Fire hip-hop offenders too
DON IMUS has been fired. There is no joy in Mudslingingville. He lost his radio and TV jobs for calling the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed ho's."
But Imus is just part of the story. Every day our children listen to rappers tarring nappy-headed women as ho's. We will not get anywhere until we also fire those entertainers and their enablers.
To be sure, Imus 's use of the word nakedly exposed a largely white world where presidential candidates, publicity-hungry journalists, and Fortune 500 advertisers prostituted themselves before the throne of Imus' s 2 -million-listener microphone. The racist and homophobic insults have been flying for years; during the 2000 campaign, I questioned how Democratic presidential candidates Bill Bradley and Al Gore could justify going on the show.
The inner mind of Imus was nailed long ago, when he was confronted on "60 Minutes" with his own assertion that he had sidekick Bernard McGuirk on hand to do "nigger jokes." Imus responded, "Oh, OK. Well then, I used that word. . . . I don't apologize for offending people, you know? And I know it's not politically, not politically correct, and I don't care."
It is not clear if the world Imus thrived in is permanently altered. He should have been fired long ago, but until now advertisers did not care about his long series of offenses. MSNBC and CBS deny that money was a factor, but the networks only pulled the plug on Imus after Procter & Gamble,
How much more, pray tell, do you need to "monitor" a talk show host like Imus?
Of course, if we really care about n-jokes, then there is much more monitoring to be done. Though Imus is gone, he is still with us in blackface. All the artists of Billboard's current Top 10 rap albums glorify the n-word and brag about all the "ho's" they exploit. This reflects no change from the close of 2004, when all of Billboard's Top 10 rap singles used the n-word, with plenty of the h-word thrown in.
You can only partially blame "the white man" for its proliferation. Historically, it is no surprise for the top white CEOs of Madison Ave nue and Hollywood to profit off stereotypes with no conscience. But in the next tier, black and white hip-hop moguls and artists made the unconscionable decision to deliver some of the worst garbage.
Steamy "booty-shaking" music made Black Entertainment Network founder Robert Johnson a billionaire. Hip-hop moguls like Def Jam founder Russell Simmons, Jay-Z, Diddy, and Damon Dash turned hip-hop into a $10 billion industry. According to Rolling Stone, the industry's Top 30 moneymakers in 2006 include rappers and moguls Diddy, 50 Cent, Eminem, Jay-Z, Kanye West and Dr. Dre. Taken together, these six artists earned $113 million.
The current top rap album comes from Paul Wall. Among his past "lyrics" are: "I'm on the hunt for some one-night love, best believe that it's goin' down; money and ho's, cars and clothes." In second place is Young Buck, whose n-word- laced obscenities include "Watch me do my thang, I got these ho's open." It says it all when ninth-ranked Devin the Dude brags, "I lay these ho's, slay these ho's, play these ho's, never pay these ho's." From there, the lyrics only get worse.
There have been black protests against this vulgarity, but nothing of the shut- ' em-down outrage against Imus. Hip-hop apologists say just as clearly as Imus that they don't care. Russell Simmons has long defended the use of the n-word, bizarrely saying, "It means we're special." Johnson long said that the "E" in BET stood for entertainment, not education or enlightenment. Yet in 1996, BET's own vice president for programming, Lydia Cole said, "We don't watch BET. I'm concerned about the images portrayed of young girls."
When presidential candidate Joe Biden called rival Barack Obama "articulate," as if it were a surprise that a black man could be so, BET's president of entertainment, Reginald Hudlin, responded by saying, "It makes me weary, literally tired, like, 'Do I really want to spend my time right now educating this person?' "
It is time to be weary of slurs and demeaning images, no matter who they come from. Don Imus reopened a wound that will never be closed until everyone is held responsible for calling a nappy-headed woman a ho .
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com. 
