This week has been pretty much a blur, as I've been off from the day job and putting in pretty solid 10-12 hour days, trying to get our house in Austin ready to sell. There's no phone, email, or television distractions at the house now, so I pretty much get up early, go there, work all day, and come home. Tack on an hour commute each way and it makes for a pretty long day.
On top of all that, the in-laws are coming to visit the weekend, and assorted extended family of the wife are coming over for lunch tomorrow, so tonight has been a mad cleaning dash once I got home.
Despite being pretty worn down, I decided it'd be a good idea to play the $30 rebuy bracelet race (still kicking in that one as of typing this, although a little below average stack with 24 players left). I also satellited into the $200+$16 late night bracelet race, so I'm likely going to have to mainline some coffee soon to stay upright and somewhat conscious.
Catching up on assorted news of the week, I have to admit that I don't get this Don Imus firestorm at all. Either side of it. I think I've been inhaling too many paint fumes.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't someone in his line of work pretty much resign himself to eventually getting canned for stepping over the line a bit too far and.or one time too many? Isn't that exactly his line of work, dazzling us with his audacity and assholery, as he flaunts the line of propriety and decency? I just can't see this as a freedom of speech issue, or that he was somehow wrongfully targeted or overzealously punished. It's not like he's going to struggle ot find another job or that he'll be somehow blacklisted. He wasn't exactly preaching the gospel of Jebus so it's not like all of this leaves him permanently stained.
On the other side of the equation, good lord. Aren't there more pressing issues revolving around race relations that some dude who gets paid to be an almost racist, bigoted persona calling a basketball team "nappy headed hos"? Jesse and Al were ready to march at the word "nap", which is admirable and I'm not knocking their efforts whatsoever, but I always can't help but feel that it kind of dilutes your effort when you rise to arms so quickly over something that seems to not be that terrible in the grand scheme of things. Not to mention all of the ink spilled about who has the racial currency to call someone a ho or not, yada yada yada.
In the end I can't help but think that he's a slightly bigoted, slightly racist entertainer who got fired finally for being too bigoted and too racist. But maybe this story is much more complicated and I'm just tired and/or dumb. Yes, indeed, bigotry and racism suck. Boo. But if anyone (an impressionable child or otherwise) was looking to Don Imus for wisdom and general guidance as to how to live their life and what mores to adopt, then we're in a whole other world of hurt.
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