Hail to the "Nappy Headed Hos"

(photo: Embattled Curmudgeon Don Imus in the days before the bitches and hos got up in his grill)

I don’t listen to talk radio because it makes me carsick. It doesn’t matter if I’m in my car or in my kitchen, if talk radio is on, I am instantly stricken with feelings of motion sickness. This is likely brought on by a Proustian memory from childhood when my parents would smoke in the car with the windows rolled up while WBZ crackled on the AM radio.

Still, I’ve been closely following the Don Imus story -- mostly because he is this week’s diapered astronaut and I can’t look away. I listened to the transcript of his “nappy-headed hos” comments and their context. His egghead producer Bernard McGuirk egged him on, calling the women on the Rutgers team “hos” first, before Imus added the offensive frizzy adjective.

To me, they sounded like two old, out-of-touch white guys who just discovered Urban Dictionary. It was a lame exchange and it backfired like parents calling their kids “dawgs” in an effort to communicate with them via street talk. They should not only be penalized for sounding like racists but also for sounding like complete idiots.

But he apologized several times, spent three hours on Al Sharpton’s radio show --which is punishment in and of itself -- and is meeting with the Rutgers basketball team. As he should. His radio show has been suspended for two weeks, MSNBC has dropped its simulcast of his show and numerous advertisers have pulled their sponsorships.

And, of course, wherever there is indignation, there is Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

Last night, Keith Olbermann held their feet to the fire a little bit, something I’m surprised more media outlets or activists aren’t doing:

If they're protesting Imus for racial comments, why aren’t they going after Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz and their ilk who have built entire careers – quite unapologetically – on hatemongering, pandering to half wits who find racial stereotypes, misogyny, and gay bashing absolutely hilarious.

Is it because our expectations of these knuckle-dragging talk show hosts are so low that we simply accept this vitriol from them, sort of the same way you expect gorillas to hurl their own feces when they get excited?

Imus used the term “nappy headed hos” – that's pretty offensive, but is it any more offensive than these incidents:

- Last year, conservative talk show host Neal Boortz said Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney looked like a “ghetto slut,” and that her hair “looks like an explosion in a Brillo pad factory. It’s just hideous. No it’s not an Afro...it just shows contempt for the position that she holds. She looks like Tina Turner peeing on an electric fence.”

- Rush Limbaugh, drug-addicted conservative gasbag, has repeatedly referred to Halle Berry and Barack Obama as “Halfrican-Americans.”

- Barely-educated conservative blowhard Glenn Beck (also a former drug addict) called the victims of Hurricane Katrina “scumbags," implying poor + black = scumbag.

- Not even going to go there with skanky Ann Coulter as we've dealt with her before.

Where is the outrage here? The advertising exodus? If someone cannot control themselves or maintain the slightest level of decorum, they shouldn’t be on the public airwaves. I’ve always subscribed to the “don’t like it, don’t listen” philosophy but if they’re trying to set a new standard with Imus, then it should be applied to these hateful morons too.

"A Botch"

Fox News is already in the business of "fake news" so it's understandable that its attempt to rip off the "Daily Show" would backfire. Their regular newscasts are funnier and more absurd than the "1/2 Hour News Hour" (garbage title) which debuts this Sunday.

Even the most whitebread conservative bloggers and TV writers are calling it "a pus-filled abscess of a show" that "sucks decomposing dog ass." Yikes.

It's impossible to disagree: The only thing funny about this clip is the desperately exaggerated laugh track. The "Don't Tell Mama, I'm for Obama" t-shirt bit would be funny if they hadn't stolen it. The format is also a blatant rip off of SNL's Weekend Update. It should be clear to everyone that there is not an original, funny thought in any of the follicly-challenged heads at FNC.

From Hal Boedeker's review:

"Jon Stewart knows how to do slashing comical commentary. He weighs in on what's happening, such as the media's bizarre coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death.

David Letterman knows how to do slashing comical commentary. He takes President Bush's awkward speeches and contrasts them with the lasting words of John F. Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt.

Fox News Channel does not know how to do slashing comical commentary. The channel debuts "The 1/2 Hour News Hour" at 10 p.m. Sunday. This show was meant to be a conservative version of "The Daily Show." It is a botch.

"The 1/2 Hour News Hour" does not comment on what is happening; it simply takes swipes at people. These people include Howard Dean, Hillary Clinton, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama and Ed Begley Jr. Other joke topics are the ACLU, Time magazine, children's books and global warming.

Laughter, of an awfully canned variety, greets all the gags. Nothing happening on screen justifies these outbursts.

Hey, I'm all for a good dig at the high and the mighty. But these satirists fall short of hitting their targets with wit, timeliness or punch.

Which raises the point: What is a comedy show doing on a news channel?

"The 1/2 Hour News Hour" was developed by Joel Surnow, who has given the world many minutes of entertainment through "24." On the basis of the premiere, Surnow should stick to political thrillers. At the top, Rush Limbaugh puts in a cameo as the U.S. president (the year is 2009); Ann Coulter drops in as his vice president. Then they disappear, a smart move.

Fox News Channel will offer a second episode at 10 p.m. March 4. If we're lucky, we'll never hear of this dreadful show again."

O'Reilly's Opera

Time to visit Giana. I came very close to booking a ticket to Seattle this morning after learning about this new opera playing at UW in January that is based on Bill O'Reilly's 2004 phone sex scandal with Faux News underling Andrea Mackris. Igor Keller, a Washington-based saxophone player, not only set the sexual harrassment suit to music but transformed it into what he calls a "31-part, concert-length baroque oratorio." Entitled "Mackris v. O'Reilly," the libretto opens with a reading of the original complaint filed by Mackris and runs through seven chorales, four recitatives, and numerous arias before the denouement, which features a dramatic, baritone reading of the settlement. The opera covers all of the sordid details including O'Reilly's paranoid rants and the infamous loofah-as-falafel Caribbean shower fantasy. (a wistful recitation and aria are devoted to this gem in part 27 of the production) For those unfamilar with the loofah story: O'Reilly, the King of Moral Outrage, called up Makris and awkwardly tried to lure her into phone sex by telling her that she had specatular boobs and that he wanted to soap them up with his loofah mitts. On the second reference, he mistakenly -- and quite inexplicably -- referred to the loofah as a "falafel." All the while, he's having a go at himself with a vibrator. Truth is stranger than fiction. Either way, the O'Reilly opera will most certainly be better than this.

The Daily Show Effect

I KNEW IT! Recent studies have found that viewers of The Daily Show and other "fake news" programs are not cynical and disengaged, but informed and savvy. In many ways, this is common sense: In order to "get" satire, you have to have a decent understanding of the material being parodied, right?

- In a May 2006 study entitled "The Daily Show Effect," two political science professors from East Carolina University found that while college-age viewers of Stewart's show may be cynical about politics, they were nonetheless better informed and more confident in their ability to understand politics than viewers of traditional news media.

- Mary Zeiss Stange, a professor at Skidmore College, wrote a piece for USA Today last month that argued that the "Daily Show Effect" is not so much about cynicism as it is about critical analysis. "Based on my experience with them, I can attest that the current college-age generation is generally, and increasingly, media savvy when it comes to critically 'consuming' the news," she said. "I would further argue that this is more so because of shows such as Stewart's, The Colbert Report, and Web sites such as that of the The Onion newspaper."

In fact, the Daily Show generation is not only apt to be more concerned about current events, says Zeiss Stange, but also more likely to be spurred to do something with that concern. "In other words, Stewart's watchers could actually become more active voters," she said.

Her notions are shored up by a 2004 election survey from the non-partisan Annenberg Public Policy Center that found Daily Show viewers to be better informed about campaign issues than consumers of other late-night television programs, newspapers, network news, or cable news

I KNEW IT. The viewers of fake news -- because they understand the real news -- see through all the "truthiness" and talking points floating around out there. For those who don't watch The Colbert Report (which is a parody of The O'Reilly Factor), truthiness is "what you want the facts to be, as opposed to what the facts actually are; it's what you feel is the truth as opposed to what the truth actually is."

Truthiness is pervasive at places like Fox News and on almost all syndicated talk radio shows that subscribe to the notion that if you say something loudly enough and repeat it often enough, people will believe it -- even when it is completely untrue.

For instance, Delusional Phone Sex Enthusiast and Wicked Big Narcissicist Bill O'Reilly has repeatedly called viewers of The Daily Show "stoned slackers" and "dopey kids" who "don't know what's going on in the world." However, Nielsen Media Research shows that Stewart's viewers are not only smarter, but more educated than O'Reilly's. Daily Show viewers are 78 percent more likely than the average adult to have four or more years of college education, while O'Reilly's audience is only 24 percent more likely to have that much schooling.

O'Reilly may really believe that he is relevant and important but his audience is -- in fact -- comprised of old & senile men who wear their pants too high. However, short term memory is required of his bible-thumping public because bible thumpers tend to get outraged over dirty sex. Two years ago, the bleedingly self-righteous O'Reilly paid $10 million to a 31-year-old Fox staffer to keep her from going public with phone recordings of him telling her she had "spectacular boobs" and that he wanted to "soap them up with his loofah mitts." After the big pay-off, he took zero accountability. Instead, he just blamed the non-loofah mitt-wearing democrats. It's happening again now with the Foley/Page scandal. Everyone's blaming the democrats for their own twisted horniness.

But you have to feel sorry for these repressed white guys. They are probably not shirking responsibilty out of fear or malice or even politics but sexual frustration. From what I can see, these morally superior men love dirty sex but nobody wants to have dirty sex with them.


That said, it's getting harder to tell the difference between a fictional Daily Show skit and an actual cable news segment. The line has been blurred, which is why we're seeing Stewart/Colbert '08 t-shirts and why Keith Olbermann, through his inspiring special comment segments, is becoming the Edward R. Murrow of cable news -- even though his show, "Countdown," is considered more of an entertainment program. These guys are smarter and much more grounded and sane than the others. When asked about the popularity of the Stewart/Colbert '08 shirts, Jon Stewart said it was "sad. " "Nothing says I am ashamed of you, my government, more than a Stewart/Colbert t-shirt," he said. Yet more evidence that he gets it.

Jon Stewart @ Wang Center

Thanks to one of WMD's and Peete's pals, Annie and I were in the house at the Wang Center last weekend, in an audience that Jon Stewart addressed as "my poor sweet little blue staters...you godless sodomites." Fellow godless sodomites Cameo and the Brownman were also present and in the fray.

Stewart covered all of the bases, commenting on everything from the Middle East to gay marriage. For instance, Stewart said he was against gay marriage at first because he didn't want to have to leave his wife for a dude: "I assumed gay marriage was going to be mandatory because why would anyone else care." He discussed the "bizarre wardrobe idiosyncrasies" of religion: "The Pope is just one hat choice away from being the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan." It wasn't all politics, however. Stewart also recreated his two-year-old son's very Ben Cyr-ish dance moves that he busted on a Manhattan street after correctly identifying a tiger. He ended the show with a hilarious play-by-play about his dog having gastrointestinal issues in the middle of the night.

ALL of it was funny and much of it was inspiring.

While I've always liked Jon Stewart, I became a true devotee after watching him verbally disembowel Tucker Carlson on CNN in 2004. You know Tucker Carlson -- that pasty, bowtie-wearing frat boy who looks a little -- how you say -- date-rapey? Stewart chastised Carlson and his show "Crossfire" for doing a disservice to public discourse by participating in "partisan hackery." When Carlson tried to compare his interviewing style with that of Stewart's, Stewart said, "The lead in to my show is puppets making crank calls. You're on CNN. What's the matter with you?" Then he called Tucker a dick. Awesome. Clearly, CNN agreed with Stewart as "Crossfire" was cancelled shortly thereafter. Unfortunately, Tucker has since landed at MSNBC. While he's lost his bowtie and has made his acquaintance with a tanning booth, he's still a total dick.

Speaking of which, some Harvard grad wrote an op-ed in the Globe earlier this year about how Jon Stewart is harmful because he turns away smart, independent thinkers from a life in politics by making government seem uncool and clownish. (I would argue that the government makes itself appear uncool and clownish and Stewart is merely pointing this out) I don't know if the guy who wrote the op-ed is completely humorless or has no sense of irony but he certainly doesn't get it. He contends that young people who watch "The Daily Show" are more likely to shun public life and go work in the private sector. However, he provides no evidence, statistics or sources to support his hypothesis aside from a fictional composite example. Speaking for myself -- although I am certainly not a "young person" -- watching shows like "The Daily Show" or "The Colbert Report" has not made me care less about the world. Watching these shows has never given me the urge to go work at Goldman Sachs, nor has it given me the urge to go into politics. But that's because neither of these occupations is in my blood. What really makes me feel turned off and completely powerless is the actual. real. news. The real news makes me want to smoke a brick of hash and apologize to my kids for bringing them into this mess. I credit people like Jon Stewart for rousing me from my apathy. Jon Stewart has not made politics and government repulsive to me, but palatable. He turned me into a voter. He did not do this with scare tactics or condescension, but by being engaging, funny and intelligent, and often through clips like this one.