What the freaking hell is going on here?

I woke up that morning to finish up my math homework and to catch some CNN, as I always do on mornings where I wake up early. I was expecting some news on Iraq, some on political campaigns, etc. Instead, I got 40 good minutes of some basketball coach talking.

This was annoying enough, especially because the same footage was playing on both CNN AND CNN Headline News.

Of course, at this moment I had no idea what was going on. A few seconds later I would find out that Don Imus, famous radio personality, had called the Rutger's Women's basketball team "nappy headed hos".

Uhm.

Ok?

I was bewildered by the ensuing controversy. I did not know why controversy existed. What Imus said in the beginning held true for me till the very end - "some idiot comment meant to be amusing." So ok, it's offensive that he called them nappy headed hos. It was wrong. I thought "well, maybe 2 weeks suspension is more than enough punishment for him".

...Then he got fired.

At this point, I was pretty flaming pissed off.

We live in a vulgar world. No other way to get around that fact. In the TIME magazine article about Imus and the cultural lines that exist (and that he stepped over), the author points out a lot of things. For instance, Lenny Bruce used to repeat the word nigger (I'm not going to censor that...) over and over again until it had no real meaning to him or his audience. Lenny Bruce was considered avant-garde.

Carlos Mencia trots onto a set every week and, in front of a live audience, talks about stereotypes of spics and the subtle difference between niggERS and niggAS. He is considered funny. He gets paid a healthy sum by Comedy Central.

Countless numbers of rappers talk about pimipin' hos and slappin' bitches and all that other crap. Three Six Mafia won an Oscar for their song, It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp. Uhm.

So, yes, there is a difference between a rapper saying that and, well, Imus saying that. But how much of a difference?

By even creating this much controversy in the first place, aren't we acknowledging racial differences in our culture? Oh, it's ok for a black guy to say the N-word but when a white guy says it, holy sh*t call jesse jackson and al sharpton, it's going down. Is this really the example we want to create for the younger generations to come who would otherwise be ignorant to the idea of race?

What do lines do? Lines separate things. Creating different lines (that cannot be crossed) for different cultures and different people merely amplifies the fact that we're different. Great. Just what we wanted.

So why isn't there a standard? Isn't it arguable that Don Imus was merely trying to be funny in the same way that Carlos Mencia is? What would have happened if Imus was twenty-something years old? Would it make a difference? What if he was black? I'm willing to bet that the fact that he is a 66 year old white male had a lot to do with this. A lot.

It appears MSNBC is just trying to wash their corporate hands of this controversy, but it's so ironic because these are the same corporations which are defining the "trendy", the "allowable", the "funny". Damn. Imus already apologized once. Was it really, truly necessary to fire him?

It just seems to me that this logic is laced with so much BS that it's hard to see what's what. America might be a great place to live, but damn, it seems there are more than a few hypocritcal assh*les in here.