Two weeks ago, the Imus witch hunt was in full swing as the Reverend Al Sharpton among others called for the firing of radio personality Don Imus for calling the women of the Rutgers University basketball team “nappy-headed ho’s”. This, Sharpton alleged, was a racist slur against black women. His best bud, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, demonstrated with his Rainbow Coalition outside the offices of CBS Radio and MSNBC. They both said repeatedly that all racism, whether it comes from whites, blacks or anybody else, was to be actively opposed at all times, and stopped. I called Sharpton a “sanctimonious imbecile”, a comment I intend to quantify here and now.

The day after Imus made his remarks, another radio show called The Dog House with JV and Elvis, which airs in New York City, played a prank call on the unsuspecting employees of a Chinese restaurant. Prank calls can be funny; I play them frequently on my afternoon show. During this prank call, they repeatedly referred to the employee on the phone as “Chinese man”, referred to the “hot, Asian, spicy ass” of the female co-worker who first picked up the phone, ordered “flied lice”, bragged about learning kung fu, and asked about his “tiny eggroll in [his] pants”. (You can listen to the entire bit here.)

Which of the above incidents - that of Imus or of The Dog House - would you consider to be more full of racism? I think there’s no doubt that the latter is an inherently racist piece. It was prerecorded and lasted six minutes, while Imus’ remark was an ad lib comment lasting less than two seconds. The two jocks responsible for the prank call have now been suspended by CBS Radio, and a Chinese advocacy group have expressed their outrage and called for their firing.

But there are a few people missing from the scene.

Where is Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition? Where are Al Sharpton’s appearances on talk shows demanding that the jocks be fired? Where are the demonstrations? Do they only notice racism when it’s levelled at black people? Is that not, in itself, exactly the kind of racism they claim to want to rid America of? I wouldn’t be surprised if Sharpton acknowledges this in the next few days under pressure from others of the kind of criticism I’m levelling at him in this blog. But it will be a token gesture, since there were no black people involved in the incident. Yet he believes all racism needs to stop.

Sharpton is a racist hypocritical moron, guilty of selective outrage™. Simple as that.

John Wright

johnwright@softhome.net