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Here’s the long awaited list of the Top 11 Scandals of 2007. Wait until you see where Vanessa Hudgens makes the list!
Sex, drugs, vulgarity, criminality and even diapers. Public figures have served up a smorgasbord of bad behavior this year.
11) Sen. Larry Craig
“I am not gay.” So said Sen. Larry Craig after he was caught in an airport men’s room sex sting. The Idaho Republican pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. At first, he said he intended to quit. Now he says he’ll finish his term.
10) Michael Vick
Michael Vick’s reputation was mauled by pit bulls in July. He faces prison after pleading guilty to dogfighting. The Falcons quarterback is suspended and stands to lose tens of millions in ad deals and bonus money.
9) Don Imus
8) Lisa Nowak (aka Crazy Diaper Wearin Bitch)
Lisa Nowak’s NASA career crashed in February when she was arrested in Orlando. Cops say she raced 1,000 miles to kidnap a rival for the love of a fellow astronaut. Whether that drive was diaper-assisted is in dispute.
See the rest after the jump!!
7) Sgt. John Shannon
Wounded Iraq War vet Staff Sgt. John Shannon testified in March about patient neglect and shoddy conditions at Walter Reed Medical Center. The scandal cost the hospital commander and Army secretary their jobs.
6) Scooter Libby
“Scooter” Libby was convicted in March of lying in the CIA leak case. Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff was sentenced to 30 months in prison. President Bush commuted the sentence, calling it “excessive.”
5) Mike Nifong
The rape case against Duke lacrosse players blew up in his face, and Mike Nifong went from prosecutor to prosecuted. He was disbarred, resigned as Durham County’s district attorney and served one day in jail for contempt of court.
4) Marion Jones
Three-time Olympic gold medalist Marion Jones tearfully admitted in October that she used steroids. Jones pleaded guilty to felony charges, gave up the medals she won at the 2000 Games and retired from her sport.
3) Sen. David Vitter
Sen. David Vitter had the dubious distinction of being the biggest name on a Washington escort service’s phone list. In July, the Louisiana Republican said God and his wife had forgiven him for “a very serious sin.” He remains in office.
2) Vanessa Hudgens
When nude photos of Vanessa Hudgens surfaced in September, there were rumors that Disney would dump the ‘High School Musical’ star. Hudgens apologized and now she’s said to be on board for the third film in the series. I’ll believe it when I see it.
1) Miss New Jersey
Claiming she was being blackmailed, Miss New Jersey went on the offense. Amy Polumbo appeared on TV in July to reveal photos she admitted were not “ladylike.” Miss Teen USA officials decided not to strip her of her title.
source: Top 11 Scandals of 2007 [aol news]
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That was quick. Don Imus is reportedly returning to WFAN soon, and the DJs are the ones starting the rumors.
 Imus buds Mike Francesa and Chris Russo, of “Mike and the Mad Dog,” while celebrating the sports station’s 20th anniversary last Friday, whispered that a deal to bring the talk-radio legend back to the radio station is in the works.
“When we return to our regular schedule this September, I hope the team will once again be complete,” Francesa said.
Imus was fired when he eloquently called the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy headed hos.” Since then, Imus has received numerous offers, but he is unable to accept any until he settles with CBS. Returning to the radio would avoid a legal battle over his current contract.
I guess with legal battles, it’s pick your poison. Al Sharpton probably already has one in the works.
Source: post chronicle
Rap impresario Russell Simmons has called for a ban on the words “bitch,” “ho” and “nigger” in over-the-air rap.
  Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons said Monday that the recording and broadcast industries should consistently ban three racial and sexist epithets from all so-called clean versions of rap songs and the airwaves. Currently such epithets are banned from most clean versions, but record companies sometimes “arbitrarily” decide which offensive words to exclude and there’s no uniform standard for deleting such words, Simmons said.
The recommendations drew mixed reaction and come two weeks after some began carping anew about rap lyrics after radio personality Don Imus was fired by CBS Radio and NBC for referring to the players on the Rutgers university women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos.”
Expressing concern about the “growing public outrage” over the use of such words in rap lyrics, Simmons said the words “bitch,” “ho” and “nigger” should be considered “extreme curse words.” “We recommend (they’re) always out,” Simmons, the pioneering entrepreneur who made millions of dollars as he helped shape hip-hop culture, said in an interview Monday. “This is a first step. It’s a clear message and a consistency that we want the industry to accept for more corporate social responsibility.”
I’m not sure how rap could survive without the use of three quarters of its vocabulary.
Otherwise, however, I’m torn on Simmons’ proposal. I’m no fan of speech bans and all those words have their place in legitimate social commentary and the entertainment industry. And, frankly, if you’re letting your kids listen to hip-hop, I’m not sure their hearing the word “ho” is among your chief problems.
Still, until quite recently, that kind of language was simply not heard on the public airwaves until well after 10 pm. I’m hard pressed to argue that the culture has been improved by the change.
One fallout of the Don Imus firing is that his charity ranch for sick kids may go under, reports AP’s Deborah Baker.
Don Imus’s banishment from the public airwaves also deprives him of a critical platform to raise money for the sprawling Imus Ranch, where children with cancer and other illnesses get a taste of the cowboy life. Before he was fired last week for calling the Rutgers University women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos,” Imus pointed to the northern New Mexico ranch to make his case that he is “a good person who said a bad thing.”
With Imus out of a job, some wonder whether the pipeline to charity money will eventually dry up. Just as corporate sponsors backed away from his radio show, “I think you’ll see a similar effect on the charity, where the corporate donors will find a less hot-button charity to support,” said Trent Stamp, president of Charity Navigator, a New Jersey-based charity watchdog group.
 Imus said he and his wife Deirdre are round-the-clock surrogate parents to the youngsters who spend a week at the property, nearly half of whom are from minority groups and 10 percent are black. “There’s not an African-American parent on the planet who has sent their child to the Imus Ranch who didn’t trust me and trust my wife,” he said on his show. “And when these kids die, we don’t just go to the white kid’s funeral.”
Kansas horseman Rob Phillips says he still plans to give the ranch proceeds from a 500-mile charity race he’s staging this fall. But Phillips worries that without Imus’s radio forum, the ranch and other charities will suffer. “He had a capability to get on the air and raise a tremendous amount of money for these causes,” Phillips said. “I don’t see anybody else doing that.”
Stamp said donations may increase in the short term because of the heightened attention — “the celebrity factor ratcheted up to a new level.” The Imus show’s annual two-day fundraising radiothon, benefiting the ranch and two charities that refer children to it, had raised more than $2.3 million as of Friday, according to Deirdre Imus, who hosted Friday’s show. But in the long term, Stamp predicted the firing would cause “irreparable harm.”
Now, as Radley Balko noted recently, this may not have been the most efficient charity anyway. Baker notes that,
It’s an expensive operation. The ranch hosted 90 children from March 2005 through February 2006 and spent $2.5 million — or about $28,000 a child — according to its most recent federal tax filings. That’s at least 10 times what the Make-A-Wish or similar camps spend on kids, largely because the Imus operation is a year-round, working cattle ranch, Stamp said.
It’s also rather comical to have kids working on a cattle ranch and then serve them a vegan diet. After all, production of meat, dairy products, and leather are why people raise cattle. A ranch is a large operation if the only goal is to play with your pet cows.
Still, people willingly gave their money to the operation and by all accounts the kids enjoyed a rather unique experience. While money is fungible there’s no guarantee that all the money Imus would have raised will go to another charity, let alone that this particular group of kids will benefit.
via OTB
The COMPLETE list of…
The 100 Unsexiest Men of 2007:
Please take the time to note #80 on the list, Ann Coulter, the only female. haha!
[1] DONALD TRUMP
[2] THE FAT GUY FROM BORAT
[3] FLAVOR FLAV
[4] KARL ROVE
[5] HOWARD K. STERN
[6] DON IMUS
[7] SANJAYA MALAKAR
[8] PEREZ HILTON
[9] BOB DYLAN
[10] CARL FROM AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE
[11] MICHAEL RICHARDS
[12] KARL LAGERFELD
[13] PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN
[14] THE US SENATORS FROM MASSACHUSETTS
[15] JAMES GANDOLFINI
[16] BILL O’REILLY
[17] CHUCK KLOSTERMAN
[18] MEL GIBSON
[19] LARRY THE CABLE GUY
[20] JARED FOGLE – SUBWAY SPOKESPERSON
[21] GERARD WAY – MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE
[22] BRUCE VILANCH
[23] PETE DOHERTY
[24] PHIL SPECTOR
[25] O.J. SIMPSON
[26] ROBERT NOVAK
[27] MR. BLACKWELL
[28] DUSTIN “SCREECH” DIAMOND
[29] MARK ANTHONY
[30] HOWIE MANDEL
[31] BILL BELICHICK
[32] JAMES LIPTON
[33] SPENCER PRATT
[34] SCOOTER LIBBY
[35] KEVIN FEDERLINE
[36] BRIAN POSEHN
[37] TONY KORNHEISER
[38] MICHAEL DEVLIN
[39] RYAN SCHREIBER
[40] CURT SCHILLING
[41] PETER “ZEBBLER” BERDOVSKY
[42] JEFF FOXWORTHY
[43] PACMAN JONES
[44] ALBERTO GONZALES
[45] THE DUKE LACROSSE TEAM
[46] MARK FOLEY
[47] DR. NEIL CLARK WARREN
[48] ALAN COLMES
[49] RICHIE “LA BAMBA” ROSENBERG
[50] MITT ROMNEY
[51] ANTHONY CUMIA
[52] JAY-Z
[53] BUD SELIG
[54] DR. PHIL
[55] RONALDINHO
[56] KIM JONG-IL
[57] RANDY JOHNSON
[58] JACK ABRAMOFF
[59] GENE SIMMONS
[60] MALCOLM GLADWELL
[61] HARRY KNOWLES
[62] LARRY BIRD
[63] CHAD KROEGER
[64] PETER JACKSON
[65] COLIN MELOY
[66] RUSH LIMBAUGH
[67] MARIO BATALI
[68] WILLIAM OEFELEIN
[69] THE YING YANG TWINS
[70] ARTIE LANG
[71] DR. ROBERT REY – DR. 90210
[72] GEORGE STEINBRENNER
[73] POPE BENEDICT XVI
[74] PEYTON MANNING
[75] DAVID LEE ROTH
[76] MALE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE BOSTON PHOENIX
[77] DICK CHENEY
[78] BILL GATES
[79] JOE FRANCIS
[80] ANN COULTER – LOL!!!
[81] NICK DENTON
[82] THE GEICO CAVEMEN
[83] BAN-KI MOON
[84] DEVENDRA BANHART
[85] JOHN BASEDOW
[86] JOHN POPPER
[87] JOE SIMPSON
[88] ERIC ESTRADA
[89] NEWT GINGRICH
[90] JOHN KRUK
[91] BOB SAGET
[92] OSAMA BIN LADEN
[93] JIMMY KIMMEL
[94] BILL RICHARDSON
[95] PATRICK STUMP
[96] JON HEDER
[97] LARRY KING
[98] REVEREND TED HAGGARD
[99] AARON CARTER
[100] TOM CRUISE
source
CBS justifiably fired Don Imus from his radio show. His insulting remarks landed him on the cover of Time Magazine, already!
source: ONTD
Following MSNBC’s lead, CBS Radio has fired Don Imus.
 CBS fired Don Imus from his radio show Thursday, the finale to a stunning fall for one of the nation’s most prominent broadcasters.
Imus initially was suspended for two weeks for calling the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos” on the air last week, but outrage continued to grow and advertisers bolted from his programs.
“There has been much discussion of the effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society,” CBS President and Chief Executive Officer Leslie Moonves said in announcing the decision. “That consideration has weighed most heavily on our minds as we made our decision.”
Quite bizarre. Imus has a longstanding reputation as a “shock jock” but that hasn’t stopped him from being invited to do things like perform at the National Association of Broadcasters’ dinner with the President of the United States or Senators, media celebrities, and other luminaries from appearing on his show over the years. It’s stunning hypocrisy to pretend this is somehow unexpected behavior.
Obviously, they’re a business and they have the right to do this. Still, it seems an absurd overreaction to me.
I don’t know the language of Imus’ contract but I presume CBS will owe him for the remainder of his contract. Given the nature of the program, I can’t imagine he gave them a “morals clause” as an easy out.
In any case, presuming he’s interested at this stage of his career in starting over, I’m sure he’ll join Howard Stern on satellite radio in the not-too-distant future.
OTB
Constance Rice,* a civil rights attorney in Los Angeles, has the smartest take I’ve yet seen on the Don Imus “nappy headed hos” controversy.
More to the point, Imus should only be fired when the black artists who make millions of dollars rapping about black bitches and hos lose their recording contracts. Black leaders should denounce Imus and boycott him and call for his head only after they do the same for the misogynist artists with whom they have shared stages, magazine covers and awards shows.
The truth is, Imus’ remarks mimic those of the original gurus of black female denigration: black men with no class. He is only repeating what he’s heard and being honest about the way many men — of all races — judge women.
Just as black comedians who make mean jokes about Asians and Latinos don’t see themselves as racists, I’m sure that Imus doesn’t see himself as a racist either. He reveres blues artists such as B.B. King and Ray Charles. He praises American icons such as Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King Jr. He clearly likes former Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford and has interviewed Sharpton a few times. He treated Lani Guinier with uncharacteristic respect during her guest appearance to discuss her latest book.
His sympathy for the Katrina victims came through. And after the James Byrd dragging-lynching in Texas in 1998, Imus did not joke. In serious tones that couldn’t hide his sorrow or disgust, he quietly remarked that it was unwise for black people to ever trust whites.
After listening to him for 10 years, I’ve concluded that Imus is not a malevolent racist. He is a good-natured racist. And the streak of decency running down his self-centered, mean persona is sometimes pretty wide.
That captures Imus perfectly, I think.
I used to listen to the show a quite a bit during my morning commute and have seen the MSNBC simulcast a handful of times. My general take is that he’s a weird dude. He’s simultaneously a self-centered jerk who berates his staff and will ramble on for weeks on end about some perceived slight and a guy who devotes considerable time, energy, and money in trying to ease the suffering of kids with cancer and other debilitating diseases. He’s both a Neanderthal and a patron of the arts. He’s a naive rube and an incurable cynic. Most bright, talented folks are a bundle of contradictions, I guess, but Imus is much more so than most.
Some of the show’s humor, especially that by executive producer Bernard McGuirk, is undeniably racial but probably no more “racist” than that of Lenny Bruce or Red Foxx or Richard Pryor or Chris Rock or Dave Chapelle or Carlos Mencia. No doubt, we’ve learned time and again, it’s different when a member of an ethnic group makes a joke about his own kind than when an outsider does. Yet Rock, Chapelle, Mencia, and others make plenty of jokes about other races without getting nearly the condemnation of Imus.
And, unlike Imus, their material is all pre-scripted. With the exception of some recorded bits, Imus does four hours of off-the-cuff talk every morning.
Duncan Black, taking exception to similar comparisons made by Howard Kurtz on CNN, is dubious of the logic that, because “other people have used the word ho in other contexts” Imus shouldn’t be condemned for it. But Kevin Drum is right:
A slur aimed at specific people is obviously different than a generic slur in a rap song, but it’s not that different. If one is offensive, so is the other, and it’s hard to argue that the cesspool of misogyny in contemporary rap has no effect on the wider culture. It’s not that this excuses what Imus did. It’s just the opposite. If we’re justifiably outraged by what Imus said, shouldn’t we be just as outraged with anybody else who says the same thing, regardless of their skin color?
You’d think.
Imus has been, rightly so, condemned for using racial and gender slurs to describe some decent women whose only sin, apparently, was being less physically appealing to the Imus staff than their counterparts on the Lady Vols. But I don’t see why that’s much worse than rappers and comedians–who are much more influential with our young people than the geezerly Imus–constantly using that language to apply to women generally.
At the same time, though, effective humor is often edgy. Bruce, Pryor, Rock, and others used humor to positively impact the discussion of the incredibly sensitive issue of race. We don’t want to outlaw words that make people angry, nor put topics that make them uncomfortable off the table.
It’s perfectly reasonable for the corporation that pays Imus’ check to want to protect its image and avoid alienating its advertisers and audience. At the same time, it’s been clear for a quarter century or more that this is who Imus is. Firing him for something Rice correctly notes “doesn’t even come close to one of his meaner riffs” would be much more egregious than his remarks.
UPDATE: Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr., perhaps better known by his nom-de-rap “Snoop Dogg,” has weighed in on the controversy.
Snoop frequently refers to women as “b**ches” and “hos” in his music, but he insists Imus’ use of the term was unacceptable and the 66-year-old DJ should be taken off the air.
The Doggystyle star says, “It’s a completely different scenario.”
“(Rappers) are not talking about no collegiate basketball girls who have made it to the next level in education and sports. We’re talking about hos that’s in the ‘hood that ain’t doing s**t, that’s trying to get a n**ga for his money. These are two separate things.”
“First of all, we ain’t no old-ass white men that sit up on MSNBC going hard on black girls. We are rappers that have these songs coming from our minds and our souls that are relevant to what we feel. I will not let them muthaf**kas say we are in the same league as him.
Kick him off the air forever.”
Via Steven Taylor, who observes, “To be honest, Snoop’s right–he and Imus aren’t in the same league. Snoop and his ilk are worse in terms of propagating racist and sexist stereotypes and attitudes in our culture.” As if to prove this, the AP provides “Snoop Dogg Hit With Gun and Drug Charges.”
You can’t make this stuff up.
_________
*As an aside, Drum reports that Constance Rice is a second cousin to Condoleeza Rice, who she admires personally even though she doesn’t share her politics. I suspect they’d agree on this particular issue, though.
OTB
Radio host Don Imus, suspended for two weeks for calling the Rutgers female basketball players “nappy-headed hos,” called the punishment appropriate Tuesday but stressed, “I am not a racist.”
 “What I did was make a stupid, idiotic mistake in a comedy context,” Imus said on his show Tuesday morning, the final week before his suspension starts.
Asked by NBC “Today” host Matt Lauer if he could clean up his act as he promised on Monday, he said, “Well, perhaps I can’t.” But he added, “I have a history of keeping my word.”
 The radio host tried to shift some of the focus from himself, saying, “that phrase originated in the black community. … I may be a white man, but I know that these young women and young black women all through that society are demeaned and degraded by their own black men and that they are called that name.”
Imus said his staff had been trying to set up a meeting with the Rutgers players to apologize, but he said he didn’t expect forgiveness. Of the two-week suspension by MSNBC and CBS Radio, he said: “I think it’s appropriate, and I am going to try to serve it with some dignity.”
Members of the Rutgers team and coach C. Vivian Stringer planned to speak publicly about the comments later Tuesday.
The Rev. Al Sharpton also appeared on “Today” and called the suspension “not nearly enough. I think it is too little, too late.” He said presidential candidates and other politicians should refrain from going on Imus’ show in the future.
Read more…
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