Les Payne wins!

Date: Friday the 13th
Time: Ask Freddy or Jason
Place: Welfae Island Swankadero - not Newsday territory

I don't think I've looked at a copy of Newsday (the Long Island paper) since I moved to Roosevelt Island. Before that, living in Long Island and Queens between 1988 and 2004, I read it quite a bit and had many (4 or 5) comedic masterpieces (IMHO) published in the "letters to the editor" column. One of the people to share the editorial space with me was Les Payne.

Les Payne was an African American editor of Newsday who would regularly point out, through the 80's and 90's, that Don Imus would, "indiscriminately" (!) take low cheap racial shots at every Black person on the public radar, defaulting every person to Rastus-level minstrelsry regardless of their achievement or character. He was dead on right. As Bob Herbert points out in his column this Monday, Imus was quoted as saying "Bernard McGuirk is there to make nigger jokes." on 60 Minutes. Any sentient being who listened to 3 Imus programs could not conclude otherwise.

Imus's target audience is guys like me, middle-aged (plus) white guys in NY's financial industry.
It's why he can outbill Stern. Many of us think this rote crap is hysterical, and it is certainly never going to directly offend any of us. I've been personally offended by the laziness of it for a long time. That enough people drew the line at the "nappy headed ho's" characterization of the Rutger's Women's Basketball Team is more a testament to the lattitude he was given than anything else.

Just because you're a white humorist who says "nigger", it doesn't make you Mark Twain, or Kurt Vonnegut (Innocent Bystander High in "B of C") for that matter.