, you know, I'm thinking of, you know, an 8-year-old black kid being driven to school by his dad or mom who hears this and wonders what he just heard. And it's in that initial hurt that all these problems begin to show up.

And so what I told David Carr was I didn't think for a second like that. You should also know that your -- our good friends, those journalistic giants at Fox News, are wondering how your regular posse could possibly appear, and the answer is, "It's simple: We know you."

Nappy-headed. See, that would be a reference to people of african descent whose ancestry is insufficiently intermingled with people of european descent (voluntarily, let's take it for granted, because gee whiz, that's how that mostly happened, right?) so that their hair isn't straight (although I understand that can be arranged). This is, clearly, a completely class- and race-neutral statement.

"Hos" would, of course, be a reference to garden implements, because if it wasn't, there surely wouldn't be nearly as many people pretending this was acceptable discourse.

I so enjoy dipping my toe into the world of responsible journalism.

The General has some pictures of the troublemakers.

a little recent history review

this was Wonkette just about a year ago

wonkette: OMG I AM WATCHING MICHELLE MALKIN’S INTERNET VIDEOS FOR THE FIRST TIME
operative: she has internet videos?
operative: does she do the thing with the ping-pong balls?*

I am, by the way, for obvious reasons not going to link to any of this noisesomeness

Ms. Malkin, while she believes that race is entirely sufficient reason to put law-abiding american citizens in prison (and about this, she is egregiously wrong), does not believe that it's sufficient reason to cast aspersions on their morals (and about this, she is entirely right)

This is hardly
the first
time
liberals
have
made Asian whore ping-pong ball jokes about me.

But Wonkette has now mainstreamed it. And I'm sick of it. Are you proud of yourselves? Do you get a bonus from Nick Denton for scraping the bottom of the barrel?

Ms. Malkin, you will not be surprised to hear if you're familiar with her oeuvre, is upset again.
She's upset because "the New Civility Squad" is being hypocritical when they get all upset at Imus for calling a group of african-american college students whores in a racist way.

Because rappers (or as the admirably race-blind Ms. Malkin puts it, "young, black rappers") do it too.

Which is most likely why Rev. Sharpton and Rev. Jackson called for a boycott on violent misogynist rap last year

.an anti-rap movement ... began in March [2005], soon after shots were fired by the rival entourages of 50 Cent and the Game outside a New York radio station. Al Sharpton demanded that the Federal Communications Commission ban violent rappers from radio and television, and he launched a boycott against Universal Music Group, which he accused of "peddling racist and misogynistic black stereotypes" through rap music. Sharpton expressed special concern about white perceptions of African Americans. Rappers and their corporate supporters "make it easy for black culture to be dismissed by the majority," he said, and the large white fan base "has learned through rap images to identify black male culture with a culture of violence."

Do you suppose that's where Ms. Malkin learned it?

Anyway, should we, do you suppose, be upset because Ms. Malkin objected to racism aimed at her and didn't say anything when Don Imus was doing the same thing?