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Byline: David J. Neal
MIAMI _ Will there come a time when a young woman championship athlete with kinky hair and an iPod full of hip-hop free of "b----" and "ho" thinks, "Thank you, Don Imus?"
Could be.
Recent history says when impolite comments rip away sports' and society's polite veneer to reveal still-present infections from old diseases, two things have happened: punishment for the speaker, but also discussion about sports' societal condition of which the speaker's words were only a symptom.
See the American sports Hall of Verbal Infamy that Imus just joined in the public mind: Al Campanis. Jimmy the Greek. Marge Schott. Dennis Rodman. Fuzzy Zoeller. Reggie White.
Calling the Rutgers University women's basketball team a bunch of "nappy-headed hos" cost Imus his show, which was simulcast on CBS Radio and MSNBC.
"I think the reaction to Imus is as strong as it was because this is the first time I can remember that a comment took in women and people of color _ the objectification of women and the stereotypes of African American women," said Dr. Richard Lapchick, founder and Director Emeritus of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University.