Imus Roundup

Let's be clear: I don't care that Imus was fired. I didn't listen to him, and on the off-chance I did hear him, I didn't listen to him very long.

To me, he was a goner the second the media ran with the story. Honestly, I don't think CBS and MSNBC come out on top here, despite taking the "moral high ground" by firing him. Their initital decision was a two-week suspension, and then, after 8 days, he was gone altogether. Why not fire him, then, in the first place? Because CBS and MSNBC don't care that Imus made disparaging comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team - they care about the almighty dollar. So when sponsors such as Staples, Bigelow Tea, American Express, General Motors and others decided to pull out, the plug was pulled on Imus. Clearly, the final straw was loss of dollars, not public outrage.

Here's what the people are saying, playing various angles:

E. J. Dionne:

"Arguing about Imus does absolutely nothing to provide our poorest African-American kids with better schools, health insurance or a chance at college and higher incomes. We rightly heap praise on those noble Rutgers women, but we should ask ourselves if Imus would have gotten away with comparably sleazy comments targeting less visible and less successful women, or men. I think we know the answer."

Linda Chavez:

"Don Imus is a crank. But his bigoted remarks have made him more famous than anything he's done in the past and will probably attract more listeners when he returns to his ornery morning show than he has ever had. MSNBC and CBS may have cancelled him for now, but he'll be back, and when he returns, ratings will go up. And we can thank the "news" coverage Imus has received when they do."

Jason Whitlock:

"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."

Pat Buchanan:

While the remarks of Imus and Bernie about the Rutgers women were indefensible, they were more unthinking and stupid than vicious and malicious. But malice is the right word to describe the howls for their show to be canceled and them to be driven from the airwaves – by phonies who endlessly prattle about the First Amendment.

John Fund:

"It's certainly true that many black leaders, ranging from Calvin Butts of New York's Abyssinian Baptist Church to Queen Latifah to the editors of Essence magazine have spoken out against offensive rap lyrics. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have also raised their voices against them. On Friday Barack Obama told a black South Carolina audience that offensive rappers 'are degrading our sisters.' It's about time he stepped forward, since it was Mr. Obama who helped legitimize the rapper Ludicrus, whose oeuvre includes such songs as 'Ho,' 'You'z a Ho' and 'I Got Hos,' by inviting him to his Chicago office last year to talk about, as the Associated Press put it, 'lighting the way for the nation's youth.'
"But there have been almost no calls demanding that any 'gangsta rap' artists be driven from the airwaves as Mr. Imus was or that the record companies promoting 'gangsta rap' be boycotted. Pepsi did drop Ludicrus from its ad campaign after his lyrics angered Oprah Winfrey and also became the subject of a pointed campaign by Fox News's Bill O'Reilly, one of the few media figures who has been willing to take on hate rap foursquare."

Sister Toldjah (re: Obama's response, here):

"...I could appreciate a generalized rant about our culture if that was what was at issue here, but it wasn’t. The issue was Don Imus’ 'nappy-headed hos' comment as it compared to rap music and it’s influence on the black community. Nice way to skip out of issuing a more serious condemnation in favor of the general 'we’re all guilty' standard liberal line whenever people start focusing more intently on problem segments of our society. Guess the Senator didn’t want to risk offending any black voters with a long overdue bit of straight talk, eh? "

Tammy Bruce's website:

"However, whatever his merits and demerits, Imus is just another media curmudgeon. He's not particularly responsible for keeping black people down, and taking him out will not do anything to improve the state of the world. Everybody knows this. The firing is just a war trophy for the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton."

Ann Coulter:

"The reason people don't like what Imus said was because the women on the Rutgers basketball team aren't engaged in public discourse. They're not public figures, they don't have a forum, they aren't trying to influence public policy.
"They play basketball — quite well, apparently — and did nothing to bring on an attack on their looks or character. It's not the words Imus used: It would be just as bad if he had simply said the Rutgers women were ugly and loose.
"People claim to object to the words alone, but that's because everyone is trying to fit this incident into a PC worldview. It's like girls who say, 'It's not that you cheated on me; it's that you lied about it.' No — it's that you cheated.
"If Imus had called me a 'towheaded ho' or Al Sharpton a 'nappy-headed ho,' it would be what's known as 'funny.' (And if he called Anna Nicole Smith a 'flaxen-headed ho,' it would be 'absolutely accurate.') But he attacked the looks and morals of utterly innocent women, who had done nothing to inject themselves into public debate.
"Imus should apologize to the Rutgers women — and those women alone — send them flowers, and stop kissing Al Sharpton's ring. This wasn't an insult to all mankind, and certainly not an insult to Al Sharpton. Now, if Imus had called the basketball players 'fat, race-baiting black men with clownish hairstyles,' well, then perhaps Sharpton would be owed an apology."

Monica Crowley:


"We've caught Hillary Clinton in another lie, this time involving the Imus firestorm.
"Several days after the controversy broke out, Clinton decided it was safe for her to weigh in on the I-man's comments. Clinton was quoted in the New York Daily News and on her website as saying, 'I've never wanted to go on his show and I certainly don't ever intend to go on his show, and I felt that way before his latest outrageous, hateful, hurtful comments.'
But hold on. She never wanted to go on Imus? After all, her hubby Bill has Imus to thank for saving him in the 1992 New York primaries. Many say Bill Clinton's appearance on the Imus radio show helped him to win in New York and launch him to the national stage. Maybe Imus could do the same for her in 2007?
"It sure sounded like the Clinton camp wanted to go there, when Imus buddy Donald Trump called into the show on April 6th. Anyone who listed to Imus knew how he felt about Hillary. He called her 'Satan,' and vowed she would never appear on his program. That morning, Trump tried to change his mind:
'As you know I mentioned that Hillary wanted to really get on your show. She has a lot of respect for you but it doesn't seem to be reciprocal. She's a terrific woman and she'd do your show gladly but you don't seem to want to according to Bernard and according to watching you, you don't seem to want her on the show.'
"The interview raises some real questions: Was Trump speaking on behalf of the Clinton campaign or was he doing this totally on his own? If you listen to the interview, it sure sounds like Trump wasn't asking for himself. Who put Trump up to it?
"You'd think these would be good questions for the mainstream media to ask, but they've been too busy piling on a man who said a stupid thing and bowing to the pressures of two race-baiting hustlers."

Debbie Schlussel:

"These women--who seemed to be basking in their 15 minutes of fame quite exuberantly for women claiming to be upset by it--tried so hard to seem glum, it was hard to tell if I was watching a press conference . . . or extras tryouts for the Lifetime Channel's latest angry-women-done-wrong-by-the-White-man movie of the week, big-and-tall-size.
"Who are Essence Carson, Heather Zurich, and C. Vivian Stringer? Before Monday, we'd never heard of them. After all, they play in a college sport no-one on earth cares about: women's basketball, which has a popularity level lower than the XFL (pro-wrestling's failed football league, which didn't last a full season). And these women weren't even the champions. They lost.
"But now, even though we don't want to, we know their names, while we don't even know--and couldn't care less about--the names of the women on the team (University of Tennessee Volunteers) that beat them and actually won the NCAA women's basketball championship.
"Sounds to me like they owe Donald Imus a big thank you. He put them on the map, to the point that we know more of their names than we do pro women's hoops players. The WNBA President was so jealous that even she had to insert herself into the controversy by piling on with her Imus condemnation."

Kirsten Powers:

"This also isn't about free speech. Nobody is saying Imus should go to jail for what he said. The issue is whether there are standards that you apply to people in the public eye, and if one of those standards is that you don't tolerate blatantly racist comments. When you have a person on the record admitting that they hired someone to make racist jokes, then it's unclear how you cast them as a person who just made a 'mistake.' Seems like more of a 'plan' than a 'mistake.'"

Joe Conason:

"Whatever the true motivation behind the decisions by NBC and CBS to rid themselves of Don Imus, the executives who decided to jettison the bullying schlock jock managed to focus on what mattered most to them. Perhaps they were pandering to frightened advertisers or perhaps they were soothing outraged employees, but the network suits ultimately ignored all the special pleadings, racial diversions and other distracting irrelevancies.
"So should the rest of us, when Imus and his defenders whine about the injustice inflicted on him this week.
"It doesn't matter whether rappers or anybody else use the same disgusting language that Imus and his sidekick Bernard McGuirk used when describing the Rutgers basketball team as 'nappy-headed hos.' Imus himself tried out a version of this argument when he appeared on the Rev. Al Sharpton's radio show, pointing out that although he is indeed a white man, he is hip enough to know that 'ho' is a term of disrespect heard in the black community. This is a stupid argument, roughly akin to claiming that white ownership of slaves was justifiable because black Africans sold them. The only issue for NBC and CBS was the standard of discourse on their programming, not what some idiots may be saying somewhere else.
"It doesn't matter whether Sharpton -- or any of the other Imus critics -- has raised equally loud objections to vile rap lyrics. There are many reasons, of course, to discount Sharpton as a moral exemplar. Like Imus, he hasn't hesitated to exploit prejudice as part of his act. But changing the subject to the preacher's checkered background doesn't exonerate Imus. Regardless of the preacher's always amazing alacrity, he was not the victim here and his role is not the issue. What Imus did would demand redress even if Sharpton had never elbowed his way into the controversy."

Michelle Malkin:

"I believe top public officials and journalists who have appeared on Imus's show should take responsibility for enabling Imus—and should disavow his longstanding invective.
"But let's take a breath now and look around. Is the Sharpton & Jackson Circus truly committed to cleaning up cultural pollution that demeans women and perpetuates racial epithets?
"...What kind of relief do we get from this deadening, coarsening, dehumanizing barrage from young, black rappers and their music industry enablers who have helped turn America into Tourette's Nation?"

John McWhorter:

"Imus hosts a radio show and a lot of people listen to it. During a few seconds last week he said something tacky. The show went on, as did life. Black people continued to constitute most new AIDS cases, black men continued to come out of prison unsupervised. And we're supposed to be most interested in Imus saying 'nappy-headed ho's'?
"What creates that hypersensitivity is a poor racial self-image. Where, after all, did Imus pick up the very terminology he used? Rap music and the language young black people use themselves on the street to refer to one another.
"What Imus said is lowdown indeed, but so is the way blacks refer to each other. And life goes on."

Lastly, LaShawn Barber, who sums up my viewpoint better than I could:

"If black Americans in 2007 are this delicate and overreact to the slightest insults with this much unrighteous indignation, it’s pretty safe to say black people are not made the way they used to be, of stronger stuff, able to withstand truly demeaning and criminal treatment at the hands of true oppressors. It’s sad to know that the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of people who faced actual oppression are so much weaker, much less discerning, and much more undignified."

And this is just what I've read - there's much more out there. Who do you agree/disagree with?