attempted murder charges leveled against six black teens show “one rule for white kids and one for black kids.”
Sharpton and an entourage of three dozen religious and civil rights leaders met and prayed privately with one of the teens, 17-year-old Mychal Bell, for about 15 minutes at the LaSalle Parish courthouse.

Bell faces up to 22 years in prison after being convicted of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated second-degree battery. He had initially faced attempted murder charges. Four 18-year-olds and a juvenile—who round out the group dubbed the Jena Six—are awaiting trial on attempted murder and conspiracy charges.

“I did not come to Jena to start trouble,” Sharpton said while preaching at a local church service after the meeting. “I came to Jena to stop trouble.”

Bell and five other teens were charged in the December 2006 beating of a white schoolmate, 18-year-old Justin Barker. Barker was treated for a swollen and cut face and released the same day, but said he took pain medication for a week.

Black community leaders across the country were outraged, protesting that the attempted murder charges were too harsh.

In comments directed at District Attorney Reed Walters, who is prosecuting the Jena Six, Sharpton said, “You can’t sit in the courthouse and have one rule for white

kids and one for black kids.”
Walters did not return a call for comment left on an answering machine at his residential number. No one answered Sunday at his office.

Jena, a town of 3,000, is mostly white with about 350 black residents. Residents said racial tensions have escalated because of events at Jena High School.

Last year, the morning after a black student sat under a tree on campus where white students traditionally congregated, three nooses—unmistakable lynching symbols in the old South—were hung in the tree.

Students accused of placing them were suspended from the school for a short period, and tensions increased.

Then on Dec. 4, six black students were accused of jumping Barker and beating and kicking him. A motive for the attack was never established.

“You cannot have two levels of justice,” Sharpton said Sunday. “Some boys assault people and are charged with nothing. Some boys hang nooses and finish the school year. And some boys are charged with attempted murder.”

On the April 4 edition of MSNBC’s Imus in the Morning, host Don Imus referred to the Rutgers University women’s basketball team, which is comprised of eight African-American and two white players, as “nappy-headed hos” immediately after the show’s executive producer, Bernard McGuirk, called the team “hard-core hos.” Later, former Imus sports announcer Sid Rosenberg, who was filling in for sportscaster Chris Carlin, said: “The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the [National Basketball Association’s] Toronto Raptors.”

McGuirk referred to the NCAA women’s basketball championship game between Rutgers and Tennessee as a “Spike Lee thing,” adding, “The Jigaboos vs. The Wannabees — that movie that he had.” McGuirk was presumably referring to Lee’s 1988 film, School Daze (Sony Pictures), though co-host Charles McCord misidentified it as “Do the Right Thing” (Criterion, June 1989).

In a June 2, 1991, review of Lee’s Jungle Fever (Universal Pictures), The New York Times described the rivalry depicted in School Daze:

“School Daze,” his 1988 satire on an all-black college similar to his own alma mater, Morehouse, turned the friction centered on color into a pointed burlesque. The college’s women divided into two camps, the dark “Jigaboos” and the fair “Wannabees,” who taunted each other in one scene with the epithets “pickaninny,” “Barbie doll,” “tar baby” and “high-yellow heifer.”

Rosenberg’s comparison of the Rutgers women’s basketball team to the Raptors recalled comments he made in June 2001 about Venus and Serena Williams, two African-American female professional tennis players. According to a November 20, 2001, Newsday article, Rosenberg said on the air: “One time, a friend, he says to me, ‘Listen, one of these days you’re gonna see Venus and Serena Williams in Playboy.’ I said, ‘You’ve got a better shot at National Geographic.’ ” Rosenberg also referred to Venus Williams as an “animal.” Media Matters for America noted those comments when Rosenberg alluded to them on the March 28 edition of Imus.

Also, on the March 30 edition of Public Broadcasting Service’s The Charlie Rose Show, regarding the NCAA “March Madness” basketball tournament, host Charlie Rose asked CBS sportscaster Billy Packer: “Do you need a runner this Final Four? Because I could jump on a plane and I could be there.” Packer replied: “You always fag out on that one for me. … [Y]ou always say, ‘Oh yeah, I’m going to be the runner,’ then you never show up.”

In 2000, as noted by an article on ESPN.com, Packer made comments that were viewed as disparaging to women, when he said, “Since when do we let women control who gets into a men’s basketball game? Why don’t you go find a women’s game to let people into?” Also, as noted in a March 4, 1996, article in The Washington Post, Packer “describ[ed] Georgetown guard Allen Iverson as a ‘tough monkey’ during the Hoyas’ nationally televised game against Villanova” during that year’s NCAA tournament. Packer later apologized for both comments.

From the April 4 edition of MSNBC’s Imus in the Morning:

IMUS: So, I watched the basketball game last night between — a little bit of Rutgers and Tennessee, the women’s final.

ROSENBERG: Yeah, Tennessee won last night — seventh championship for [Tennessee coach] Pat Summitt, I-Man. They beat Rutgers by 13 points.

IMUS: That’s some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and –

McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos.

IMUS: That’s some nappy-headed hos there. I’m gonna tell you that now, man, that’s some — woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like — kinda like — I don’t know.

McGUIRK: A Spike Lee thing.

IMUS: Yeah.

McGUIRK: The Jigaboos vs. the Wannabes — that movie that he had.

IMUS: Yeah, it was a tough –

McCORD: Do The Right Thing.

McGUIRK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

IMUS: I don’t know if I’d have wanted to beat Rutgers or not, but they did, right?

ROSENBERG: It was a tough watch. The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the Toronto Raptors.

IMUS: Well, I guess, yeah.

RUFFINO: Only tougher.

McGUIRK: The [Memphis] Grizzlies would be more appropriate.

From the March 30 edition of PBS’ Charlie Rose:

ROSE: Do you need a runner this Final Four? Because I could jump on a plane, and I could be there.

PACKER: You always fag out on that one for me. You know, you never — you know, you always say, “Oh yeah, I’m going to be the runner,” then you never show up. But I’m sure they can find a place for you. You’ve got all the connections in the world. You can go ahead and be a runner any place you want to.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (AP) - Rutgers women’s basketball coach C. Vivian Stringer said Friday the team had accepted radio host Don Imus’ apology. She said he deserves a chance to move on but hopes the furor his racist and sexist insult caused will be a catalyst for change.

“We, the Rutgers University Scarlet Knight basketball team, accept - accept - Mr. Imus’ apology, and we are in the process of forgiving,” Stringer read from a team statement a day after the women met personally with Imus and his wife.

“We still find his statements to be unacceptable, and this is an experience that we will never forget,” she said.

The team had just played for the NCAA national championship last week and lost when Imus, on his nationally syndicated radio show, called the players “nappy-headed hos.” The statement outraged listeners and set off a national debate about taste and tolerance. It also led his firing by CBS on Thursday.

“These comments are indicative of greater ills in our culture,” Stringer said. “It is not just Mr. Imus, and we hope that this will be and serve as a catalyst for change. Let us continue to work hard together to make this world a better place.”

Imus was in the middle of a two-day radio fundraiser for children’s charities when he was dropped by CBS. On Friday, his wife took over the show and also talked about the meeting with the Rutgers players.

“They gave us the opportunity to listen to what they had to say and why they’re hurting and how awful this is,” author Deirdre Imus said.

“He feels awful,” she said. “He asked them, ‘I want to know the pain I caused, and I want to know how to fix this and change this.’”

Deirdre Imus also said that the Rutgers players have been receiving hate e-mail, and she demanded that it stop. She told listeners “if you must send e-mail, send it to my husband,” not the team.

“I have to say that these women are unbelievably courageous and beautiful women,” she said.

Stringer declined to discuss the hate mail Friday. Rutgers team spokeswoman Stacey Brann said the team had received “two or three e-mails” but had also received “over 600 wonderful e-mails.”

The team members respected Imus’ willingness to apologize, but they also wanted him to understand how they were hurt, said the Rev. DeForest Soaries, Stringer’s pastor, who joined the meeting. Imus tried to explain what he meant, “but there was really no explanation that they could understand,” Soaries said on NBC’s “Today” show.

The cantankerous Imus, once named one of the 25 Most Influential People in America by Time magazine and a member of the National Broadcasters Hall of Fame, was one of radio’s original shock jocks.

His career took flight in the 1970s and with a cocaine- and vodka-fueled outrageous humor. After sobering up, he settled into a mix of highbrow talk about politics and culture, with locker room humor sprinkled in.

Critics have said his remark about the Rutgers women was just the latest in a line of objectionable statements by the ringmaster of a show that mixed high-minded talk about politics and culture with crude, locker-room humor.

Imus apologized on the air late last week and also tried to explain himself before the Rev. Al Sharpton’s radio audience, appearing alternately contrite and combative. But many of his advertisers still bailed in disgust, particularly after the Rutgers women spoke publicly of their hurt.

On Wednesday, a week after the remark, MSNBC said it would no longer televise the show. CBS fired Imus Thursday from the radio show that he has hosted for nearly 30 years.

“He has flourished in a culture that permits a certain level of objectionable expression that hurts and demeans a wide range of people,” CBS Corp. chief executive Leslie Moonves said in a memo to his staff.

Sharpton praised Moonves’ decision Friday and said it was time to change the culture of publicly degrading other people.”I think we’ve got to really used this to really stop this across the board,” he told CBS’s “The Early Show.”

Some Imus fans, however, considered the radio host’s punishment too harsh.

Mike Francesa, whose WFAN sports show with partner Chris Russo is considered a possible successor to “Imus in the Morning,” said he was embarrassed by the company. “I’m embarrassed by their decision. It shows, really, the worst lack of taste I’ve ever seen,” he said.

Losing Imus will be a financial hit to CBS Radio, which also suffered when Howard Stern left for satellite radio. The program earns about $15 million in annual revenue for CBS, which owns Imus’ home radio station WFAN-AM and manages Westwood One, the company that syndicates the show nationally WFAN.

The show’s charity fundraiser had raised more than $1.3 million Thursday before Imus learned he had lost his job. The total had grown Friday to more than $2.3 million for Tomorrows Children’s Fund, CJ Foundation for SIDS and the Imus Ranch, Deirdre Imus said. The annual event has raised more than $40 million since 1990.

“This may be our last radiothon, so we need to raise about $100 million,” Don Imus had cracked at the start of the event.

Volunteers were getting about 200 more pledges per hour Thursday than they did last year, with most callers expressing support for Imus, said phone bank supervisor Tony Gonzalez. The event benefited Tomorrows Children’s Fund, the CJ Foundation for SIDS and the Imus Ranch.

Imus’ troubles have also affected his wife, the founder of a medical center that studies links between cancers and environmental hazards whose book “Green This!” came out this week. Her promotional tour was called off “because of the enormous pressure that Deirdre and her family are under,” said Simon & Schuster publicist Victoria Meyer.

The Deirdre Imus Environmental Center for Pediatric Oncology in Hackensack, N.J., works to identify and control exposures to environmental hazards that may cause adult and childhood cancers. Imus Ranch in New Mexico invites children who have been ill to spend time on a working cattle ranch.

Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana, Karen Matthews, Warren Levinson, Seth Sutel, Tara Burghart, Colleen Long and Hillel Italie contributed to this report.

On the Net:

wfan.com/pages/332252.php

Imus suspended by CBS Radio, MSNBC
The shock jock will be taken off the air for two weeks as calls mount for his firing.
By Matea Gold, Times Staff Writer
April 10, 2007

NEW YORK — CBS Radio and MSNBC are suspending Don Imus’ radio program for two weeks in an effort to staunch the furor after the controversial talk show host called the Rutgers University women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos.”

CBS Radio, which owns the New York sports station that produces “Imus in the Morning,” and MSNBC, which simulcasts the program, announced the suspension Monday evening after a day in which the calls for Imus’ dismissal grew louder, despite his pledge to curtail offensive remarks on his show.

The move came after high-level discussions at both networks that drew in CBS Corp. President Leslie Moonves and NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker. The suspension will take effect April 16 to allow the program to proceed with a previously scheduled radiothon this week to benefit children’s charities.

Officials at NBC News, which runs MSNBC, decided to suspend the program after “careful consideration,” according to a statement by the network.

“Don Imus has expressed profound regret and embarrassment and has made a commitment to listen to all of those who have raised legitimate expressions of outrage,” read a statement from NBC News.

“In addition, his dedication — in his words — to change the discourse on his program moving forward has confirmed for us that this action is appropriate. Our future relationship with Imus is contingent on his ability to live up to his word.”

The morning talk-show host made the remark about the predominantly African American team last week during a free-wheeling discussion about the NCAA women’s basketball championship, triggering sharp condemnation from black leaders and journalism groups.

Imus apologized two days later, but calls from African American leaders for him to be fired have mounted.

On Monday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson led a protest demanding his dismissal in front of the NBC offices in Chicago, one of several he plans to hold around the country. Rutgers University President Richard McCormick denounced Imus’ comments as “extremely hurtful” and said the college expected Imus’ employers to take the matter seriously.

The controversy has created a dicey situation for NBC and CBS Radio, which have garnered sizable audiences for Imus’ show. It airs on 70 radio stations around the country, including KCAA-AM (1050) in Southern California, and draws millions of listeners. Ratings for the MSNBC simulcast are up sharply this year, putting the cable channel in a close race with CNN’s second-place morning show.

The shock jock is known for his biting brand of humor and proudly calls himself an equal opportunity offender.

But this latest incident spotlighted the racially charged language he uses on his show, a frequent stop for NBC journalists such as Tim Russert, as well as politicians from both sides of the aisle. HBO’s Bill Maher and CBS’ Jeff Greenfield were scheduled to appear on the program today.

On Monday, Imus apologized again for the slur he used to describe the Rutgers team, saying he was embarrassed about the episode. He said he spent the weekend reaching out to black leaders, adding that he wants to express his regret in person to the basketball players and their families.

“They need to know that I’m a good person who said a bad thing,” he said.

“This program has been, for 30 or 35 years, a program that makes fun of everybody,” Imus added. “It makes fun of me and it makes fun of everybody on the planet…. That’s got to change — some of that — because some people don’t deserve to be made fun of, like these young women.”

During the 13-minute segment, Imus discussed the work he does on his cattle ranch in New Mexico, where he and his wife host children who have cancer and blood disorders; 10% of the children are black.

“I’m not a white man who doesn’t know any African Americans,” he said.

The gravelly voiced radio personality also made an extensive appearance on the Rev. Al Sharpton’s nationally syndicated radio show to make amends.

“Our agenda is to try to be funny, and sometimes we go too far,” he told the civil rights leader. “And sometimes we go way too far. In this case, we went way too far.”

Imus added that when he made the remark, he didn’t think of it as a racial term.

But Sharpton denounced the comment as “racist” and “abominable,” adding: “You should be fired for saying it.”

Sharpton was joined by Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D-Mich.), who called on MSNBC to institute policies to prevent other similar incidents.

“I mean, who says ‘hos’ publicly?” she asked. “What is that? That is probably one of the most derogatory things any woman — black, brown, yellow — could even ever experience.”

The program grew contentious at times, with Imus growing testy as he defended the work he’s done on behalf of sick children.

“I will bet you I have slept in a house with more black children who were not related to me than you have,” he said to Bryan Monroe, president of the National Assn. of Black Journalists.

At another point, as he argued with Sharpton and Kilpatrick, Imus declared: “I can’t get anyplace with you people.”

www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/celebrity/la-na-imus10apr10,1,3331171.story?track=rss&ctrack=1&cset=true