Really!
Imus got what he deserved. It was overdue. But Wonkette's self-serving essay reveals her as a phony who herself has made many of the comments she now so piously condemns. Lisa DePasquale, though unfortunately a conservative, blasts Wonkette's hypocrisy in a column you should read in its entirety. Here's an excerpt.
There’s another double standard that’s not being discussed. Cox (and the current Wonkette bloggers) never hesitate to make crude, politically and factually incorrect comments about women. If she (or any woman) would have said “nappy-headed hos” it would be called catty not racist. Or gossipy instead of sexist.
Conservative women like Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Katherine Harris and Michele Bachman have been insulted in the same vein by Wonkette. A picture of Ann Coulter speaking is captioned on Wonkette.com, “Nothin’ but Diet Coke, nicotine, and blow in her system.” A Wonkette “operative” asks if Michelle Malkin will be doing a sexual trick on her videoblog. Katherine Harris’s physical attributes (her “eyes” as Imus calls them) are discussed and she is called a “street whore.”
15 comments:
I gotta tell you, I tried to get into your blog here and contribute but I am absolutely floored by your obsession with this Imus BS.
The day after one of the most tragic incidents in American history takes place, you pour on over some silly disk jockey and his former guest. That was okay the day before yesterday. But the killings at Virginia Tech are so horrific, I just cannot think of anything else other then those precious lost lives and how terrible the family and friends of those killed must be feeling.
And you drone on about Imus.
This kind of shallowness just doesn't interest me at all.
Shame on you.
Jake,
Every day, not just yesterday, people are senselessly and horribly killed. It's been going on in Darfur for years. It goes on in Iraq. And people are murdered here every day. Some are hit by drunk drivers. Others are victims of domestic violence. Still others die because they can't afford adequate health care.
What happened yesterday is beyond words - it's beyond comprehension. Of course it sickens and saddens me. But I'll have to deal with it in my own way and in my own time. I can't do it any other way and be true to myself. I'm not ready to write about it. If I did, then I really would be shallow.
Today I have two posts. The first deals with campaign finance reform. The other deals with Imus, and is the one you found so offensive. I did so in part because it's a good way to introduce a discussion of racism in America. And your comments from last week kept me interested in the subject.
This is not a newspaper - it's a blog. There is one writer, editor and publisher - me. Every newspaper in the country is full of horrid details, but many questions remain unanswered. Any post I did on this topic would have to be commentary, and I'm not comfortable enough about the facts to write anything more meaningful than what you can easily find at many other places.
Your comment is very interesting to me. Last week, you were waving the pom poms for Imus' first amendment right to be racist, sexist and anti-Semitic. And now you're telling me what I should and should not be discussing on my own blog.
Let's look at our local mainstram blogs and what they posteed today. At the Morning Call Capitol Idea talks about money in judicial races, Bill White
discusses his beard and turning TV shows into movies. Over at the ET, editors Jim Deegan
and Joe Owens have excellent posts on the tragedy. But you chastise Owens, too. "Couldn't we spend at least a few days in mourning?," you ask.
Did it ever occur to you that we all have different ways of mourning? When my dad died, I shed few tears. Same for my mom. But I was as sad as any of my sisters. And what happened in Va. bothers me, too. But I'll have to deal with it my way, not yours.
Bernie,
I'm courting censure as a racist, anti-Semite, and God know what other politically incorrect remark in commenting on the Imus debacle - which cuts more ways than one - for commenting against censorship.
But for me, right or wrong, I am, converted at an early age to John Milton's Areopagitica, opposed to censorship absolutely.
So keep on trying to portray me as a Southern racist, or Bubba, or whatever, but I remain - until the day I die - retain inalterably opposed to censorship of any kind.
Billy,
Imus wasn't censored. He was fired. He's still as free as he ever was to talk about "nappy-headed hos." People just don't find those racist rants as entertaining as they once did. Go figure.
And I don't consider you a southern racist. I cosnider you a southern kook who is allergic to the truth.
Another of my favorite people, and whose still living, is the George Carlin, who may have replaced Lenny Bruce, Morton Sahl, or Chip Wilson as my favorite comedian.
You read, and listen. You know what Carlin said about radios - in may have told it in the State Theatre - radios have dials.
The dials are there to tune in another station if you're a knee-jerk ass that's offended by what sh'it (the PC contraction of "she and it) in case you don't get it.
So if you don't like what you're hearing you pompus Yankee ass, then turn the dial.
But only after you've KISSED my White Southern ASS.
You Yankee Bastard,
You have tried to discredit me for writing that the local news media doesn't manage the news.
At least Ed Sieger ofThe Excess-Times (kisses officialdoms ass to excess most times) accurately reported that I was accompanied from Easton Mayor Phil Mitman's "dog and pony show" held last evening in the Acopian Room (refurbished with $800,000-plus from the 2001 $111 million megabond that eely Glenn Reibman slipped past your failing eyesight and probing proboscis)as they zinged their booty to Wall Street
The pair should have gone to that Brooklyn Club Fed with Michael Solomon for mail fraud, at least.
Sieger reported that "At one point, police Capt. Michael Vangelo restrained Givens as he tried to calm the [silk-stocking] College Hill resident [definitely not one of the blue-blooded Brahman.] Three or four people intervened [including Soth Side Shaman William "Little Bear" Brennan and Sal Panto] and, along with Vangelo, calmed Givens."
Can't say the same for The Morning Call Girl as to her truthfulness:
To make Easton police officer Captain Michael Vangelo and former two-term Easton Mayor Sal Panto and his current candidacy for a third look good at my expense, the Call Girl - ever the pimp to the pols -
I don't read wonkette so I was glad to catch the commentary.
Billy,
Turn the dial. That's an option I recognized w/ Imus years ago. What happened to him now is that his sponsors also turned the dial. He was not censored. He was fired after years of racist and sexist rants because his sponsors don't want to pay for that tripe. It has nothing to do w/ censorship or the First Amendment.
I, for one, am thrilled the MC refused to report your verbal streaking in Easton. That's all it ever is. Like that blind bat Turdaro, you're just an attention seeker. Your primary motive is to get noticed.
Your faux liberal rants diminish other citizens who might actually be interested in true reforms.
w
Bernie,
No offense. But (not including you here.) That article stinks of pundits and bloggers whom have too much press!
Remeber when you had to earn national attention, like Cronkite, Helen thomas, Woodward, etc.
Now goofballs whom get a linked piece to Drudge, or refrenced by that junkie Limbaugh have national press.
Wonket was just the Air America Version.
Blogs are better for local matters. National ones, like drudge, abd bradblog are just jerks boosting their name.
Who reads her blog anyways?
Sara,
Very well said.
Bernie, et.al:
For what it's worth, Ana Marie Cox hasn't been the editor of Wonkette for nearly a year. She did cop in a Time column to feeling guilty about enabling Imus.
But, for the sake of clarity, I'm pretty sure Cox (whom I met once, very briefly) didn't pen the entries in question.
John Micek
John,
Ana Marie Cox, the original Wonkette, was originally the exec. editor at the discretely named Suck, where she regaled readers with tales about blowing the "masturbatory horn." Heady stuff. From there, she became famous at Wonkette for a strange fascination with the word "assfucking", as well as a prediliction for penis jokes.
She stepped down as Womkette's editor in January 2006, but is considered Wonkette's editor emeritus, and still posts, although it is infrequent.
She may not have penned all of the entries mentioned. I'll give you that. In fact, the article I link refers to one slur as the work of a Wonkette "operative." But under her fearless leadership, Wonkette got that well-deserved reputation as a "gossipy, raunchy, potty-mouthed blog."
She became popular when she repeated some lies in the Drudge Report about Kerry having an extramarital affair. Great journalism, eh?
Now she's Time's Washington editor. God help Time. And she acts very shocked by the way Imus treats women. I don't believe she was nobly confessing her guilt. She was just using the Imus story as a way to make herself look good.
By the way, why the hell are you commenting here? Slumming?
Slumming?
Nah ... But it is proof that I probably had too much free time on my hands.
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