Don Imus forced to apologize

For the first time in his nearly 40 year career in radio, Don Imus has been forced to apologize for his racist “jokes”. This morning I listened to him apologize profusely to the women’s basketball team at Rutgers and to Black Americans in general for calling them “nappy headed ho’s” [ho's means whores] last Wednesday.

Black political leaders have not been mollified by his apology. This afternoon Imus is scheduled to appear on Al Sharpton’s radio show at 1pm Eastern Standard Time. Fortunately, this can be heard online at: http://www.sharptontalk.net/. Sharpton is a very sharp critic of racism in the media and in society generally, so this should make for a very dramatic exchange.

Today’s NY Times summed up the controversy in the business section.

“Imus in the Morning” is scheduled to start this morning like any other, with Don Imus and his crew cracking wise about the weekend’s events, riffing off the news and chatting with Evan Thomas, one of Newsweek’s top guns. Later Tom Oliphant, Washington author and former op-ed columnist for The Boston Globe, will check in for some political talk.

Given that Mr. Imus spent part of last week describing the student athletes at Rutgers as “nappy-headed ho’s,” you might think he’d have trouble booking anyone, let alone A-list establishment names. But Mr. Imus, who has been given a pass for this sort of comment in the past, also generously provides airtime to those parts of the news media and political apparatus that would generally be expected to bring him to account.

Mr. Imus’s comment about the Rutgers team last week was not just, as they say, over the line — you can’t even see the line from where he landed. It was not a gaffe, a slip of the tongue, a joke in poor taste. (Nor was the on-air comment to Mr. Imus by the show’s longtime producer, Bernard McGuirk, calling the women’s final the “Jigaboos vs. the Wannabees,” in a bad attempt to borrow a phrase from a Spike Lee movie.) Mr. Imus’s slur was the kind of unalloyed racial insult that might not have passed muster on a low-watt AM station in the Jim Crow South.

The article goes on to mention that its own African-American reporters have been the butt of Imus’s racist jokes. When Gwenn Ifill, now a host of a PBS talk show, was working at the Times, Imus referred to her as a “cleaning lady” and to sports writer William C. Rhoden as a “quota hire.” Evidently this has not persuaded NY Times columnists Tom Friedman, Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd from making regular appearances on his show over the years.

Imus’s ability to attract powerful political and media figures over the years has earned him inclusion on Time Magazine’s list of the most powerful 25 Americans in 1997. It said:

But what he really plays is people. “Imus is the best political interviewer,” says New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. “He’s read everything, and he gets to the heart of everything.” The host claims that all he wants from guests is to “goad them into saying something that ruins their life.” Spoken like a 29-year veteran of shock-jocking. But Imus does more: probing and prodding like a national inquisitor, he translates stodgy politics into vital popular culture.

Like many people, I listen to the radio in the morning from the minute I wake up to the minute I walk out the door. About 10 years ago, I switched from Howard Stern to Imus because there somewhat fewer commercials. I also found conversations with Frank Rich somewhat more interesting than those with porn stars, if only marginally so. Back in the 1980s, my radio was always tuned into WBAI in the morning. As the station began to enforce a “preaching to the choir” litmus test, I began to look elsewhere. I tried NPR briefly but the smarmy, suburban, New Yorker magazine, centrist politics made me scream. I backed the WBAI rebellion in the late 1990s if for no other reason that one NPR seemed sufficient.

Some of the best reporting on Imus’s racism comes from Philip Nobile, who has been trying–mostly unsuccessfully–to shame his guests from appearing on the show. This item appeared on the webzine MobyLives:

I once sought to write about Spike Lee’s fake conversion to Islam for the New Yorker. Charles Michener, the commissioning editor, gave me one piece of advice. Regarding the magazine’s style circa Tina Brown, he said, strive for “ironic distance.”

The title of this article was fashioned with the New Yorker’s standard in mind. It is meant to gently signal the reader to the ridiculous position that David Remnick finds himself in as Don Imus’s buttboy.

“I love David Remnick, I just have to tell you that,” Imus said on Friday, September 27, setting up his treasured guest.

Imus tends to fawn over the celebrity journalists who perfume his anti–gay, anti–black, anti–Asian, anti–Semitic, and sometimes anti–handicapped ridicule. Remnick is especially dear. In 1998, the flattery took the unusual, some might say tasteless, form of a $50,000 payoff––via a one–time Imus Book Award for “King of the World.” From that moment on, Remnick has kept his Gentlemen’s Agreement, pretending that Imus’s merde is meringue.

At any rate, it is a sign of some progress that Imus is finally on the defensive. The fact that Black America can raise the stakes in such a struggle to the point where powerful media companies can see the necessity to restrain its pit bull marks a degree of progress. Listening to Imus’s apology this morning gave me a sense of satisfaction, but I think that the real payback will be listening to Sharpton rake him over the coals. The show comes on in about 40 minutes and should be archived as well. Check it out.