(Untitled)

[erndawg08]

My brief response to Don Imus and Mike and Mike

In all of the craziness, I wrote into Mike and Mike (a television/radio program on ESPN) in response to the very classy comments of the head baskeball coach of Rutgers, Vivian Springer.  I have

Comments

Response

[kornbus]

Ern, it's cool that you wrote into Mike and Mike. I wrote in only one time, but it was just to give them a "Man Up" story, haha. Not exactly socially relevant stuff. But I digress...

It was interesting to read your thoughts on the Don Imus/Rutgers story. I agree that the women of Rutger's have handled this with class. It would have been easy to respond with a war of words, but, following the lead of Coach Stringer, they did not. They expressed their feelings of bewilderment, but also made it clear that no one can ruin their good feelings about what they accomplished this year. I applaud them for that.

My personal feeling is that the women of Rutger's are the only ones who should truly be offended by this. And they are the ones Imus truly needs to apologize to. I'm glad that, on the latter point, he agrees with me.

After incidents like this, unfortunately we see a lot of bloodlust in the heart and minds of America. It is one thing, in my opinion, to feel Imus should be punished. Yet another thing entirely to call for his job. Many people want him to simply disappear and never be heard from again. What is this need in our hearts to attack another human being's livelihood simply for making a mistake? Even if that mistake is one that causes hurt feelings? I feel that people have a right to be upset, but to want someone to vanish off the face of the earth because they said a bad thing is wrong.

Forgiveness, I believe, is what should be preached in cases like these. We must not attack hatred with more hatred. If it is true peace we want, we must practice it ourselves in all instances.

Thanks for reading.

Re: Response

[erndawg08]

I find it really interesting how we are ofttimes on the same page. I agree with you that the mistake should be sought to be forgiven, but...time must be taken to analyze the mistake. The greater issue is not Don Imus or Michael Richards but it is the fact that race is the taboo issue. We cannot talk about it in a very cogent way, because of the greater self-hatred of the non-dominant racial classes (the source of the rap songs calling of using the words hoes and niggers). Peace never implied reciprocity (hate for hate; or even love for love). Peace means acknowledging our differences and just then seeing our differences they arent in the way of me living with you and you with me in a community.