Don Imus: A Response to Ian

In the interest of full disclosure I will say that I dislike Don Imus. Talk radio is a medium that attracts loudmouthed boors and Imus is no exception. He has a history of saying stupid things (as documented by Slate, here).

If you want opinions on the whole affair from those who are qualified:

1) Michael Wilbon probably wrote the best piece I've read on the subject, highlighting Imus' pathology. Particularly stirring is the excerpt from a "60 Minutes" interview where Imus first denies hiring former producer Bernard McGuirk to do "nigger jokes" and subsequently admits to it only after being called out.

2) Stephen Metcalf, an excellent writer, characterizes Imus as an artifact of sorts that "ought to have been shit-canned" in a headier piece about Imus' place in culture.

3) Jason Whitlock approaches the subject from a less direct vantage point, calling out the glorification of gangster culture in hip-hop. He's right, The Game and Young Jeezy are probably not great role models.

As for the opinion of someone less qualified (because, by my own definition, the criteria for qualification is to be published in a major media outlet- I'm aware that this definition qualifies Dan Shaughnessy and Stephen A. Smith which is an unfortunate externality) and a response to Ian, I offer my two cents.

Ian, despite what Les Moonves or CBS's PR person may have said, the real reason for dismissing Don Imus was not for just this one comment about the Rutgers womens basketball team. Principally, it's a financial decision. As Dr. Z from SI put it: "CBS Radio did an assessment of the balance sheet, which is how corporate people adjust their morality, and decided that whatever financial gain Imus might generate in the future would be offset by the loss of advertising revenue, plus image..." When Imus said the words, “nappy-headed hos” it was picked up by the media, the blogosphere, and the youtube community launching an off-the-cuff remark into a maelstrom. The writing was on the wall. Once MSNBC quit on Imus, CBS has no other option than to follow suit or they would look like a collaborator, damaging their public image and, in turn, their bottom line.

And to say that Imus’ history or saying racist and sexist things was not an issue here is just plain wrong. Here’s a hypothetical: a producer at CNN hears of the Imus story and says to his coworkers, “Yeah, but Imus has been saying s*** like this for twenty years- wait a minute, Imus HAS been saying s*** like this for twenty years…” and two hours later it comes out that Imus once referred to journalist Howard Kurtz as a “boner-nosed… beanie-wearing Jewboy” and sidekick Sid Rosenberg noted that Serena and Venus Williams would “more likely be featured in National Geographic than in Playboy.” Sure “nappy-headed hos” was the tipping point, but there were PLENTY of coins in the curse jar before it overflowed. “Why now?” is NOT a suitable argument in defense of Don Imus.

As for your characterization of Jesse Jackson as a hypocrite for calling Imus out after he spoke out against the Duke lacrosse players, it’s specious at best. The situations are wholly different. When Jackson spoke, there were pending, serious criminal charges against the Duke students and Jackson felt he was speaking out against an injustice. Perhaps Jackson should not have presumed their guilt, but at least there was a question of it. The facts from the case are that a group of predominantly affluent, predominantly white, student-athletes threw a party in which they hired significantly less affluent African American strippers and provided alcohol to 18, 19, and 20 year olds. Excuse me if I give Mr. Jackson a pass on this one.

On the flip side, Don Imus turned a female Division I basketball team into an object of ridicule for no perceivable reason other than his own edification. Here is an extended excerpt from the video: “…some rough girls from Rutgers. They got tattoos… some nappy-headed hos… the girls from Tennessee they all look cute… the jigaboos versus the wannabes…” (the last line belongs it Bernard “the nigger joke man” McGuirk referencing the Spike Lee movie School Daze in which two dichotomous groups of students at an all-black college fight over race and identity, one group more “black” and the other more “white.”)

I’m not going to go into why what he said was so bad, the odds are you’ve read about it ad nauseum at this point. But I do want to focus on one fact: these girls are innocents. Complete innocents. And Don Imus calls them out for being less attractive and less “feminine” than their opponents in a manner that reeks of both racism and sexism. Female athletes, especially female student-athletes, have a hard enough time dealing with the specter of the feminine ideal without the Don Imuses of the world making it more difficult for them.

And I just can’t get behind you equating the Rutgers womens basketball to Alex Rodriguez or Jason Kidd or even J.J. Reddick. These girls are student-athletes. They’re not mugging for the camera or endorsing Pepsi. It’s possible that none of them will get a dime more than their scholarship out of basketball. And this was no baseless insult from the peanut gallery, some drunk heckler that shouted “nappy-headed hos” from the fifth row. This is a radio personality, and not even a sports radio personality, de-humanizing and de-feminizing them just to make himself cackle. It’s malicious from top to bottom.

And please don’t weep for Don Imus or his throngs of listeners who won’t get to hear his farewell. Idiots are like cats, they always land on their feet (SEE ALSO: Rush Limbaugh). Soon the ink will dry on a behemoth of a deal with Sirius or XM and Imus can join Howard Stern and Opie and Anthony as the shock-jock dinosaurs in the retirement home of satellite radio.


You're right on so many levels. We agree on so many levels. We should not however, let our opinion of Don Imus, or our disgust with his humor and history of crass behavior get in the way of making an objective report of what happened. At the very essence of this case is the despicable way CBS handled it, and it's atrocious the amount of hypocrisy coming from every corner.

On your first point we're in complete agreement. The reason they gave was a lie. Terrible job by CBS.

On your second point, Jesse Jackson called the lacrosse players "rapists" when they weren't. Forgive me for saying that such a statement is much more unjust than Imus saying something stupid during an unfunny comedy riff. Jesse Jackson is a role model, a Congressman, and a civil rights activist. Imus is a guy on the radio that has carved a niche for himself doing this kind of inane stuff, with never a public word from CBS condoning him. So, to recap, Jackson, someone who is supposed to be held to a higher standard, carefully chose his words and described as fact that accused innocent men had committed one of the worst crimes you could admit, completely oblierating their reputations until the case completely fell apart. Meanwhile, Imus, a guy who everyone knows should be taken with a grain of salt, said something off the cuff that he later apologized for, including to their face, and the girls have done nothing but gain from this situation. You're right, the two aren't even comparable.

Fine, forget the athletic comparisons. I concede the high ground there.

And I am not weeping for Don Imus. I don't like him. I think he's said a ridiculous amount of stupid things in his career. But is there any evidence of CBS saying, "Listen, Don, tone it down or we're going to let you go."? The coin that overfilled the jar does not work here, as you can tell when the jar is getting too full and know not to put another coin in. A more apt analogy would be placing rocks in a pond and then stuffing in Everest...when this issue should have been not much bigger than the other rocks. Again, I am in complete agreement that those were all awful things, and if he was warned by his employer that they were unacceptable and could result in termination, than I'd be okay with this.

But they fired him for doing his job, a job that made them millions of dollars for decades. He should not have been fired for this. He's apologized. The more this drags out, the more all other disingenuous parties make him look better by comparison. People want to make him jump through hoops, do the talk show circuit, apologize to the world. He was right in drawing the line. He said he'd apologize to those girls and he did. He's insinuating political correctness is becoming a joke. Some people deserve respect, like those girls. Other don't, like the hypocrites.

And for the first time in a long time, I respect Don Imus.