POLITOPICS

It's something like poison to bring up this Imus thing again, but I'm doing it anyway. Imus producer criticizes Rev. Sharpton - Yahoo! News. I still don't think Imus is a racist. I think he's prejudiced like most people are and he allowed that prejudice to cloud his judgment. In general, this country was ready for a race war and the people who profit from it were waiting for someone to open the door. Imus did that.

But back to the point, I do think that Imus' producer, Bernard McGuirk, might be racist. Why do I think that? Every time I've listened to the show, he has found a way to inject race into it. He particular likes to express his anger when a topic revolves around black men/white women. That really bothers him. He also likes to do impressions of black people in "ghetto" voice regardless of whether it applies or not. One example is Condi Rice. When he imitates her, he uses the "ghetto" voice even though everyone knows she doesn't sound like that. Whatever. Condi is probably one of the most powerful people in the world, so there's no harm he could do.

I say all this because, after staying silent during this whole flap, McGuirk finally speaks up and decides that Sharpton is what he wants to talk about. I assumed that McGuirk stayed quiet because of guilt. He is the one who usually initiates the racial conversations and he was the one who made the "hard-core hos" comment that spurred on Imus. Regardless, Imus is the man, so he has to take the blame.

McGuirk goes on Hannity & Colmes, knowing he'd find a friend in Hannity, to say although an apology was in order, this was really about Sharpton and not Imus or him. "It seemed like he terrorized broadcast executives," he said. "It seemed like they were in a fetal position under their desks sucking their thumbs on their Blackberrys, trying to coordinate their response."

That is pretty much true, but although its right for him to accept his part of the blame, he can't place all the rest on Sharpton. Those broadcast executives and advertisers gave into their own fear and allow men like Sharpton & Jackson to make them feel unless they jump on the "no tolerance" bandwagon, they will suffer their bottom line. By buying into the fact that Sharpton still speaks for blacks, they made it the truth. This is not to express some defense of the show and the behavior of those on it, but this thing stopped being about Imus the second Sharpton got involved.

Also, whenever I hear the name McGuirk, I think of the soccer coach on the HOME MOVIES cartoon. Awesome cartoon I got hooked on through CN Adult Swim. If you haven't seen it, rent it.