Political Correctness: Make a Judgment

mysteryman wrote:

snood wrote:
No disappointment here. The statement would be racist whether you acknowledged it or not. Sorry if you're too ignorant to see that.

I dont believe that.
Something can only be racist or insulting if you choose to take it that way.
If you give someone else that much power over your own self worth,what does that say about you.

Don't you people get it? Burning a cross on the lawn and hanging young black males from trees is only racist if you choose to take it that way. If you would just ignore it, there would be nothing racist about it. Rolling Eyes

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I tell ya - it's hard to get inside some folks' heads & try to see things the way they do. I'm thinking, "...So, if I wake up and find the 'n' word painted in red on the side of my house, it's not a racist thing unless I think it is?" Wow.

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Free speech is only for liberals in America.

If people don't want to hear what Imus, or any other "shock jock" has to say, all they have to do is not listen.

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snood wrote:

Here are some choice comments from Imus in the past...

On blacks:

"William Cohen, the Mandingo deal." (Former Defense Secretary Cohen's wife is African-American.)

"Wasn't in a woodpile, was he?" (Responding to news that former black militant H. Rap Brown, subsequently known as Abdullah Al-Amin, was found hiding in a shed in Alabama after exchanging gunfire with police. Imus is here alluding to the expression "nigger in the woodpile.")

"Knuckle-dragging moron." (Description of basketball player Patrick Ewing.)

"We all have 12-inch penises." (After being asked what he has in common with Nat Turner, Malcolm X, Minister Louis Farrakhan, Latrell Sprewell from the New York Knicks, and Al Sharpton.)

"Chest-thumping pimps." (Description of the New York Knicks.)

"A cleaning lady." (Reference to journalist Gwen Ifill, possibly out of pique that she wouldn't appear on his show. "I certainly don't know any black journalists who will," she wrote in the April 10 New York Times. The Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page used to appear, but after he made Imus pledge not to make offensive comments in the future, he was never asked back.)

On Jews:

"I remember when I first had [the Blind Boys of Alabama] on a few years ago, how the Jewish management at whatever, whoever we work for, CBS, or whatever it is, were bitching at me about it. [] I tried to put it in terms that these money-grubbing bastards could understand."

"Boner-nosed beanie-wearing Jewboy." (Description of Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, a frequent guest.)

On women:

"That buck-tooth witch Satan, Hillary Clinton." [] "I never admitted it when I went down there and got in all that big jam, insulting Bill Clinton and his fat ugly wife, Satan. Did I? Did I ever say I was sorry for that?"

On Native Americans:

"The guy from F-Troop, Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell." (This is a reference to the zany Indian characters on the 1960s TV sitcom F-Troop. They had names like "Roaring Chicken," "Crazy Cat," and "Chief Wild Eagle.")

On Japanese:

"Old Kabuki's in a coma and the market's going up. [] How old is the boy? The battery's running down on that boy." (Reference to Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, who died the following week.)

On gays:

"I didn't know that Allan Bloom was coming in from the back end." (The homosexuality of the author of The Closing of the American Mind became widely known when Saul Bellow published Ravelstein, a novel whose protagonist was based on Bloom, who by then was deceased.)

"The enormously attractive [NBC political correspondent] Chip Reid, I can say without being accused of being some limp-wristed 'mo."

On the handicapped:

"Janet Reno's having a press conference. Ms. Reno, of course, has Parkinson's disease, has a noticeable tremor. [] I don't know how she gets that lipstick on (laughter) looking like a rodeo clown."

-From an article in Slate Magazine, by Timothy Noah
http://www.slate.com/id/2163872/?nav=fix.

That certainly shows more of a pattern of, at the very least, stereo-typical generalizations and general meanness. Enough to make me not want to listen to him. Bad enough to be fired? Still can't make that call.

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snood wrote:

I tell ya - it's hard to get inside some folks' heads & try to see things the way they do. I'm thinking, "...So, if I wake up and find the 'n' word painted in red on the side of my house, it's not a racist thing unless I think it is?" Wow.

Is this situation really equivalent to vandalism and implicit threats? I really am trying to get my head around why this is such a big deal. It's a very simple thing for you to say I'm ignorant or out of touch and that's why I don't get it. I prefer to dig a bit.

If a black dj called them nappy headed hos, would it be racist? If a black dj called the women's US soccer team pasty-faced skanks? If a white dj called them that? In all of those cases, the words are not nice and are insulting to the subjects and show some disrespect to women, but none are an attack on any group of people. Are the words themselves racist, like with the n word? Which ones, "hos" or "nappy-headed"?

You've convinced me that Don Imus is not a nice person and that I would not be interested in listening to or watching his show. I'm just not sure that anything further than that is warranted for these remarks.

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Painting the N word on the side of your house is a property crime and is racist and is a hate crime, IMO.

Hanging young black boys in trees is murder and racist and a hate crime, IMO.

Someone brought up what Webb said - which wasn't a crime or racist if he didn't know what it meant when he said it, but as a politician and representative of the people of his state, he's in a different league than Imus, Stern, Letterman or other personalities.

I'm much more concerned with things like what Dick Morris said on Hannity and Colmes: "But you know, back to your question of scared. You have to ask yourself, the first black man is running for president and nobody's afraid of him, because everybody's afraid of Hillary."

Why would it be scarey for a black man to be president? What's Dick afraid of? That says a heck of a lot more than what Imus said. Imus is an idiot. Morris is part of our political system.

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FreeDuck wrote:

Setanta wrote:
You quoted me before making your remark, so it was understandable that i would consider your remarks as reflecting on what i had written, even if the reference was to Imus.

I quoted you to respond to what you had to say. That doesn't make everything I said about you.

I don't suggest that everything you wrote was about me. However, your snotty remarks about "white guilt" and bowing down to Sharpton, coming after a quote of my post inferred that i would approve of Imus displaying "white guilt" and bowing down to Sharpton. Since i don't suffer from "white guilt" nor support nor admire Sharpton, i was making it clear that nothing i had written was suggestive that Imus should behave as you characterized it--once again, a snotty characterization.

It seems to me that you are awfully intent on suggesting that what Imus said was no big deal. You have attempted to suggest that his remark was not racist and was not sexist, and that it only applied to the athletes to whom he was referring, without reference to gender or race. I say that's bullshit, and the other comments which Snood has posted from Imus show a pattern of racist and sexist comments from Imus.

I haven't personally called for him to be fired, and i rather suspect that this in fact helps his ratings (or will, at least, help them for a brief time). That might be good reason for his corporate masters to keep a lid on it, hoping that it will eventually blow over, and hoping also to profit from the furor in the short term. As McG suggests, people should just ignore him because he's a putz--but i doubt that this will really hurt him, since i suspect that people already tune in because of his outrageous style--rather like the puerile types who think Howard Stern is cool.

None of that, however, changes the fact that he casually and arrogantly characterized these athletes in sexist and racist terms, and no attempt on your part to suggest that he didn't is going to change that.

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Setanta wrote:

FreeDuck wrote:
Setanta wrote:
You quoted me before making your remark, so it was understandable that i would consider your remarks as reflecting on what i had written, even if the reference was to Imus.

I quoted you to respond to what you had to say. That doesn't make everything I said about you.

I don't suggest that everything you wrote was about me. However, your snotty remarks about "white guilt" and bowing down to Sharpton, coming after a quote of my post inferred that i would approve of Imus displaying "white guilt" and bowing down to Sharpton.

That's not the way you responded, though. You responded as if I had said that you were bubbling over with white guilt and bowing down to Sharpton. In fact, nothing I wrote was about you at all.

Quote:

Since i don't suffer from "white guilt" nor support nor admire Sharpton, i was making it clear that nothing i had written was suggestive that Imus should behave as you characterized it--once again, a snotty characterization.

That's all you had to say in the first place then, right? And nothing I said was "snotty" unless you assumed I was talking about you.

Quote:

It seems to me that you are awfully intent on suggesting that what Imus said was not big deal.

I think I've been pretty clear that is exactly what I'm saying -- at least that it's not a big enough deal to get the attention it's getting.

Quote:

You have attempted to suggest that his remark was not racist and was not sexist, and that it only applied to the athletes to whom he was referring, without reference to gender or race. I say that's bullshit, and the other comments which Snood has posted from Imus show a pattern of racist and sexist comments from Imus.

That's a convenient reconstruction of my argument. You claimed that his remarks "attacked black people" and "attacked women". I say THAT'S bullshit. As to the pattern, I've already said that snood's post DOES indicate a pattern of something, racist generalizations being one of them.

Quote:

None of that, however, changes the fact that he casually and arrogantly characterized these athletes in sexist and racist terms, and no attempt on your part to suggest that he didn't is going to change that.

Which terms were racist and sexist -- hos or nappy-headed -- and why? I'm asking the question (for about the third time) because I'm undecided (despite your convenient misrepresentation of my argument) whether the words themselves are racist or sexist. I have said and will continue to say that, in my opinion, they don't rise to the level of the hooplah that has stemmed from them. You seem to agree with that when stated by others. So why is your back up?

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squinney wrote:

Painting the N word on the side of your house is a property crime and is racist and is a hate crime, IMO.

Hanging young black boys in trees is murder and racist and a hate crime, IMO.

Someone brought up what Webb said - which wasn't a crime or racist if he didn't know what it meant when he said it, but as a politician and representative of the people of his state, he's in a different league than Imus, Stern, Letterman or other personalities.

I'm much more concerned with things like what Dick Morris said on Hannity and Colmes: "But you know, back to your question of scared. You have to ask yourself, the first black man is running for president and nobody's afraid of him, because everybody's afraid of Hillary."

Why would it be scarey for a black man to be president? What's Dick afraid of? That says a heck of a lot more than what Imus said. Imus is an idiot. Morris is part of our political system.

Agreed that comparing Imus's joke to racially motivated vandalism, murder, etc. is a huge red herring here. What Imus did was not illegal. There is absolutely no comparison. And also this thread was prompted by a particular term 'tar baby' and whether that is a racist term. (The jury is still out on that one too with widely differing views, but it is a good illustration of something being racist only if you choose to make it racist. The term itself was not originally coined, intended, nor used as a racist term.)

There is also a tendency to sometimes translate 'stating the obvious'--i.e. he or she is an African American or an Asian or a Native American or white--as being racist. But when it comes to who is running for president, it seems to be fair game for consideration along with a person's religion, marital status, etc. etc. etc.

Dick Morris worked for Bill Clinton and was in government at that time but not now. He currently is just one more media guy sometimes talking sense and sometimes talking nonsense in the newspapers and on telecasts. Putting his comment in context of that whole discussion quoted by Squinney, he was making the observation that Obama's race is not as much problem for him as it otherwise might be as he is perceived as a viable alternative to Hillary who scares a lot of people to death. He was actually not being racist himself, but trying to make the point that even a lot of racists out there would vote for Obama over Hillary because she is so scary. Stupid remark? Depends on your perspective I guess. Racist? No.

(I'm not saying that Dick Morris can't be an idiot though. Anybody who gets fired from the Clinton administration because of sexual misconduct certainly has to be suspect on that score. Smile

)

If 'ho' is used in the same way as it is used in rap, on TV, in the movies etc. or as Jeff Foxworthy used it in his redneck joke, can we honestly say it is intended to be racist? "Nappy headed hos" however does appear to obviously narrow it down to African Americans but I just can't see that it was intended to be mean.

Again Imus is a crude dude who deals in crude bad taste humor. I don't listen to him because I don't appreciate crude bad taste humor from him or anybody else. But if we're going to think that crudity in humor is appropriate anywhere, I just don't see his stupid 'nappy headed hos' quip as being dangerous or damaging racism and I think way too much has been made of it. I think his apology was appropriate, but he should not be fired. He and all the others like him should be forced by ratings to clean up their act though.
_________________
--Foxfyre

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I?-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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This one's tough.

This picture is on the front of today's paper (I'll include the caption too):

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/10/sports/10rutgers2.600.jpg

Rutgers Women Respond: Members of the Rutgers women's basketball team held a news conference to speak about their hurt, anger, and wounded pride after a racial remark made on the radio talk show of Don Imus last week. The players agreed to meet privately with him

And I couldn't help but feel badly for them. I get mad at Imus -- idiot, what's wrong with him, stupid thing to say. Etc.

But then also... he's suspended for this? Might get fired? Career in jeopardy? Wow. This has been his role for a long time. He says stupid things, some of which are funny and some of which aren't. I really like Kinky Friedman, who is a good friend of Imus'. I don't know Imus well, but when I think of Friedman's career being destroyed for something similar, it doesn't seem right.

My opinion isn't fully formed yet, but it seems like there can be censure -- you idiot, what's wrong with you, stupid thing to say, etc. -- without quite that serious of a consequence.

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FreeDuck wrote:

That's not the way you responded, though. You responded as if I had said that you were bubbling over with white guilt and bowing down to Sharpton. In fact, nothing I wrote was about you at all.

No, that's false--i responded as though you were claiming that i had suggested that Imus should bow down to Sharpton because of "white guilt." I had not in fact said anything about how Imus should behave, and resented the implication that i approved of him "bowing down" to Sharpton because of "white guilt."

Quote:

That's all you had to say in the first place then, right? And nothing I said was "snotty" unless you assumed I was talking about you.

It was snotty for you to suggest that Imus was "bowing down" to Sharpton, and that he was motivated by "white guilt." It was snotty to suggest inferentially from my post that i would approve of that.

Quote:

I think I've been pretty clear that is exactly what I'm saying -- at least that it's not a big enough deal to get the attention it's getting.

I could not agree less.

Quote:

That's a convenient reconstruction of my argument.

That's no reconstruction at all. In fact, you wrote, in post #2603719:

FreeDuck wrote:

I disagree. I think it was insulting to the women on the Rutgers basketball team, but that's about it. It wasn't an attack on women and it wasn't an attack against black people.

You specifically stated that it was not an attack on women, and not an attack on black people. I've never heard anyone but women referred to as "hos," and it is a expression taken from black urban slang, with a history of denigrating women. Despite what Lash has written, i've never heard any reference to "nappy head" in any other context than a reference to black people.

Quote:

You claimed that his remarks "attacked black people" and "attacked women". I say THAT'S bullshit. As to the pattern, I've already said that snood's post DOES indicate a pattern of something, racist generalizations being one of them.

If his remarks were not specific to women, why did he say "hos?" If his comments were not specific to black people, why did he refer to "nappy heads?" I can think of few contentions more absurd than that his remark does not attack women and black people.

Quote:

Which terms were racist and sexist -- hos or nappy-headed -- and why? I'm asking the question (for about the third time) because I'm undecided (despite your convenient misrepresentation of my argument) whether the words themselves are racist or sexist. I have said and will continue to say that, in my opinion, they don't rise to the level of the hooplah that has stemmed from them. You seem to agree with that when stated by others. So why is your back up?

I've explained why the use of "hos" and "nappy headed" are respectively sexist and racist terms--and i think you only deny it because you are attempting to defend a weak argument. This is at least three times, and i think more, that i've given this explanation. I did not misrepresent your argument, i've quoted it above--you specifically said in that post, and continue to say in this post, that the remarks are not directed at women and blacks. As for the "hooplah," when someone has a nationally syndicated radio program, that creates the hooplah, not my comments. My back is not up, but i am disgusted that you continue to try to suggest that Imus' comment was relatively innocent, and continue to attempt to advance a ridiculous argument that the remark was not sexist and racist. I have not agreed that the "hooplah" is unwarranted by the character of the remark--i have simply observed that this likely will not have the repercussions for Imus and his corporate sponsors that such a remark deserves. I condemn what he said, and him for saying it, but i'm not so foolish as not to see the pragmatic side of this, which is that in the continuing sexist and racist climate of this country, he'll probably not only get away with it, he'll probably even experience an increase in ratings. That doesn't by any means suggest that i think the "hooplah" is overblown.

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I'll probably be crucified on this thread for saying this, too, but I don't think these young women are doing themselves any favors. Look at them. They're attractive, apparently smart and capable enough to be in college, talented athletes, et al, and have everything going for them. Are you going to tell me that they are so fragile and vulnerable that a stupid insensitive even racist remark from a crude talk show host is devastating to them? Why are they giving the illusion that he has that kind of power over them?

I think we women are actually tougher than that.

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Well, the "censure" ends up to be a 2-week paid vacation, so no need for too much hand-wringing about an over reaction. Imus will be fine. The intensity of the discussion that has come from this is IMO understandable, and incidentally, very instructive.

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Posted on Wed, Apr. 11, 2007
COMMENTARY
Imus isn't the real bad guy
Instead of wasting time on irrelevant shock jock, black leaders need to be fighting a growing gangster culture.
JASON WHITLOCK
Thank you, Don Imus. You've given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.

You've given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.

You've given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor.

Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it's 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.

The bigots win again.

While we're fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I'm sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent's or Snoop Dogg's or Young Jeezy's latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos.

I ain't saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don't have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.

It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.

Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and wait for someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves.

It's embarrassing. Dave Chappelle was offered $50 million to make racially insensitive jokes about black and white people on TV. He was hailed as a genius. Black comedians routinely crack jokes about white and black people, and we all laugh out loud.

I'm no Don Imus apologist. He and his tiny companion Mike Lupica blasted me after I fell out with ESPN. Imus is a hack.

But, in my view, he didn't do anything outside the norm for shock jocks and comedians. He also offered an apology. That should've been the end of this whole affair. Instead, it's only the beginning. It's an opportunity for Stringer, Jackson and Sharpton to step on victim platforms and elevate themselves and their agenda$.

I watched the Rutgers news conference and was ashamed.

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for eight minutes in 1963 at the March on Washington. At the time, black people could be lynched and denied fundamental rights with little thought. With the comments of a talk-show host most of her players had never heard of before last week serving as her excuse, Vivian Stringer rambled on for 30 minutes about the amazing season her team had.

Somehow, we're supposed to believe that the comments of a man with virtually no connection to the sports world ruined Rutgers' wonderful season. Had a broadcaster with credibility and a platform in the sports world uttered the words Imus did, I could understand a level of outrage.

But an hourlong press conference over a man who has already apologized, already been suspended and is already insignificant is just plain intellectually dishonest. This is opportunism. This is a distraction.

In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no threat to black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so destructive and must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about the idiot rappers on BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the country who use words much more powerful and much more destructive?

I don't listen or watch Imus' show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it's cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they're suckers for pursuing education and that they're selling out their race if they do?

When Imus does any of that, call me and I'll get upset. Until then, he is what he is ?- a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you're not looking to be made a victim.

No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There's no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.

To reach Jason Whitlock, call (816) 234-4869 or send e-mail to [email protected]. For previous columns, go to KansasCity.com

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How "tough" women in general are, or these athletes are, is not the point--but i'm not surprised that Fox doesn't see or doesn't want to see the significance of the remark. We live in a nation which--despite the civil rights movement of more than forty years ago, and the women's liberation movement of thirty and more years ago--continues to be racist and sexist, continues to denigrate people for the color of their skin or their physical gender. Phyllis Schlafly would be pleased.

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sponsors
Several big time sponsors are withdrawing their support advertising of the Don Imus show.

BBB

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Good for them.

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And- about "red herrings"...
I do not intend to equate saying "nappy headed ho's" to burning crosses, but only to submit that both things are racist, whether anyone is there to witness it, or not.

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snood wrote:

And- about "red herrings"...
I do not intend to equate saying "nappy headed ho's" to burning crosses, but only to submit that both things are racist, whether anyone is there to witness it, or not.

Indeed.

It is fascinating to see the current political correctness reach a point where some people are not prepared to name obviously grossly sexist and racist remarks for what they are...presumably..... in SOME cases...... for fear of being politically correct.

This is so stunningly recursive that I expect some folks heads to be appearing out of their bums any minute now.

I have no idea what a reasoned and reasonable response to these sexist and racist remarks is, since I know nothing about the context and situation of the creep making them, but they're sexist and racist all right.

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Trash Talk Radio
Trash Talk Radio
By Gwen Ifill
The New York Times
Tuesday 10 April 2007

Washington - Let's say a word about the girls. The young women with the musical names. Kia and Epiphanny and Matee and Essence. Katie and Dee Dee and Rashidat and Myia and Brittany and Heather.

The Scarlet Knights of Rutgers University had an improbable season, dropping four of their first seven games, yet ending up in the N.C.A.A. women's basketball championship game. None of them were seniors. Five were freshmen.

In the end, they were stopped only by Tennessee's Lady Vols, who clinched their seventh national championship by ending Rutgers' Cinderella run last week, 59-46. That's the kind of story we love, right? A bunch of teenagers from Newark, Cincinnati, Brooklyn and, yes, Ogden, Utah, defying expectations. It's what explodes so many March Madness office pools.

But not, apparently, for the girls. For all their grit, hard work and courage, the Rutgers girls got branded "nappy-headed ho's" - a shockingly concise sexual and racial insult, tossed out in a volley of male camaraderie by a group of amused, middle-aged white men. The "joke" - as delivered and later recanted - by the radio and television personality Don Imus failed one big test: it was not funny.

The serial apologies of Mr. Imus, who was suspended yesterday by both NBC News and CBS Radio for his remarks, have failed another test. The sincerity seems forced and suspect because he's done some version of this several times before.

I know, because he apparently did it to me.

I was covering the White House for this newspaper in 1993, when Mr. Imus's producer began calling to invite me on his radio program. I didn't return his calls. I had my hands plenty full covering Bill Clinton.

Soon enough, the phone calls stopped. Then quizzical colleagues began asking me why Don Imus seemed to have a problem with me. I had no idea what they were talking about because I never listened to the program.

It was not until five years later, when Mr. Imus and I were both working under the NBC News umbrella - his show was being simulcast on MSNBC; I was a Capitol Hill correspondent for the network - that I discovered why people were asking those questions. It took Lars-Erik Nelson, a columnist for The New York Daily News, to finally explain what no one else had wanted to repeat.

"Isn't The Times wonderful," Mr. Nelson quoted Mr. Imus as saying on the radio. "It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House."

I was taken aback but not outraged. I'd certainly been called worse and indeed jumped at the chance to use the old insult to explain to my NBC bosses why I did not want to appear on the Imus show.

I haven't talked about this much. I'm a big girl. I have a platform. I have a voice. I've been working in journalism long enough that there is little danger that a radio D.J.'s juvenile slap will define or scar me. Yesterday, he began telling people he never actually called me a cleaning lady. Whatever. This is not about me.

It is about the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. That game had to be the biggest moment of their lives, and the outcome the biggest disappointment. They are not old enough, or established enough, to have built up the sort of carapace many women I know - black women in particular - develop to guard themselves against casual insult.

Why do my journalistic colleagues appear on Mr. Imus's program? That's for them to defend, and others to argue about. I certainly don't know any black journalists who will. To his credit, Mr. Imus told the Rev. Al Sharpton yesterday he realizes that, this time, he went way too far.

Yes, he did. Every time a young black girl shyly approaches me for an autograph or writes or calls or stops me on the street to ask how she can become a journalist, I feel an enormous responsibility. It's more than simply being a role model. I know I have to be a voice for them as well.

So here's what this voice has to say for people who cannot grasp the notion of picking on people their own size: This country will only flourish once we consistently learn to applaud and encourage the young people who have to work harder just to achieve balance on the unequal playing field.

Let's see if we can manage to build them up and reward them, rather than opting for the cheapest, easiest, most despicable shots.
---------------------------------

Gwen Ifill is a senior correspondent for "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" and the moderator of "Washington Week."

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Political Correctness: Make a Judgment

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