If I had the cultural authority to award an ''"I'''m a reactionary who is completely missing the point''" award, I wouldn'''t think about giving it to anyone but Oprah Winfrey. She put her understanding (or lack thereof) of the issues surrounding Imus-gate on display as she threw one of her swanky ''"Town Hall''" meetings and put hip-hop on trial for the problems ailing black America. Oprah'''s fundamental disconnect with contemporary black culture forced defendants '' er '' participants such as Common and Russell Simmons to dodge loaded question after loaded question in an effort to explain there are larger issues at hand besides censoring the word ho from an arena of artistic expression. It got to the point that Oprah was cutting off her audience'''s questions because they disagreed with her stance.
But in spite of Oprah'''s self serving reasons for holding the event, this meeting succeeded in allowing many of the nation'''s most prominent black figures to try and hash out these issues in between network commercial breaks and Oprah'''s Fox News-style cut-offs. It also exposed the biggest problem with the issue at hand; an inability to answer the question of why.

Before being interrupted by Oprah and her aura of righteousness, Common was onto something when he explained that a problem cannot be fixed before it is acknowledged. Building on that idea, I think there needs to be an understanding as to why something is a problem before it can be fixed. Everybody wants to point out and eliminate the problems, but nobody wants to think about why they are problems. With Michael Richards and Don Imus, the public hung themselves up on the taboo words, but failed think about the meaning behind those words. Now, Oprah is attacking hip-hop for its glorification of these words, but she fails to think about why such words are coming from the hip-hop community.
What struck me as odd about the program is that in between segments, pre-recorded interviews with other black figures aired and brought further insight to the issue. People like Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (check out the middle of Part 3) would explain that this problem of degrading language and attitudes in the black community does not stem from an insular phenomenon within the hip-hop world, but rather an oppressive socio-economic system that affects the mentality of blacks brought up in poverty. When any of the panelists would try and build on that thought Oprah would shut them down and let her next guest start demanding that Snoop Dogg have his contract ripped up. What good does this do? Why impose guidelines on rappers and musicians who get paid to express themselves creatively and then compare their situation to that of Don Imus? Imus''' job was contingent upon public opinion. Snoop Dogg'''s contract is contingent upon the purchasing power of the consumer.
As multiple people tried to convey to Oprah, killing the messenger and putting a band-aid on the problem won'''t make it go away. Before we can condemn such behavior, the public must understand why it is wrong to refer to women as hoes and why white people cannot freely appropriate elements of black speech into their own. A lack of understanding will only breed hostility.
This is not to say that Russell Simmons and Kevin Liles are helpless victims here. At the end of the day, they still hold the power and influence to affect change if they wanted to. They could proactively put marketing dollars behind artists who aren'''t playing into negative stereotypes and force the media to give them attention. It might cost them their jobs, but that would be inconsequential if they cared about changing the hip-hop community. Yes, that'''s easier said than done, but this isn'''t a problem that any one group of people can fix. It requires the collective efforts of artists, executives, the media, and consumers. Even with Oprah'''s best efforts to derail the real discussion, everyone else on the program reached this conclusion and made the show worthwhile, even if it didn'''t reach the audience it was intended for.
So thank you, Oprah, for caring so much about the issue of race that you could devote an entire episode to it in between episodes about what floral bouquets we should use at our next dinner party.
(Be sure to watch Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 as well)