The only person happier than Larry Birkhead about the announcement that he is the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby is Don Imus. Perhaps the paternity news will briefly diminish the worldwide importance of his calling the Rutgers women’s basketball team “n*ppy-headed h*s.” (By the way, what’s the word for a woman who gives birth to a child of uncertain paternity?)
Which reminds me, Americans need a rule book to tell us which people can say what words, when. The rule book will be longer than the Patriot Act and will require weekly updates as new words and circumstances are added. Perhaps a Nasdaq-style ticker would be more efficient.
“Ho” is used with abandon by black hip hop artists, but is a capital offense when used by Imus, who is not a black hip hop artist.
Perhaps sensing that such rules lack precision, the scowling Miss Grundys of the world think they have hit on the perfect omnibus rule. They instruct us to remember “the simple wisdom of Grandma” and “be nice.”* There’s a word for the grim Miss Grundys, but apparently I’m not allowed to use it. Sarah Silverman is. This will be in the rule book.
* Peggy Noonan, ‘That’s Not Nice’, The Wall Street Journal, March 10, 2007.
The requirement to always “be nice” would end the careers of Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle. In fact, it would be the end of all humor. Even Bob Hope cruelly implied that Democrats didn’t support the troops when he joked to the troops in Vietnam: “The country is behind you 50 percent.”
At least we’ll still be able to watch the “Charlie Rose” show! Actually, for all we know, Rose is calling women “nappy-headed hos” on a daily basis, but no one has ever seen his show.
In addition to ending all humor, we’ll lose all political debate. For Americans over 4 years old, people in the public sphere are engaged in serious arguments — over abortion, illegal immigration, how much money the government takes from you, and the battle against Islamic fascists. The “be nice” admonition is the sort of thing stupid girls say when they have nothing substantive to say.
I, for one, promise to implement the “be nice” policy just as soon as the other side does.
Say, does anyone remember if Winston Churchill was “nice” in his public pronouncements about his fellow countrymen? I don’t think he was! This is what Winston Churchill said about the Labor Party’s Ramsay MacDonald:
“I remember when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum’s Circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the program which I most desired to see was the one described as ‘The Boneless Wonder.’ My parents judged that the spectacle would be too demoralizing and revolting for my youthful eye, and I have waited 50 years to see The Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench.”
And guess which public figure was regularly accused of making “outrageous” remarks, trading in “insults, trashings and character assassinations”? It was said of that same public figure: “Who can examine this record of insults and say that here is a man of class?”
That’s right: Ronald Reagan, the man cited as the paragon of niceness by our betters. (Quotes are from Washington Post columnists Richard Cohen and Colman McCarthy.)
Was Reagan “nice” to the Soviets? They certainly didn’t think so. The Soviets incessantly denounced Reagan as “rude,” and our dear friends at the BBC upbraided Reagan for his “rude attacks” on Fidel Castro, Nicaragua and the Soviet Union. Post columnist McCarthy complained that Reagan had “put down an entire nation — the Soviet Union — by calling it ‘the focus of evil in the nuclear world.'”
Oh dear! Reagan wasn’t “nice.” No wonder he never accomplished anything.
One more item for the delusional Miss Grundys obtusely citing Reagan as their model of “niceness”: As governor of California, Reagan gave student protesters at Berkeley the finger. Remember that the next time you ask yourself: “What would Reagan do?”
People who are afraid of ideas whitewash Reagan like they whitewash Jesus. Sorry to break it to you, but the Reagan era did not consist of eight years of the president passing out candy to children and joking about his naps.
The real reason that Imus’s insult was boorish and wrong is that the women on the Rutgers basketball team aren’t engaged in public discourse. They’re not public figures, they don’t have a forum, they aren’t trying to influence public policy.
They play basketball — quite well, apparently — and did nothing to bring on an attack on their looks or character. It’s not the words Imus used: It would be just as bad if he had simply said the Rutgers women were ugly and loose.
People claim to object to the words alone, but that’s like girls who say, “It’s not that you cheated on me; it’s that you lied about it.” No — it’s that you cheated.
If Imus had called me a “towheaded ho” or Al Sharpton a “nappy-headed ho,” it would’ve been unremarkable, though rather boring. (And if he’d called Anna Nicole Smith a “flaxen-headed ho,” it would’ve been “accurate.”) But he attacked the looks and morals of college athletes, who’d done nothing to inject themselves into public debate, unless it’s about how they play basketball.
Imus should apologize to the Rutgers women — and those women alone — and stop kissing Al Sharpton’s ring. He’s already been rude. He doesn’t have to add “cowardly.”
COPYRIGHT 2007 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
4520 Main Street, Kansas City, MO 64111
