Don Ho, Don's Hos, Hos and Pimps

Say it ain't so! Don Ho, legendary Hawaiian musician and entertainer, died April 14 of a chronic heart condition. He was 76. From its opening in 1965, The Don Ho Show entertained millions of people who flocked to see him in clubs from Honolulu to New York. Ho, of mixed Chinese, Hawaiian, Portugese, Dutch and German descent, is perhaps best known for his easy-listening pop classic "Tiny Bubbles."... It was only a matter of time for Don Imus, the cranky bigot and disc jockey who committed career suicide this week after years of being rewarded for bad taste and even worse judgment. Mr. Imus' career was 41. Reportedly (as this can only be confirmed by the few people who heard Imus in the Morning on CBS Radio or the even smaller number who watched him on cable dwarf MSNBC), the shock jock referred to a predominantly-black team of female athletes as "nappy headed hos." The callous quip was classic Imus: neither funny nor thoughtful. But when he got caught straddling the race and sex rails, the mean-spirited motormouth could only watch as he was hit head-on by the train of race-baiting, self-promoting power pimps rushing to Hymietown to create a crisis and pander for some prime press time. It's good that Imus is gone. He was free to say stupid things and he paid the price for his irresponsible remarks. You say you're sorry, Don? Talk to the hand. There will be no redemption for you. That's reserved for the likes of the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton; for their mistakes and for the mistakes of those these holy men see fit to forgive... Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty a ho in Durham, North Carolina will not be charged for falsely accusing three Duke lacrosse players of raping her at a party a little more than a year ago. Despite her lies, the state's attorney general has given stripper Crystal Gail Mangum a pass. She will continue to dance for dough around Durham even though she has criminally-abused the legal system, took three strangers to the brink of ruin and recklessly raised racial tensions on a national scale. How do we know the stripper lied? Her story of the alleged attack changed every time she told it. And though her DNA test swab read like a Ho's Who's Who of the Durham democrat voter base, it didn't identify one member of the Duke lacrosse team. In fact, there was a lot of exculpatory evidence that should have closed this case within days of when it started. But it was ignored. Which brings us to the man pimping Ms. Mangum and her baseless charges from the beginning, suspended (and soon-to-be former) local DA Mike Nifong. Nifong's political ambitions drove him to abuse his prosecutorial power and file false and serious charges against three innocent college students. Why? Because this saga was framed from the beginning by the liberal media to be the perfect storm; a poor, single, black mother brutally raped by rich, white boys while working hard to put milk on the table for her hungry babies. Every camera in the country was trained on Durham. As soon as they were all plugged in and rolling, Jesse, Al and a lot of the usual stir-it-up types did their standard class warfare drive-by. Nifong saw an opportunity to score some easy points with black voters during his primary election. He ratcheted up the rhetoric; calling the Duke students "hooligans" and worse. About that time, Duke President Richard Broadhead was getting heavy lefty pressure in the community and on campus. He folded like a cheap suitcase, rolling over on his students and the lacrosse program. Emboldened by Broadhead's cowardice, 88 liberal faculty members (I know, that's redundant) lobbied loudly for a lynching. The smell of blood was enough for Nifong. He filed charges against three random players without any proof a crime had occurred. He charged them with committing rape and other vicious acts. Why did Nifong let politics interfere with the pursuit of truth? Pick a reason. She's a black stripper and they're white guys who hire strippers; they were students at Duke and she goes to a much lesser school; they take drug tests, she takes drugs; she has kids she can't afford and they come from (gasp) "prosperous" families. In short, these three players represent everything the liberal elite fear and loathe; those whose lives would never make Sweeps Week on Springer. Last week, after more than a year of local non-investigation and obfuscation, the State of North Carolina dropped all charges against the innocent players, saying in the strongest terms that the the idiot prosecutor had run amok with the case. And while much will happen before this drama is done, let's write the Steve's America ending you'll never see in The New York Times (especially if it really happens). Mike Nifong will be disgraced, disbarred, then imprisoned for his criminal conduct. It will only be after many years in prison (and much personal experience) that he will come to understand the true brutality of rape and sodomy. While there is no compensation for the tears, trauma and reputational damage they have endured, the Duke players and their families will end up with huge monetary settlements from both the taxpayers of Durham and from Duke University that will more than compensate them for their legal expenses. The boys will be left with enough money for a lifetime of better parties with better entertainment. They should even have enough left to raise some privileged middies or attackmen of their own who will go on to play for Syracuse. Dick Broadhead will be dusted by Duke as a condition of the financial settlement between the university and the three students. He will be named president of North Carolina Central University where he will hire the 88 by-then-unemployed Duke faculty members who publicly, wrongfully and shamelessly convicted their own students. NCCU is where Crystal Gail Mangum goes to school on a Jesse-Jackson-paid scholarship. Given her busy schedule and many extra-curricular activities, she ought to be a sophomore by the time this all comes down in a couple of years. There just seems to be kind of a sweet symmetry to all of that. Oh, and one more thing... An even-happier ending will be written the day Americans of all colors shun celebrity victimologists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. These are not leaders in the mold of Martin or Malcolm. They are pimps of fear, bigotry and resentment; political opportunists and extortionists always willing to dance for the man who will pay them the most. Their selective moral outrage has become tiresome and predictable to the point of parody. We all know that whenever bad stuff happens, we can count on these "men of the cloth" to show up in shiny suits and hang around until the last race card has been played and the shakedown check has been written. They're not even good pimps. A good pimp (I'm told) will ensure some level of customer satisfaction for the price he extracts.