If Not Imus, Then Beck, Boortz, Limbaugh, and O'Reilly: Let's Not Go After Hip Hop for Imus' Sake

Excerpt of Glenn Gamboa's "Imus Clouds the Debate"

First of all, a rapper would never have hurled racist and sexist slurs against the Rutgers team after their loss in the NCAA Tournament. Attacking people after such a difficult defeat is never funny. It's cold.

Second, rappers would differentiate between student-athletes working hard to rise to the top of their field and prostitutes or even promiscuous women. Do some hip-hoppers use sexist slurs too much? Definitely. But that should not be viewed any differently than the sexist slurs thrown around the boardroom or in workplace cafeterias. It's also no different than a business structure that pays women an average of 23 percent less than men.

Hip-hop should be judged like any other art form, on the merits of the many, rather than the actions of a few. There are examples of sexism and racism in country music and rock as well, but those genres aren't stereotyped in the same way.

The insults Imus and his colleague chose for the Rutgers women were designed to resonate with a certain part of his snickering audience - the ones who see everything in racial terms first. He was playing the race card then and, by trying to push some of the blame for his actions on hip-hop, he is doing it again.

This is a decent explanation of why the mainstream media is wrong in promoting talk against hip hop instead of going after Neal Boortz, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly