Darryl E Owens
An excellent piece of commentary from Darryl E Owens, Orlando Sentinel.
What the heck was Jamie Foxx thinking?
Perhaps the Oscar-winning actor still was deep in character — channeling Nathaniel Ayers, the music prodigy-turned-homeless schizophrenic who is the subject of Foxx’s upcoming film, The Soloist.
That must have been the case given his coarse bashing of teen singer/actress Miley Cyrus was plain off-the-charts deranged.
During his weekend Sirius satellite-radio show, The Foxxhole, Foxx shoved the 16-year-old Hannah Montana star under the school bus after a caller reminded him that she’d vowed to “ruin” Radiohead because the rock band blew her off at the Grammys.
“Who is Miley Cyrus?” Foxx asked. “The one with all the gums? She’s got to get a gum transplant!”
Ouch. Still, Foxx’s inner “Dice” Clay had only begun to stir:
Generously offering some career tips, Foxx advised the Disney Channel teen idol to “… make a sex tape and grow up. Get like Britney Spears and do some heroin. Do like Lindsay Lohan … and get some crack in your pipe … That’s what I want.”
Know what I want? To usher Foxx to the public woodshed.
I mean, I liked Ray as much as the next guy, but his trenchant tirade against someone not old enough to vote was unconscionable.
Scratch that. I forgot — the sly Foxx said he was sorry.
“I so apologize … and this is sincere,” he said on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. “I am a comedian, and you guys know that whatever I say, I don’t mean any of it.”
That’s probably true — of the apology.
A nice slice of America’s nobility lies in a bedrock belief in second chances. But when celebrities who catch flak predictably offer up sham mea culpas to escape the doghouse for any foul thing they say, perhaps we ought to amend our no-strings forgive-and-forget philosophy.
“I have a radio show … We’re really the black Howard Stern,” Foxx told Leno. “We go at everybody. There was a situation with Miley Cyrus, and I just want to say, I apologize for what I said. I didn’t mean it maliciously …”
Oh, I am sure the cast member who described Cyrus as a “white [rhymes with itch]” meant it as a sweet nothing.
“Miley, I apologize, so I’ll call you,” Foxx said on the Leno show. “I got a daughter too, so I completely understand.”
What I can’t understand is the deafening silence in some quarters during this rancid episode.
Where was Jesse Jackson? Did you hear a word from the Rev. Al Sharpton? Can I get a witness to some outrage from the familiar black voices that hit the high notes over anything resembling a racist slight?
Had some white shock jock called a group of black girls, say, “nappy-headed hos,” the arbiters of racial decorum at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People would have dragged out torches and pitchforks. Wait — the NAACP did just that two years ago when shock jock Don Imus used that hair-raising phrase in referring to the black players on the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.
“The announcement by CBS and MSNBC that they will no longer carry Don Imus’ show is a welcome first step in removing this scourge from the airwaves,” NAACP National Board of Directors Chairman Julian Bond said in a 2007 press release.
Still, on this latest broadcasting scourge, the NAACP predictably has been lax in dressing down Foxx, who recently added an NAACP Image Award to his trophy collection. Where are the calls for Foxx’s pelt? Where are the letters to Sirius management? “The Imus controversy has had the unexpected but refreshing effect of reigniting an American conversation about race and the coarsening of our society,” Bond said. “We want to extend the conversation to include the prevalence of bigotry, misogyny and homophobia, which cheapens our society, denigrates our population and marginalizes our people. Whether it comes from so-called ‘shock jocks,’ rappers or the non-famous, it has to end, and the NAACP stands ready to assist in the dialogue and the solutions.”
Your move, NAACP.
Credible leadership demands that if you hunt Imus’ scalp for running off at the mouth, you must too excoriate Foxx. It is the height of hypocrisy to play mute when someone black goes blue on a white teenage girl.
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Well look at this, A black man says something very horrible about a white teenage singer. Both people are very popular. The voiced out attack on this white was unwarranted, uncalled for. This black man goes on the tonight show and issues a so-called apology. Where is al sharpton ? Jesse Jackson ? The entire naacp ? Why are they not protesting against this rabid racist of color ? I guess they figure that they will not make any money from this so they will sit this one out. On there fat duffs I guess. Oh wait a minute did'nt they protest against that actor from the t.v. show seinfeld when he went on his racist rampage ? There is a dangerous double standard here. Don Imus lost his job and was forced to apologize for the horrible things he said about the black girls on that basketball team ? I don't believe that this guy will become a real man and issue a real apology at all.