It's sometimes easy to say remarkably offensive things without thinking, which is why hecklerspray never expects to be invited back to speak at the nunnery again – and it's also why American DJ Don Imus hasn't got a job any more.
Thanks to Don Imus calling a female college basketball team a bunch of "nappy-headed hos" and getting fired for it, he's now at a loss for how to spend his days, apart from pacing about bitterly and sadly wondering about the exact date that he came to identically resemble Uncle Peter from The Smell Of Reeves And Mortimer. But Don Imus didn't get where he is by sitting around moping – no, instead Don Imus is taking action against his former employers. Imus is planning to sue CBS radio for $40 million because he says he was only employed by the network to bark out grossly racist and misogynist epithets all the time in the first place.
We'll happily admit that we haven't really been paying too much attention to all this Don Imus kerfuffle, and that's for three simple reasons: 1) We don't know who Don Imus is, 2) we've never listened to CBS radio and 3) where we're from a nappy is something a baby shits into.
So for those as uninitiated as we obviously are, here's a vague Don Imus timeline. Some women play basketball for Rutgers University and Don Imus, for whatever reason, calls them all "nappy-headed hos." Cue much apocalyptic hand-wringing hysteria from everyone, appalled that someone as scarecrowy as Don Imus could say the words "nappy" and "hos" in such short succession.
Eventually Don Imus was fired from his radio show for his remarks, and the world of hip-hop decided to ban the word "ho" altogether because of it – a move akin to hecklerspray banning the word "it" or "the" or "nobsack." But Don Imus is a fighter, albeit a fighter that looks like it was carved out of leather and soaked in acid for a week, and that's why he's planning to sue CBS radio for a ludicrous amount of money, as Reuters reports:
Ousted radio host Don Imus is expected to file a $40 million lawsuit against CBS next week, accusing it of breach of contract, the New York Times reported on its Web site on Friday. The paper cited Imus's lawyer, Martin Garbus, as alleging that CBS violated a clause in the radio host's contract that encouraged him to engage in "extraordinary," "irreverent" and "controversial" topics.
CBS has responded to this claim by announcing that it was right to fire Don Imus and that it'll beat him easily, but Imus is making an interesting point. He was obviously employed to say things that deliberately offended people, but in the wake of Mel Gibson shouting about Jews and Sugartits, Michael Richards shouting about ramming pitchforks up black people's bottoms and Isaiah Washington shouting about gay people, Don Imus was always going to be walking a tightrope when it came to his views about black people and women.
But, to be fair, Don Imus wants to use the $40 million he's after from the CBS lawsuit to prove to the world that the "nappy-headed hos" comment was a one off and that he really does like black women – he plans to spend the winnings on a giant cage made out of dinosaur bones to keep a bunch of African American women in, where they'll be provided with as many watermelons, loincloths and bongo drums as they could possibly ever wish for.
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