Rich Finally Pontificates On l'Affaire Imus

Frank Rich, who was a regular guest on the Imus In The Morning show, has now added to the pile (TimesSelect required) of same old, same old blather, this blog included, on the Imus/Rutgers story.

Rich does the requisite condemnation of what Imus said and adds a mea culpa trying to excuse his regular appearances. He is also quick to point to negative speech by right wing comentators.

Key quote:

Does that mean he should be silenced? The Rutgers team pointedly never asked for that, and I don’t think the punishment fits the crime. First, as a longtime Imus listener rather than someone who tuned in for the first time last week, I heard not only hate in his wisecrack but also honesty in his repeated vows to learn from it. Second, as a free-speech near-absolutist, I don’t believe that even Mel Gibson, to me an unambiguous anti-Semite, should be deprived of his right to say whatever the hell he wants to say. The answer to his free speech is more free speech — mine and yours. Let Bill O’Reilly talk about “wetbacks” or Rush Limbaugh accuse Michael J. Fox of exaggerating his Parkinson’s symptoms, and let the rest of us answer back.

Somehow I can't believe that Rich, who is the great melder of politics and showbiz into a grand forum where similes and metaphor take the place of logic, would be anything but joyous if someone on the right was fired for saying something offensive. It feels more like he is concerned, as are others, that one of the big forums for Democrats and liberals has been silenced.

One reference in Rich's column is a mystery to me. He writes the following:

So if we really want to have this national “conversation” about race and culture and all the rest of it that everyone keeps telling us that this incident has prompted, let’s get it on, no holds barred. And the fewer moralizing pundits and politicians, the better. Hillary Clinton, an Imus denouncer who has also called for federal regulation of violent television and video games, counts among her Hollywood fat cats Haim Saban, who made his fortune from “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.”

Has the Power Rangers cartoon been declared un-PC? I must have missed the papal bull on this topic? As far as the "national conversation" that everyone is calling for, I'm willing to bet cash money that no such discussion will emerge, unless Imus himself becomes the channel for that discourse on some new reincarnation on the public airwaves.

In Fairness To Imus

Andrew Sullivan reminds us that however offensive Don Imus is and has been over the years, he also has done much good for the kids who have attended the Imus Ranch for kids with cancer and blood diseases and the siblings of babies who died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

In the summer months and in the odd week in spring and fall, Imus was on the air from New Mexico at 3:30 AM local time. Once off the air at 8:00 AM he joined the kids and the staff in the day's activities. Yes he bitched and whined about that and the thin air that made breathing difficult for the old coot, who suffered from COPD, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. An oxygen tank was a regular companion.

According to the article sited above, the Ranch costs $1.8 million to operate each year. The "radiothon" that annually raises a good chunk of that money each year was to be held today and tomorrow. No doubt the results today were below expectation and there will be no fund raising tomorrow. If Imus somehow survives as an on the air personality, via satellite probably, he may maintain a large enough audience to sustain the Ranch. Contributions, plus his own funds may keep the place alive.

On the other hand if those who have hounded him out of the business are successful, the Ranch and its program will perish also. That, of course, is the chance Imus took every morning when he ad libbed his way along the fault line between good and bad taste.

He often said that part of his motivation for doing the Ranch was to bank some good Karma to offset the bad things in his life, of which he was well aware. No one can doubt that for the last seven or eight years some goodness has surely accrued to Don Imus. It seems that we as a nation have required his sacrifice to make us feel better about ourselves and our darker impulses. Perhaps some day young black kids confronted by the outrage of racism and sexism will have achieved the self confidence to tell the offending moron to get bent and refuse to let the racist define them in any way. We clearly are not at that place yet. Let us hope we will not have to await our collective next lives for that outcome.

It Was Inevitable

Imus is now gone from CBS. Leslie Moonves also said:

In a statement Mr. Moonves said, “Those who have spoken with us the last few days represent people of goodwill from all segments of our society – all races, economic groups, men and women alike. In our meetings with concerned groups, there has been much discussion of the effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society.”

Let's hope he remembers this when his new record division, which was restarted last year, chooses which artists to record.

In The End, Imus Doesn't Matter

Let us imagine ourselves several weeks or months in the future. Don Imus will be an all but forgotten figure. But the daily degradation of women, especially black women, will still be a daily occurrence over the airwaves. Visualize yourself far enough into the future and it will be time for next year's Grammy Awards. Ho's, bitches and their booties will be the dominant subject matter of rap music, just has they have been for decades now.

The damage done by this constant barrage of media disparagement on young black women in incalculable. Beyond that, the main buyers of rap music are not young black men, who are only 12% of the population, but young white men and boys. Only by selling to them can the hip hop industry achieve its billions of dollars of income. What are these white boys to believe about how to relate to women, especially black women. Ask any black woman and she will be able to recount daily affronts, both large and small.

Many are noticing this reality and hoping to use the Imus matter as a springboard for a broader discussion that will hopefully return civility and politeness as the norm, rather than the exception. One such writer is Jason Whitlock, writing for the Kansas City Star.

Whitlock is, in my view, too hard on Vivian Stringer. As I've written below, I think she deserves much credit. He is, on the other hand, appropriately rough on the Revs. Sharpton and Jackson:

Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.

The bigots win again.

While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’s or Young Jeezy’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos.

I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don’t have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.

It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.

Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and wait for someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves.

Who Brought Down Imus?

In newsrooms across the country, when an issue with racial overtones arises, reporters push the speed dial button on their phones that says, "Racism", and the phone rings at Al Sharpton's National Action Network. So of course Rev. Sharpton, with his history of using the media to beat up innocent people with no apology (the Tawana Brawley case) and Rev. Jackson, with his "hymietown" baggage are brought to the fore to define the attack on Imus. Imus himself, media maven that he is, unintentionally raised Sharpton's profile by agreeing to plead for his life at the feet of the great man on his radio show.

The media treat African Americans as if they were the only ethnic group in the world who are allowed to have only one spokesperson at a time. Degradingly, they think of African Americans as a people in lock step who share one and only one political or world view. Who is the spokesman or leader of Jews, Italians, the Irish, or Poles in America. The very notion is ridiculous, yet since the death of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jackson or Sharpton have tried to become that leader and the media have bought it.

In the current Imus affair, I would like to propose that a large new set of African American leaders came to the fore. The press conference held last week by C. Vivian Stringer and the Rutgers women was as powerful a statement of outrage and a plea for civility as we are likely to hear. Al Roker and other black staff members at NBC publicly demanded Imus' removal and the NBC News President, Steve Capus has said that their concerns were the determining factor in Imus removal. Roker said:

In the end, this is not about Don Imus or his producer, Bernard McGuirk, who often set the ugly and hateful tone of the "comedy" bits they produced. The ten young women of the Rutgers Women’s basketball team showed how unjust and wrong the humor of the Imus program is. Mr. Imus says he's a good person who said a bad thing. That may be true. Certainly his charity work speaks to that. But just as he wants to be judged on what he does, he must also be judged on what he says and what he has said, both on and off the air. Mr. McGuirk contends he's not a racist, even though he spews racist invective because, in his words, he grew up around black people. Hmmm. So did Strom Thurmond.

There were others, too numerous to name. They have been appearing all over the airwaves in the last few days. Like any group of people, some are more sensible than others. A large number, however, have been eloquent and reasoned in their condemnation of the kind of behavior Imus committed. I choose to believe that it was this chorus of voices that prompted sponsors to abandon Imus and MSNBC and probably CBS to drop him. Let's give credit where credit is due.

These same people have been equally appalled by the nasty and brutish crap that passes for our most popular music and as comedy on TV, cd's and in clubs. More on that later.

No Tears For Imus

This is Don Imus in his pre-rehab days 25, or more, years ago. I started listening to him at least 30 years ago. "Listening" doesn't really describe the process, for no sane person was ever able to stick with him through the whole of his four hour radio show.

What one listened for were his moments of irreverence and his merciless battery of the various "suits" who believed they controlled his show. It was this bad boy, take-this-job-and-shove-it attitude that gave comfort to the mass of us who were not about to tell our employers to shove anything.

What one quickly learned to dispense with were the endless pre-recorded commercials, the endless perseverations about some point of annoyance for which Imus was taking public revenge and the endless self-promotion. In recent years, since his marriage, the endless prattling on about the Ranch, healthy living (while we watched him deteriorate before our eyes), his wife's accomplishments or sales of Ranch-related products have been moments to be avoided at all cost.

Jumping in and out of the Imus show became much easier since he began to be simulcast on MSNBC. The remote control was a godsend. But there was also much to seek out. Imus' was the only TV show, with the exception of Jim Leher's Newshour, where one could hear at length discussions of current events or the arts where the guest got to say his or her piece and Imus made fun of them, one and all. Yes, there is also Charlie Rose, but wading through his questions often interferes with the flow of the guest.

That is all context for what I believe will be his total departure from non-satellite broadcasting. No one should cry for Imus. He is a rich man and he said a foul, stupid thing about the Rutgers kids. (I know it is pc to call them young women, but for those of us older than dirt they are much closer to children that adults.) They didn't agree to come on his show and be beaten up, as do the masochists in his regular guest rotation. Five of the ten players are freshmen for god's sake.

As I have written about before, I had a particular interest in the Rutgers women's team this year. For the prior two years I traveled to Glens Falls NY for the state basketball championships. For two years I watched Epiphany Prince, the number one or two nationally ranked high school players of her age. At Rutgers she had the great good fortune to have C. Vivian Stringer as her coach. A casualness and lack of effort that had plagued Prince at the end of her high school career were banished under Coach Stringer's tutelage. She, and the rest of the freshmen players, were cajoled, berated, yelled at and loved into an extraordinary performance that led them to the NCAA finals.

So Imus had finally picked on and bullied someone who didn't deserve his ire. And he did so in his own voice and in vile racist and misogynistic terms. But for his whole career, walking the edge of this particular cliff has been Imus' stock in trade. He has cultivated the racism and stupidity of the people he decided to keep around him. In particular, I mean Bernard McGurk, Sid Rosenbaum and Bo Dietl. It was the assigned role of these neanderthals to be the designated speakers of hate or near-hate speech. Through the use of these puppets Imus could say the things his 66 year old adolescent heart wanted to say and still maintain a phony veneer of deniability.

For the latest and fatal episode, Imus has tried to point out that terms like the one he used originated in the world of hip hop. The problem with that claim, true as it is, is that Imus didn't use it to attack anonymous or fictional characters in a "song". He used it to bludgeon ten very particular young ladies who were minding their own business. I bet most of them never even heard of the crotchety old faux cowboy from Central Park West.

So no crying for Don Imus. He will soon retire to his ranch in New Mexico, from where he will probably broadcast via Sirius/XM. But getting him off the air will accomplish nothing except to fill the coffers of the Revs. Sharpton and Jackson. The airwaves will continue to be polluted by literally thousands of cd's each year with messages of thuggery and the degradation of women. More about that later.