oh, right, the hypocrisy. I forgot.

Ms. Malkin, who appears to be determined to make a career out of the Imus situation since Mr. Kurtz of the Washington Post picked up her thoughts, has this to say about Senator Obama's response (as ever, Google's over thataway if you want to read this stuff at the source)

Barry-come-lately jumps on the anti-rap misogyny bandwagon. Here's what he said late today:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Friday questioned the way some rappers talk about women in songs, saying the lyrics are similar to the derogatory language used by embattled radio host Don Imus.

They are "degrading their sisters. That doesn't inspire me," Obama said of some hip-hop artists when a man in a crowd of about 1,000 questioned him. The Illinois senator was responding to a question of what inspired him, and said God and civil rights activists.

...

"I think that all of us have become a little complicit in this kind of relaxed attitude toward some pretty offensive things," Obama said. "And I hope this prompts some self-reflection on the part of all of us."

Funny, I don't recall Obama bringing this up when he met Ludacris last fall. The Media Blog reminds us of Luda's ho-ho-ho-ciferousness.

[sexist crap]

"Ho" came out in 2000. Then there's that other Ludacris classic, "Move Bitch." Here's the chorus and first verse of that:

[sexist crap]

That piece of garbage came out in 2001, Sen. Obama. Doesn't look like it bothered you five years later

[picture of Sen. Obama with someone who based on Ms. Malkin's palpable air of schoolyard accomplishment I assume is Ludacris]

You know who else it didn't bother five years later?

That would be Ms. Malkin. Well, to be fair, that would be, among others, Ms. Malkin, the folks at the National Review, Captain's Quarters, the Washington Times, RedState, Opinion Journal, a whole bunch of folks at Town Hall, MSNBC, Newsweek, Ken Mehlman and the RNC.

( because... )

For a subject Mr. Imus' not-supporters-but want so urgently to have a teachable moment about now, that seems like an awful lot of missed opportunities to me.

Anyway, in an attempt not to miss the next scapegoat train, the National Review Online has this, posted Friday:

Blame David Geffen [Greg Pollowitz]

One thing the Imus firing has inspired is a look at hip-hop culture in general and its role in what happened with Imus. With that in mind, this post on who's responsible for hip-hop at Huffington caught my eye:

In addressing its misogyny problem, hip hop will have to question one overlooked but unavoidable fact fact. Hip hop is owned by whites. The most powerful man in hip hop is not Puff Daddy; it is David Geffen of Sony Records. Contrary to popular belief, Russell Simmons is not the brains behind Def Jam Records; Rick Rubin is (there goes my chance to be invited to HBO's Def Poetry Jam). A fed up black blogger recently discussed the whites who control what is arguably the most important hip hop record label: "And no no no. Russell Simmons did not co-found Def Jam. Nor did he ever run Def Jam. Rick Rubin ran Def Jam. Later Lyor Cohen ran Def Jam. Nor did Russell ever sign Def Jam's big acts. LL Cool J? Rick Rubin. The Beastie Boys? Rick Rubin. Public Enemy? Rick Rubin. Oran "Juice" Jones? Lyor Cohen."

If Democratic candidates are really so disturbed by what's happening, there's an easy solution... give David Geffen's money back.

which links, I am not making this up, to this

What does that mean? It means that on balance historically and presently the imagery of Hip Hop is controlled by people who are pretty much exclusively non-black. That is white.

Moreover, most of these individuals are Jewish. I don't think that either Joel Springarn, Michael Schwerner, or Andrew Goodman would appreciate them facilitating the harm to the black image as they do. This is not what these heros of the civil rights struggle worked and died for. I think it is for their like-minded ideological descendants who are Jewish to take these executives to task for their selling and producing the most vile imagery of African-Americans since D.W. Griffith’s Birth of A Nation. Given these days' political climate, people who would or could do so and are not Jewish, unfortunately are to susceptible to being tainted with the charge of anti-Semitism.

...

What’s ironic about this state of affairs is that actually the companies under which these individuals operate are largely owned by Japanese, German, and French entities.

What’s even more ironic is that these guys, via their African-American “partners” such as Simmons, Lighty, and Puffy work closely with folks like Louis Farrakhan and Ben (used- to-be-Muhammad) Chavis (Hip Hop Action Network, etc) who, in turn, by painting the black Hip Hop non-mogul moguls as progressive, nee, revolutionary, give the whole sordid affair a “progressive”, “nationalist”, and even “anti-Semitic” cover.

Gee. Maybe it was peer pressure that got to Imus after all.

well, yeah

Memo to the Media

Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are not the only black people in America, and more than that they do not have the ability to force themselves onto your news shows. There's a pattern here:

1) Bigot eruption somewhere
2) Lots of people condemn it
3) Al Sharpton goes on every teevee program
4) The media people turn around and use Sharpton's past as a distraction/excuse for the current bigot eruption

If Al Sharpton is an imperfect spokesperson for an issue, and you keep putting him on the teevee to be the spokesperson for that issue, then the obvious conclusion is that this is a deliberate strategy.

although I don't know if that's completely fair - if we are to believe Mr. Kurtz (and he knows a great deal about media) people in his circle privately pretty much share Mr. Imus' views.

They may be having people they don't respect on because they assume that's the best they can do.

Gwen Ifill holds an altar call for Tim Russert and David Brooks

Good for her. It's been bothering me all week that she gave a pass to those of her colleagues who were dismissing Imus' offensive behavior (particularly those who, like Brooks and Russert, are far less qualified journalists than she is)

I was a Capitol Hill correspondent for the network — that I discovered why people were asking those questions. It took Lars-Erik Nelson, a columnist for The New York Daily News, to finally explain what no one else had wanted to repeat.

“Isn’t The Times wonderful,” Mr. Nelson quoted Mr. Imus as saying on the radio. “It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House.”

I was taken aback but not outraged. I’d certainly been called worse and indeed jumped at the chance to use the old insult to explain to my NBC bosses why I did not want to appear on the Imus show.

I haven’t talked about this much. I’m a big girl. I have a platform. I have a voice. I’ve been working in journalism long enough that there is little danger that a radio D.J.’s juvenile slap will define or scar me. Yesterday, he began telling people he never actually called me a cleaning lady. Whatever. This is not about me.

It is about the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. That game had to be the biggest moment of their lives, and the outcome the biggest disappointment. They are not old enough, or established enough, to have built up the sort of carapace many women I know — black women in particular — develop to guard themselves against casual insult.

Why do my journalistic colleagues appear on Mr. Imus’s program? That’s for them to defend, and others to argue about.

Guess they didn't step up (video too)

You know, it’s interesting to me. This has been an interesting week. The people who have spoken, the people who issued statements and the people who haven’t. There has been radio silence from a lot of people who have done this program who could have spoken up and said, I find this offensive or I didn’t know.

These people didn’t speak up. Tim, we didn’t hear from you. David, we didn’t hear from you. What was missing in this debate was someone saying, you know, I understand that this is offensive.

You know, I have a 7-year-old god daughter. Yesterday she went out shopping with her mom for high-top basketball shoes so she can play basketball. The offense, the slur that Imus directed at me happened more than 10 years ago. I would like to think that 10 years from now, that Asia isn’t going to be deciding that she wants to get recruited for the college basketball team or be a tennis pro or go to medical school and that she is still vulnerable to those kinds of casual slurs and insults that I got 10 years ago, and that people will say, I didn’t know, or people will say, I wasn’t listening.

A lot of people did know and a lot of people were listening and they just decided it was okay. They decided this culture of meanness was fine — until they got caught. My concern about Mr. Imus and a lot of people and a lot of the debate in this society is not that people are sorry that they say these things, they are sorry that someone catches them.

If he's watching, Big Russ must be so proud.