The winners of these awards stand as role models to be admired and saluted. From the NAACP’s own website, I quote:
Ideas and images create the belief systems that control our individual and societal actions. When it comes to forming ideas, reinforcing stereotypes, establishing norms and shaping our thinking nothing affects us more than the images and concepts delivered into our lives on a daily basis by television and film. Accordingly there is ample cause for concern about what does or does not happen on television when there is little or no diversity in either opportunities or the decision making process.
So, I sat flabbergasted on Friday night as I watched Isaiah Washington, from Grey’s Anatomy, win the award for Outstanding Performance in a Drama Series. Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Washington ranks as one of the best actors on television, but winning a NAACP Image award stands for more than just one’s own talent. Winning this award also means that the recipient embodies the ideals of dignity, decency and integrity. So can someone please explain why and how a bigot like Isaiah Washington won an Image award?
To those that don’t know, several months ago Washington brawled with his co-star, Patrick Dempsey, on the set of Grey’s Anatomy. During the exchange Isaiah hurled a homophobic remark, the F one, at another of his co-workers, actor T.R. Knight. From all accounts Washington didn’t bother to apologize on the spot for his callous remark. Nope. Even worse, at the Emmys while in the press room, Isaiah denied ever calling Knight a “Insert F word here” right in front of the entire cast! The sheer egomaniacal assholery to do such a thing astounds me.
When another Grey’s actor, Katherine Heigl, came to Knight’s defense and when Knight himself went on the Ellen show to reveal that yes the slur did happen, Washington was revealed as a liar as well as homophobe. Groups began calling for his firing from the show. Extreme? Well, I know that my ass would be fired and hauled off to jail if I sauntered into work calling people the F word and choking co-workers. I guess working in the real world is funny like that.
Eventually, Washington issued a laughably insincere apology, but by then the tidal wave of voices calling for his firing drowned out anything he had to say. So, Isaiah did what all beleaguered actors do when in trouble: he entered rehab. I had no clue they had rehab for homophobia. Maybe they could have tossed in Pat Robertson and Fred Phelps for a group discount special.
This brings us back to Friday night and the NAACP’s inexplicable decision to award Washington for his behavior. This wouldn’t even be an issue if Isaiah had been sincere in his apology and squashed this whole disastrous affair months ago, but he didn’t. I guess, in a misguided fashion, the NAACP presented the award as a show of support and solidarity with Washington. This would’ve been admirable and appropriate if the man had been misjudged or misquoted, but the circumstances were entirely of his own making and he was WRONG.
The NAACP basically revealed itself to be hypocritical. How do you rally against stereotypes and negativity when you support those that commit such actions? It seems to me that the organization saw a black man under attack and acted without stopping to ask if that man deserved the strife that came his way. Sorry, but I cannot blindly support someone of the same skin color when they are guilty of suffering the consequences of their own actions.
Isaiah may have won that night, but in the end the NAACP lost.
This is where I was going to make a pithy segue equating the Isaiah Washington drama with the whole Anne Coulter mess that happened on Saturday, but even ten Washington’s don’t begin to compare with the twisted toe jam of Satan that is Ann Coulter.
Just in case you missed it, Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference held in D.C. Ann Coulter deliverd a right handed jab by calling Presidential Candidate John Edwards the homophobic F-word. If this is all the right wingers have left, then things look pretty pathetic on that end of the American political spectrum.
Part of me is tempted to ignore the harpy. Ann Coulter exists as a vulture, feeding and profiting from the fortune or misfortune of others. From Al Gore and global warming to 911 widows, Coulter earns her rent money by issuing outlandish venomous attacks while dolled up in her Sex in the City mini skirt and tank top. She’s Conservative Viper Barbie made flesh. A real life toy fondled and played with by her “fans”.
I just don’t think people like Coulter can be ignored or explained away as inconsequential anymore. Words have power and even inane pathetic words, when not challenged, can insinuate themselves into peoples’ thoughts. Look what happened to John Kerry with that whole Swift Boat mess in the 2004 Presidential campaign. Ann Coulter shouldn’t be ignored. She should be squashed like the mosquito she is every time she pests the public with her latest ramblings.
She should be gagged. And please don’t bring up Free Speech and Ann Coulter in the same sentence. Her speeches, books and sound bites are the equivalent of yelling fire in a theater. She doesn’t engage in meaning discourse, she bludgeons the opposition with ad hominem attacks. Hopefully, with this latest stunt, a bitch slap is waiting in the wings ready to hurt Ann in the only place that would hurt: her pocketbook.
