Imus? Boo hoo...

[Alexanderofmacedon]

Why is Don Imus's comments blown so far out of proportion by the media when things like this is going on?

Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom

Pretty nasty stuff that didn't get a wink of media attention if you ask me.

[KafirChobee]

It is not so much a matter of 'racial' sensitivity as it is about allowing a bigot to continue his ways. Imus has gotten away with his crap for 50 years - isn't it about time it ended?

Now, lets focus on the rest of the racially ignorant out there.

Say, btw, where's Rushyballs? You know ... the druggy (that got saved twice bt Dubya's boys) .

[doc_bean]

The media tends to work a bit like the fashion industry, every season they need a new trend, so suddenly they'll have a lot of stories on pedophiles and a few months later it's violent teenagers and then it's racism etc. They change their reporting (what's a headline and what is not, or even what gets reported) so people always think there's a 'sudden increase' or a 'recent trend', until the networks decide that people are probably bored with the current trend and move on to another.

Apparently violent carjackings are not the hype of the moment

[Alexanderofmacedon]

The media tends to work a bit like the fashion industry, every season they need a new trend, so suddenly they'll have a lot of stories on pedophiles and a few months later it's violent teenagers and then it's racism etc. They change their reporting (what's a headline and what is not, or even what gets reported) so people always think there's a 'sudden increase' or a 'recent trend', until the networks decide that people are probably bored with the current trend and move on to another.

Apparently violent carjackings are not the hype of the moment

Sad but true.

[Hosakawa Tito]

Hopefully Al and Jesse have enough indignation and outrage left to direct it toward places where the word "ho" is much more frequently used. Black hip-hop artists.
These two self appointed arbiters of acceptable speech seem to have made peace with their own past racist remarks. NYC = Hymie town comes to mind.
At least the young women who were the target of the distasteful remark know how to handle this with class and dignity, the rest of the media hyenas should take note.

[Kralizec]

People who listen to hip-hop don't care about sexist or racist language. People who follow mainstream radio/TV channels do, apparently.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Thanks for the link, Alexander. I've done some reading on the blogosphere about this now that you've brought it to my attention.

This crime is of such unbelievably savage nature that I will quote the details under spoiler tags, with the warning that it is not for the weak of stomach:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Last January, two Knoxville Tennessee residents, college student Channon Christian 21, set to graduate this year and her boyfriend Chris Newsom 23 were minding their own business and going about their own lives when they were carjacked by two black males, Devall Davidson and Letalvis Darnell Cobbins. Just taking Christian’s Toyota 4-Runner wasn’t all these two had in mind, they kidnapped the boyfriend/girlfriend pair and forced Christian and Newsom to accompany them back to their ‘seedy rental house,’ where they then enlisted the help of two others, including a black female named Vanessa Coleman and proceeded to sodomize Chris Newsom in front of Channon before they emasculated him and shot him in the head. He was then “bound and his body wrapped up in bedding and set afire,” prior to being “discarded like trash along nearby railroad tracks.”

A most horrific and unimaginable fate awaited Channon, after being traumatized by seeing her boyfriend raped and executed before her eyes, the three males, Davidson, Cobbins and George Thomas with the assistance of the female Coleman proceeded to subject Channon to a brutal and continuous series of rapes, including sodomy and God knows what else over a period of two days inside that house – they literally tortured her in ways that defy even the most jaded imagination for two days. Later her “battered body was found stuffed in a trash can.”

“Battered” in this case means that she was dismembered so that her corpse would fit neatly into several plastic bags. According to Vanessa Coleman, after they tired of torturing and raping Channon, the men urinated on her, and poured “cleaning chemicals” into her mouth and down her throat in an effort to destroy the physical evidence they had left behind. They then inexplicably cut off her breasts, dismembered her body and threw it in a trash can at the residence.

The topic of this thread, and this is a recurrent theme on the blogosphere too, is why did this case gain hardly any attention while the headlines were dominated for a week by the racist remarks of white man. A skewed sense of perspective is questioned. Plans are being made for a demonstration in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Now Imus, I don’t know the guy, but his remarks were pathetic and I don’t care if he got the sack or not. Good riddance if he did. He doesn’t sound like the sort of radio I would like to listen too.
As to this torture and murder case, I don’t know if I would qualify it as a racist crime. Racist violence is not the same as interracial violence.
So I’m not convinced about comparing the two cases. It is too easy to juxtaposition one hideous crime with a, in the grand scheme of things, rather irrelevant remark and use this as a base for criticizing media attention. Or to use this in defense of, or put into perspective in, Imus’ distasteful remarks.

What I do recognise however, is the uneasiness a great deal of the media feels about reporting about white victim / black perpetrator crime, while the reverse almost inevitably makes headlines. Having long shed of PC in this respect, I’ll repeat the sentiment of many blogs: why is it so difficult for so many to accept and report that interracial violence in our societies is overwhelmingly of the white victim / non-white perpetrator kind?
You don’t have to run around in a costume made out of bedsheet to question the priorities of those who worry about racism and racial or racist violence.

[Louis VI the Fat]

why is it so difficult for so many to accept and report that interracial violence in our societies is overwhelmingly of the white victim / non-white perpetrator kind?
You don’t have to run around in a costume made out of bedsheet to question the priorities of those who worry about racism and racial or racist violence.

Why is it so difficult? That's because this sort of blogosphere rubbish is spouted by people who suck at statistics. Like you do, you dumb twit.

Here you go and I'll spell it for you so that even you might understand it. Let's say that race A = 90% of the population, race B 10%. Then by chance 90% of criminal acts committed by criminals from either race A or B will be against race A. It's not out of racial preference for victims that B chooses A 90% of the time, while A only chooses B 10% of the time.
Even when we allow for B being responsible for half of all crime, this principle holds. Worrying is indeed that 10% of the population is responsible for half of all crime, sure. But for choice of victims, the numbers point to statistical chance rather than to racist motivation.