Update #2 [and bump]: PBS anchor Gwen Ifill confronts/shames Tim Russert and David Brooks on Meet the Press [video and transcript]:
“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,” Ifill said. “These people didn’t speak up.” She then turned [to] Russert and Brooks, frequest guests on Imus’s show. “Tim, we didn’t hear from you. David, we didn’t hear from you.”
No wonder they seldom let women on the Sunday morning political pundit shows!
Update #1: Rutgers women will meet with Imus.
Rutgers Women End Silence in Press Conference -- "This is not about the Rutgers women's basketball team, it's about women -- are women ho's?"
Gwen Ifill, senior correspondent for "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" and moderator of "Washington Week" writes in today's Times about Imus and the young women on the Rutgers basketball team.
Ms. Ifill knows something about the subject of being insulted by Imus. The suspended shock jock has used his CBS and MSNBC show to term Gwen Ifill "a cleaning lady."
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.”
The calls for Imus to be fired continue.
New York Times:
LET’S say a word about the girls. The young women with the musical names. Kia and Epiphanny and Matee and Essence. Katie and Dee Dee and Rashidat and Myia and Brittany and Heather.
The Scarlet Knights of Rutgers University had an improbable season, dropping four of their first seven games, yet ending up in the N.C.A.A. women’s basketball championship game. None of them were seniors. Five were freshmen. . .
For all their grit, hard work and courage, the Rutgers girls got branded “nappy-headed ho’s” — a shockingly concise sexual and racial insult, tossed out in a volley of male camaraderie by a group of amused, middle-aged white men. The “joke” — as delivered and later recanted — by the radio and television personality Don Imus failed one big test: it was not funny. . .
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. . .
This country will only flourish once we consistently learn to applaud and encourage the young people who have to work harder just to achieve balance on the unequal playing field. . . Let’s see if we can manage to build them up and reward them, rather than opting for the cheapest, easiest, most despicable shots.
via memeorandum
The WaPo editorializes that those "who bask in the glow of his radio show" (like Tim Russert and Harold Ford and Howard Fineman) should remember that "you are judged by the company you keep."
Photo: ERIC MENCHER / Inquirer Staff Photographer -- "A disconsolate Rutgers team stands on the court as confetti rains down following Tennessee's national championship victory in Cleveland. From left are: Brittany Ray, Myia McCurdy, Rashidat Junaid, Matee Ajavon and Kia Vaughn. The Vols ended a seven-year drought and picked up their seventh trophy."
Imus Politics Racism Sexism News Gender Gwen Ifil MSNBC Rutgers Scarlet Knights Don Imus CBS New Jersey
