Some thoughts on the demise of Don Imus (transcript of his remarks on the Rutgers women’s basketball team):
1) Here I was fearing that the powers that be in Boston were looking to go after local right-wing populist radio talk-show host and newspaper columnist Howie Carr, but instead Mr. Imus, one of Mr. Carr’s enemies, got whacked. Mr. Carr’s happiness over the end of the I-Man is his, but it has been enjoyable to hear Mr. Carr in a jovial mood the last few days. He even laughed off Mickey Kaus’s blog post proclaiming that Mr. Carr’s was “the most offensive radio program” he’d ever heard back in 2000. He was in fine form, let me tell you. Hearing Mr. Carr direct his minions to feed Reverend Al Sharpton’s underlings talking points about Mr. Imus’s temporary replacement was also quite a treat.
2) It is awfully tedious to hear legalistic arguments about what the First Amendment does and doesn’t protect. I get that, as our Governor would say, but surely the First represents a broad popular tolerance and acceptance of speech that one might strongly disagree with and even find offensive? I guess not.
3) Had one complained about the widespread and casual use of the word “ho” before Mr. Imus’s use of the word one would no doubt have risked being called a stiff, a square, a moralist, a crank, and maybe even an anti-black bigot. And one probably will be again a few months down the road when media executives decide that ratings and sales are far more important than some overblown controversy that very few will remember.
4) The excuse that Mr. Imus deserved leniency since so many rappers use similarly vulgar and racially charged language practically all the time is laughably backwards: The fact that rappers revel in such sub low-brow garbage is a very good reason to shun that language.
5) I don’t think anybody associated with Rutgers women’s basketball team will ever need sensitivity training, as they couldn’t possibly be more sensitive than they already are.
6) Students who spent last week reading about witch hunts were in luck as they got to witness one play out in real time. Mr. Imus caused no measurable or identifiable damage with his unprovoked outburst, yet people went after him as if he had skinned a blind girl’s guide-dog on live radio. There’s any number of hyperbolic reactions to choose from but The Boston Herald’s Wayne Woodlief produced one that is as good as any I’ve seen:
The controversy has turned what should have been a tremendous moment for the Rutgers team - which pulled itself up from 3-4 to the title game - into a horrendous experience. Though I hope not, they may be remembered more as the women Imus defamed than as hoops achievers. Cinderella back to ashes.
A horrendous experience?
7) I see a lot of lefties and righties arguing over whether Mr. Imus is a liberal or a conservative. It seems to me that Mr. Imus was tribal rather than partisan, cliquish rather than ideological. It has, however, become very important to members of both camps to think of themselves as better people than the douchebags in the other camp, so there you go.
I listened to Mr. Imus’s show for a while in 1998, when he was on WEEI in Boston. I don’t remember thinking much of him one way or the other. I didn’t follow him to WTKK after he was dropped, supposedly for demanding too much for his reportedly lousy ratings at the time if I recall things correctly. But some people did like his show, Boston blogger Carpundit among them, and I don’t see how the world got better because they lost a show they enjoyed.
9) I’m not the least bit impressed by people who very rarely listen to a particular show but then get insanely worked up over some quip on the show in question they hear or hear about. I don’t find the reasoning that a spur-of-the-moment comment reveals some enormous truth about the soul of the person who said it particularly convincing. People of all kinds say thoughtless things all the time, sometimes even thoughtless things that are offensive. It is also strange that so many people got themselves intensely worked up over some off-the-cuff remarks on a live show when just about nobody gave a fig about the carefully scripted and lawyer-vetted recent blasphemous South Park episode in which Jesus kills Bill Donohue, a Catholic activist whose seemingly constant grievance-mongering I don’t care much for. Not that I have any interest in seeing South Park taken off the air or dulled down, mind you.
10) Mr. Imus was not fired for stating an uncomfortable truth or challenging opinion, but for being a jackass for really no reason at all other than to pass time in some street-wise edgy way. Nor did his slip of the tongue - if it was a slip of the tongue - come during the course of a provocative but relevant and interesting discourse. His firing does not strike me as the end of frank conversation.
11) A woman should not have to have to redeeming qualities in order to defend herself against charges of being a whore. All it should it take is not being a whore. The insistence that members of Rutgers 2006-2007 women’s basketball team are “the funniest person you’ll ever meet” and what not is entirely besides the point. All Rutgers had to say was something along the lines of “No member of Rutgers 2006-2007 women’s basketball team has ever dispensed sexual favors for monetary compensation and Mr. Imus owes them a public apology for suggesting otherwise.” How hard would that have been? The same goes for Mr. Imus’s hair comment: It wasn’t offensive because the Rutgers players are swell gals but because it was a gratuitous slur.
12) As is my habit, I listened to Boston rock station WBCN while driving around earlier today. As is often the case, in the middle of the afternoon the station aired a commercial for a strip club outside of Boston. A strip club. Who owns WBCN, you ask? CBS Radio. Rock on, Les Moonves.
