green

Al Sharpton is a racist. Imus is only a guy who made a very foolish mistake.

I do believe that we have to look at context and provenance when we examine things which people say. I have heard comedians call each other's mother a ho. On South Park, a show which never fails to push the envelope, Cartman's mother is routinely called a crack whore, the Black kid is called Token, and all groups get dissed. When an offensive word is said out of hatred and not out of ignorance or in order to make - rightly or wrongly - a comedic point we know it and it is for these individuals that we should save our righteous anger. Those who speak out of ignorance or go too far when trying to create comedy should also be educated by the public of course but we should not lose sight of the fact that these people are not true hate-mongerers. They are simply idiots.

You misread my earlier comments. I did say that Imus blew it when he made it when he made that comment. I also say that he is not a racist and that that wisecrack, though offensive, came from a different place. He was trying, and failing badly, to be hip and humorous. As to individuals whom you mention above, the young white males who purchase rap music, those dudes are Imus's target audience. An examination of his idiotic remark displays that he was talking to dudes: he was commenting on the results of a b-ball game and he used the term ho. As to how well I know Don Imus, well, I used to listen to Howard Stern's show for a couple of years and I read one of his books. Through studying Stern I gathered that Imus, his only rival, dealt in the same kind of tasteless yet sometimes wildly funny schtick. You see, I do have a frat boy's sense of humour and happen to detest soft rock, middle of the road music.

Being offensive is Imus's schtick. He is a shock jock and for many years he and Howard Stern were carrying on a serious rivalry for both market share and the title of 'king of the shock jocks.' A shock jock is expected to be outrageous, gross, controversial, and offensive. His target audience is males from the age of 15 to 40, males with a frat boy sense of humour, a target group which is notoriously difficult to attract, by the way. Don Imus certainly did blow it with the 'nappy head ho' wise crack but that is because he is a white guy who happened to diss a team of serious female athletes. Had he been a Black artist he might have been cut some slack. Who knows? Of course Imus is not a racist. He is just a shock jock who pushed the rule-breaking, politically incorrect humour envelope way too far. (Howard Stern may be better protected; his long-term side-kick, Robin Quivers, is a woman of colour and he himself is Jewish.) I would also suggest that the problem which Imus has run up against was in part created by the young Black urban music culture itself. We have, afterall, been listening to black men referring to their women as hos for a couple of decades now. It will become more difficult to remember to prize individuals who seem to hold themselves and those who belong to them in contempt. Perhaps this stupid white man fell into this trap.

Laurend, is there anyway that you can do both? I found that my recovery time from the surgery was very quick and I am 57. I spent 3 days in bed dozing, reading and enjoying the narcotics. By the 4th day I was bathed, dressed and up and about. Carlene, I have been helping my niece with writing some of her B.ed papers. She is a single mum and her child is severely dyslexic. And she suffers from the family curse: she is another depressive. I have been enjoying helping her with her work.

Caramel Cone Explosion has a very, very powerful effect on Green. :hungry: :hungry: :hungry: :hungry: :hungry: :hungry: Tragic but true.

Hah! DQ doesn't do a thing for me but Haagen-D....oh, but that is very, very bad.:hungry: And it is everywhere, everywhere!

I was going to say much the same as Doddie. Cancer in older folks does spread less rapidly than in young people. This is because the overall rate of cell division slows as we age and this affects bad, the cancerous cells, along with the good. And there does seem to be many more survivors of breast cancer these days than there used to be. One of my closest friend's sister was diagnosed with level/stage 4 breast cancer 3 years ago. Level 4 is pretty much a death sentence but the specialists seemed to have fixed her up and now she is back at work. This woman was in her very early 50s when she was diagnosed and she works on the line for one of the car companies. It is understandable that both you and your mum will be scared by this diagnosis of breast cancer. My advice would be that you accompany her to all of her medical appointments. Because she will be nervous she will miss a lot of information and she will neglect to ask questions. This is when two heads are better than one. You can act as both a second set of brains and an emotional support for her. And because you will have a proper understanding of the situation you will feel more in control of your own fears and you can assist her in mastering her fears. from green.

Boy, if I wasn't a happily married Canadian I would go down there and offer the dude some Viagra myself! :heh: :heh: :heh: He could pay me for time share in my bed! Yipes, eh.

Hooray! You're back! You missed out on a lousy dark few months up here.

By day four I wasn't taking any pain meds during the day, only chewing on cherry flavoured Gas-X. I found the operation very easy to recover from and I am 57 and I have a low pain threshhold.

How about a headless dressed body?????

I had to see my gastric doc today even though I've been avoiding her since I had my first colonoscopy 2 years ago, a colonoscopy that was never satisfactorily completed. This was the colonoscopy from hell. It appears that I have an unusually long and twisty colon and the team that was hanging out inside my butt was not at all generous with the kind of meds that are supposed to keep the whole experience light and fun. Anyhow, they never did manage to see the end of my colon even though they made a number of runs at it and kept me in the colon room for a really long time. (I know that they kept me there for an abnormally long time because the recovery nurse told me so.) The upshot of the failed colonoscopy was that she wanted me to have a barium enema. Her office made the appointment. I cancelled. I was traumatised, you see. So since my last visit my kid brother has died of bowel cancer and that increases my own odds exponentially and I have an enlarged liver to boot. I had to see her today and I had to tell her about the lapband. Turns out that I am her first ever lapband patient. She knew nothing much about it. And because I am not morbidly obese, she wanted to know why I didn't just diet and exercise. Why did I spend 16Gs on surgery? She was starting to treat me like a nut. I was starting to feel like a nut and defensive as well. Then she feels my liver and boy does it feel fat! It seems that fat people often have fat livers. Mine is a monster! It is almost a third over sized. I am horrified by the news about my liver. As for my bowel, I feel kinda casual. This doc is interested in 'em both but more interested in the bowel. Going to a specialist is always stressful but I guess I found that I was extra stressed by having to both explain and defend my choice of weight loss surgery over simple diet and exercise. To tell you the truth, this left a bit of a foul taste in my mouth. I did let her push my port though. :rolleyes

My surgery and recovery was really fast with very little pain except for gas cramps. I wish I had been told that I had to walk in order to get rid of the gas. Instead I lay around in bed for a couple of days, reading, dozing, and eating cherry flavoured Gas-X. Lots of cherry flavoured Gas-X. :phanvan And, oh yah, if you take other meds, buy yourself a pill crusher.:confused:

Love the new name and think that it is most appropriate!!! Keep us in the loop, eh.

This is F!!!ing nutz! This guy is not thinking with his big head.

LOL Ignorance can be fixed, stupid is forever.:faint:

Thanx, grrls. Where are you getting banded? I got mine at TLBC Sept 7, 2006.

My port is between my breasts and about an inch and a half below my bra strap. All fills and defills are included in the cost of my band and the fill nurse has always hit the port first time. I also found, much to my surprise, that the fills hurt less than giving blood sometimes does.

Thanx a lot everyone. I do have problems with depression - it's something that runs in my family - and I am affected by lack of sun. I do have a SAD light but even so.... And watching my cat die is very tough. He is only 9 and he has had limited exposure to the food on the tainted food list, as has the other cat and she is far too frisky, and so I don't know whether his failing kidneys are a result of the food or not. He is skin and bones and depressed most of the time and we really are delaying pulling the plug for reasons of our own grief, I guess. He is an animal with which I have always had a close bond. This makes this very painful for me. To make things worse my brother and my mother died around this time two years ago, my brother in February and my mother in April.

That's a really pretty bathing suit.

Laurend is right of course if we place the hostage situation inside America for the vast majority of people who live there are Christian. If, however, you wish to consider the odds of American Christians being taken hostage in certain Middle Eastern countries by Islamic fundamentalists as against the odds of Muslims taken hostage in America by Christian fundamentalists the answer would be different. But what may, and undoubtedly rightfully in this scenario, be considered as a bias against fundamentalist Christians might spring from other concerns: that they are the ones who are agitating for certain changes in civil rights; that there has been the occasional abortion clinic bombing as well as shooting of doctors who perform abortions; that they are viewed as leading a backlash against the tradition of teaching scientific and intellectual inquiry in schools.

Omigawd, grrl, you must have dug deep in the archives in order to find my grumblings! Yep! I am still alive but winter has made me cranky and depressed, my house plants look thin and ratty, one of my cats is dying from failing kidneys, and I am still going to physio twice a week for my torn rotator cuffs.:cry Yah, the other shoulder also blew out. And my dh's father has been in very poor health. In fact there was a point when we thought that he was dying. He is now getting better and that is a good thing but we will have to have our cat put to sleep sometime very, very soon.:think This isn't going to be easy. So I haven't been feeling all that fabulous and when I suggested to my shrink that he give me more antidepressants he flatly turned me down. :phanvan But I have been trying to follow all the events in Canuck Corners. I know that Yoda's got homeowner grief:cry and that Mr. Yoda is going to become one of us. And I know that Cloe has got pissitis bad and that it won't leave.:cry And that we have more Canucks on board.:clap2: :clap2: :clap2: Bienvenue a tous. And that you have got a new mattress and must be having lots of fun...sleeping.:heh:

That shows a lot of class!

Oh, that's okay. Green not only lives with a coupla cats, she's been known to sharpen her own nails on occasion. :heh: