While perusing the Memphis Commercial Appeal feed, I encountered a sign of the pressure being turned up in the wake of the public moral outrage (and perhaps overreaction) to Imus’ now-infamous comments. Wendi Thomas writes in her column:
Don Van de Vuurst of Germantown is perplexed.
Radio big mouth Don Imus lost his job for denigrating a women’s basketball team, but the popular and profane Three 6 Mafia will “perpetuate the denigration of women, particularly black women” at Memphis in May’s Beale Street Music Festival next weekend?[.]
In hundreds of letters, e-mails and phone calls to MIM, good people have launched a full-court press against the group, which has invited Three 6, the creators of “Neighborhood Hoe,” “Dis B*tch, Dat Hoe,” and “Project Hoe” to its festival stages five times.
I know that I’m not the only one who has been disturbed by the hypocrisy between tolerance of certain terminology in rap, but not when used by a late-middle-aged white male radio-show host. However, I also know that I’m not the only one who hopes that the pendulum isn’t swinging too far into nuttery in reaction to the apparent discrepancy.