Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters writers have been quick to attack the critics of Don Imus' racist remarks about the Rutgers women's basketball team -- but have been nearly mum about Imus himself:
-- An April 10 post by Clay Waters went after "hatemonger" Al Sharption, declaring that his "inflammatory past" is "far more racially divisive than anything Imus said about a women's basketball team." (He did add that Imus' remark was "denigrating.")
-- Mark Finkelstein wanted to know in an April 10 post: "If Don Imus' racially bigoted remark merited a two-week suspension by MSNBC, for how long will MSNBC and HBO ban Bill Maher after his bit of religious bigotry on today's 'Imus in the Morning'?" (Maher called the Bush administration "Stupid and arrogant, in a way only the religious can be.")
-- In another April 10 post, Finkelstein praised Meredith Vieira for having "the gumption to confront Jesse Jackson with his own record of having made a bigoted statement," Matt Lauer got demerite because he "tiptoed to the edge and backed off when confronting Al Sharpton about his racially-charged past."
-- In a April 9 post, Matthew Balan was unhappy that "CNN spent five minutes on the outrageousness of its daily competition: Don Imus’s remarks on MSNBC describing the Rutgers University women’s basketball team as 'nappy-headed hoes.' " Balan then misleadingly asserted that a CNN guest "got it wrong" when she asserted that occasional Imus sports guy Sid Rosenberg "previously made a racial comment," noting that "Rosenberg was banned from Imus’ show in May 2005, after joking about pop singer Kylie Minogue’s breast cancer diagnosis." While that is true, Rosenberg did, in fact, make a "racial comment" in 2001 that Venus and Serena Williams, rather than having their pictures in Playboy, have "a better shot at National Geographic." He was fired after that comment, then rehired.
-- An April 9 post by Finkelstein complained that "not a discouraging word was heard about Sharpton's history of racially-charged statements and actions that go far beyond" former Sen. George Allen's "gaffe" of calling a staffer for his campaign opponent "macaca." (As we've noted, the MRC folks never quite saw "macaca" as an insult.)
