What About Our Daughters

What is your objective for this campaign...to get him to lose his job at MSNBC?

I spoke with Sarah Ungar, Phil Griffin's Assistant. I asked her why would Phil Griffin wait for over one week to issue statements condemning Toure's remarks praising the rape of black female slaves by their White Masters.

She stated that Phil Griffin was well aware of Toure's remarks and was handling it. I asked her if she was aware that Phil's long silence implies that he supports mysoginy and rape. She hung up on me.

I am going to call once per hour today.

I am going to call some competing networks about it. Trust, if one of them picks up the story, MSNBC will get off their duffs and say something right quick.

Just got off the phone with Phil's office. I'm assuming I spoke to his secretary. She gave me the same answer as recorded by Blkseagoat upthread. She told me that Phil was currently talking to Toure, as we were speaking. I told her that I would like to see a public apology and that Toure receive a stern and appropriate reprimand. Don't know if it will happen, but at least I know I've made myself heard and perfectly clear. I will follow up with a letter/email later.

here goes for the second time around Gem.i must remember i am doing this for myself and other women like me lest i get weary in well doing.

that sounds like a good idea Shecodes.

Am I the only one here who never thought to associate Toure with MSNBC? The little I know about Toure makes me think that he believes he has acheived some sort of status because he mated with a non-black woman. I wouldn't have even known she wasn't black if Toure didn't constantly refer to her race on his Twitter page. That being said, the man is caught up on racial insecurities and I don't necessarily associate his shortcomings with MSNBC. Is he really known for his "contribution" to the mainstream news world? I thought he was just a guy talking about pop culture on those flashback music shows. That Toure blasts his MSNBC affiliation does not mean that they are blasting his ideas in reciprocity

What about the NBC affiliated black focused blog/website "The Grio"-Has anyone sent anything their way? I believe that I will do just that, right now in fact.

In agreement with MariaNTexas. Will do the same.

The Grio? Isn't Boyce Watkins a contributor? Watkins' takes the position of supporting men who are mysoginists, irresponsible fathers and womanizers. He castigates their critics.

To get back on topic, I just called MSNBC for the 6th time and spoke with someone named Dana. I asked for Phil Griffin, she asked if he was expecting my call and I answered, yes. I was transferred back to Sarah Ungar and left my contact info... for my office.

@Aisha thats not the point. The point is that this man is a journalist and part of being a journalist is NOT LYING. So even if you tried to gloss over his hate speech, which apparently you are, this would be like a commercial truck driver getting 5 DUI's some behavior is inconsistent with certain professions. Likewise, MSNBC has chastened other MSNBC contributors who lost their minds on Twitter. Why the delay here?

@nico the objective is for Black people to lodge their objections to foolishness in places that might trigger actual consequences. That's not Twitter!

@BlkSeagoat:

Boyce Watkins does that? I met him once and he talked a REALLY good game about 'supporting sisters against misogyny'. SMH I guess he was just telling me what I wanted to hear.

Shecodes,

Specifically he demanded that Barack Obama make nice with Jesse Jackson and that Obama do more to halt critcisms of black absentee fathers.

The article was published on the Grio, which I think is TOTALLY Chitlin' Eatin' - so it makes sense that msnbc would support something like that... AND Toure.

Made my second call.; transferred to voice mail for "consumer complaints." Left my message.

Now surely they wouldn't be so foolish as to let this go into week three? More fun for us!

@ Hp, you sound like a side line cheerleader for rape, or as you call it "brutal sex." That's not what we are about here. Perhaps you have this blog confused with another one?

Well, well, well. Called this morning and two phone operators were chatting it up. So, I said hello...and they were startled. I said I was trying to reach Phil Griffin and they transferred me to him, phone rang three times and I went into his voice mail.

I left a message of who I was and that it's been almost 3weeks (wink Gina) and still no response to Mr. Toure's comments. I asked what NBC is planning to do about Mr. Toure’s comment. Are they just waiting to see if the story would go away? Are they planning on issuing a response and I used the Jewish scenario again. I left my name and number with a cheerful "I hope to really hear from you personally on where NBC stands on this issue".

@gem2001 what purpose would it serve to bark up MSNBC's tree? Yes, it is problematic that Toure is a journalist who lies. Yes, I too was offended to see Toure's tweets about women slaves supposedly negotiating some advantage over slave masters with sex. These tweets broke my heart. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that he was using his twitter page in a journalistic capacity. If you believe that was the case, then perhaps you've expanded the definition of "journalism" into something I have never seen. Toure apparently got careless with his twitter page, and HE needs to be called out on it. What does MSNBC have to do with anything he's saying? I'd bet most people wouldn't even know Toure was on payroll at MSNBC. Essentially, his "MSNBC presence" is sporadic and minimal. It appears that this blog post seeks to get Toure fired. Am I incorrect? I don't anticipate MSNBC will find that it should be held accountable for Toure's tweets in any capacity, so if the network cares to address this post's concerns, it is far more likely that they will fire him. Now once Toure gets fired, will this change his behavior? his attitude? his perversion of our history? no. I am loving all this energy being devoted to calling attention to Toure's horrible tweets. I really do. Now that we've garnered some attention, a call to action is indeed necessary, but THIS is not it. We need to have Toure assuming responsibility, accountability, and more importantly, he needs to restore his journalistic integrity with some behavior modification. None of these things are possible with a half assed apology from MSNBC. look at Imus! he's BACK ON THE AIR!

@ Aisha M, are you kidding? If Toure made a comment about Jewish women giving their bodies to the Nazis to avoided going into the oven, HE WOULD BE FIRED or after the Jewish community finished with him, he'd wish he had been fired!

Yes, Imus is back on the air, but it was about a year later; all kind of people got on his case. D.L Hugely (sp) said the same thing three or four days later on Leno and then he got rewarded a few months later with his own show, though it was short-lived. And neither Rev. Al or Rev. Messy Jackson said anything about D.L.

The idea here is if the public puts enough pressure on someone or a company, either with a barrage of phone calls, emails, faxes, etc., or if the public starts doing the same thing to advertiser, you messing with their money and then things start to happen. The offending idiot either gets fired, quits or takes his (or her) punishment and changes their behavior to keep that job. Toure has choices, he'd be wise to start making better ones. :(

@AishaM the last time I checked everyone on this blog was fully grown. You don't pay anybody's bills up in here so we are free to do whatever we please. And you have the right to go take your apathy, black woman bashing enabling CONQUERED mind elsewhere. You sound just like the Black ministers who greeted Martin Luther King at various airports and kindly asked him to return home and not STIR UP THE POT.

As I stated earlier MSNBC has in the past addressed on air talent that had behaved inappropriately on Twitter. You mean to tell me that if Brian Williams had said these things on Twitter, NBC would not have issued some kind of statement?

This is the problem, we want to look the other way whent he attacks come from other Black people. Well ask the 500 folks who got hacked to death in Nigeria this week how that's working for them

Everyone I suspect Aisha is a PAID ASTRO TURFER or Toure's cousin.

Like I said. EVERY MONDAY until they issue a statement will be Phil Griffin Day. if you want us to move on, I suggest you get on the phone and tell the people who must be paying you to send out an email stating that the tweets were inappropriate, that they have spoken to him about them, and the tweets do not reflect the values and corporate ethics of MSNBC.

The sooner they issue a statement, the sooner we can move on. Get to work Aisha!

“@gem2001 what purpose would it serve to bark up MSNBC’s tree? Yes, it is problematic that Toure is a journalist who lies. Yes, I too was offended to see Toure’s tweets about women slaves supposedly negotiating some advantage over slave masters with sex. These tweets broke my heart. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that he was using his twitter page in a journalistic capacity”

Nope it can’t be said that he was twittering in “journalistic capacity”, but he CLEARLY affiliates himself with MSNBC. I’m sure MSNBC puts some bread on Toure the terrorist’s table to eat. Toure aka terrorize has made it fair game for offended individuals to question if MSNBC approves, condones, accepts, and sanctions, comments made by a terrorists regarding black women.

Secondly, we need to stop this “se la vie” attitude towards individuals who continue to deconstruct the value of black women. As I noted on pervious posters have noted he would not have said this mess about a Jewish women and survived a whole week. So, why don’t you think that we should hold ourselves in the same standards?

Jews understand how images, lead to thoughts, and thoughts lead to beliefs and beliefs can lead to the deconstruction of a community. Blow is an expert about how Germans used the propaganda machine to kills millions. Do you see any similarities? While I sure Toure the terrorist isn’t in a structured propaganda plot to destroy the black women (or maybe I’m wrong), but his ignorant two cents has provided fuel to machine so he’s just as guilty.

“Propaganda, the coordinated attempt to influence public opinion through the use of media, was skillfully used by the Nazi Party in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler's leadership of Germany (1933-1945). Nazi propaganda provided a crucial instrument for acquiring and maintaining power, and for the implementation of their policies”.

Here's a quote from Hitler himself ""Propaganda must always address itself to the broad masses of the people (BET, et all). (...) All propaganda must be presented in a popular form and must fix its intellectual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intellectual of those to whom it is directed. (...) The art of propaganda consists precisely in being able to awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will arrest the attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses. The broad masses of the people are not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who are able to form reasoned judgment in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another. (...) The great majority of a nation is so feminine in its character and outlook that its thought and conduct are ruled by sentiment rather than by sober reasoning. This sentiment, however, is not complex, but simple and consistent. It is not highly differentiated, but has only the negative and positive notions of love and hatred, right and wrong, truth and falsehood."

maybe its time to put a face to this movement. I remember when Quest Love tweeted they served Chicken in the NBC cafeteria, a NBC spokesman put out a statement the same exact day. Maybe they were afraid of the wrath of Al and dem. Maybe we need to have a name or organization name drop to scare them

Well Aisha1908 is gone. In addition to having a conquered mind, she's a liar who said one of you said she was going to be murdered. I think she is talking about thelidiva's WWII analogy. In any case. Aisha is not mature enough to roam among us. Wave ByeBye!

@revmamaafrika.com I agree - if Toure had said anything remotely anti-semitic, he likely would have gotten fired. however, I am not so sure that he would then resolve to modify his behavior or his beliefs just because he got fired from a contributor job. The practice among media outlets to address inflammatory statements is to simply fire the person who made the statements and disassociate from them. If MSNBC does hear this call, I get the sense they will take the "easy route" by firing him, but do nothing about addressing the hate he spread. That is where my skepticism lies - I just don't think we'll accomplish much by encouraging Toure to get fired. Maybe pressing media outlets to implement continuous ethics and sensitivity training among their employees might prevent this from happening again with someone else. Just a thought.

@gem2001 I offered my opinion & I praised this blog's outrage at Toure's tweets. Rather than address my comment, you're calling me names, trying to insult me. There is no room in my world for your hate. Keep it.

I will nevertheless try to chat with you from a position of respect and love.

Considering the fact that Brian Williams is a managing editor for his show on NBC (and the fact that he actually has his OWN show), the reasonable person would likely attribute his words to NBC. In fact, I'll take it a step further and say that I think his image is a defacto brand of NBC. Even without watching Brian Williams' show, one can safely presume that his influence, his audience, his livelihood is wholly intertwined with NBC. Toure is not in Brian's league. He doesn't have the influence, he might promote the MSNBC brand himself, but using the reasonable person standard, he is less likely to be be considered a "voice" of MSNBC. Brian Williams "contributes" to the Daily Show - should we be expecting Comedy Central to issue an apology if he were to ever make an inflammatory comment on his twitter page?

@thelildiva4u good points. and perhaps the best support for this cause. I agree with your point that Toure's motives don't absolve him of his guilt. you seem to be more in support of zoning in focus to Toure's careless (or intentional) contribution to the decimation of our community. So if there are any efforts made in that direction, I would definitely want to join forces with you

@gem2001 ah, I see someone is lurking my twitter page. Someone told me I was being "attacked" on this blog - that's what I meant by "murder". In any event, that's what I meant. I didn't know who said what

No one was Lurking on your twitter page, you're not that important. Your tweet was retweeted and winded up in my tweetstream. recognizing the LIE and the aspersion against the people who regularly comment here, I responded. Clearly I need to tighten up the comment filtering system a bit more.

Let the record show, that she lied about what people were saying in the comments section on Twitter and THEN backtracked to read it for herself.

Well well well....I just realized why a certain right-wing talk show host calls it MSLSD......the're probably STONED.......(sigh)

@gem2001

And you're supposed to be important? You think anyone at MSNBC is going to care enough of a grain of salt to reprimand someone who is barely on their network anyway?

I want all of you to remember Sharla's comment.

Yes, Sharla, I am important. i'm important because I am a living breathing human being and I matter. My opinions matter. now you may not think you are important. Life may have beaten you down and made you feel insignificant and conquered. That's okay Sharla, because I'll value myself and my opinion for the both of us.

Its going to be Okay Sharla, your' world won't crumble if Black women make actual requests of powerful people.

Oh and just for the record. Every time one of you conquered black women comes in this blog telling me what I can't do. You just about guarantee that it will absolutely get done if for no other reason than to prove you wrong.

Sharla....do you work at MSNBC?

SMH