Op-Ed Column: Imus and the “Teaching Moment”

When MSNBC’s Howard Fineman spoke the other day with embattled radio host Don Imus, he inadvertently underscored the real issue behind Imus’ “nappy-heads hos” comment.

Fineman, also an editor at Newsweek and “regular guest on Imus in the Morning” (as noted in his MSNBC bio), had this to say about his Imus’ remarks:

FINEMAN: You know, the form of humor that you do here is risky, and sometimes it runs off the rails. Most of the people who listen to this show get the joke most of the time, and sometimes, you know, as David Carr said in The New York Times this morning, sometimes you go over the line so far you can't even see the line. And that's what happened in this case. And I think of all the stuff you've done and do do, and, you know, you make your mistakes -- we all make our mistakes. We all make mistakes. This was a big one. And I thought that the way you handled it just now -- and I'm not blowing smoke here -- I believe it, you know, was very heartfelt. And I know you well enough to know that that's the case and you're going to do everything you can to set it right.

You know, I don't know what'll happen. I think -- you know, it's a different time, Imus. You know, it's different than it was even a few years ago, politically. I mean, we may, you know -- and the environment, politically, has changed. And some of the stuff that you used to do, you probably can't do anymore.

…

FINEMAN: You just can't. Because the times have changed. I mean, just looking specifically at the African-American situation. I mean, hello, Barack Obama's got twice the number of contributors as anybody else in the race.

…

FINEMAN: I mean, you know, things have changed. And the kind of -- some of the kind of humor that you used to do you can't do anymore. And that's just the way it is.

First, Don Imus has built a career on doing  this “risky” humor. Imus and his sidekicks have been making such comments for decades. Fineman directly refers to this when he says, “…the kind of humor that you used to do you can't do anymore.” But let’s be specific about this kind of humor. Because it has certainly encompassed more than just racism over the years. Moreover, calling Imus’ brand of humor “risky” affords it an air of originality or iconoclasm that it most certainly does not deserve.

Far from merely muttering offensive stereotypes into his microphone - or laughing along with, or feigning disapproval of, such remarks if they instead come from his crew - Imus has been much more inclusive over the years. In addition to targeting the lowest common denominator with racist “jokes” (including anti-Semitism), misogyny and homophobia also round out the Don Imus School of Humor. Humor, by the way, that, far from taking risks to enlighten through genuine wit, creativity and iconoclastic thought, instead embraces the banal hackery of age-old stereotypes. The kind of yuck-yucks you might find in one of those old joke books, where the most offensive premise and punchline built around a stereotype is supposed to be the funniest; ditto for female body parts, female intelligence, and the sexual preferences and consequential situations of gays and lesbians. The type of stereotype-driven jokes that predate the turn of the 19th and 20th century, having been passed down - like racism, sexism and homophobia themselves - from one generation to the next.

Such mainstream news stars as Fineman, Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, David Gregory and Andrea Mitchell, and politians like John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry and Joe Biden, make (or made) regular visits to Imus’ studios. So accepted was this annointed dean of beltway politics, MSNBC gladly began to simulcast his radio broadcasts some years ago. The dark reality, however, which no one in the mainstream media wants to touch (many of them because they’re regulars on his show), is that this type of humor – uninventive and unfunny, and as stultifyingly boring as it is offensive – has always been embraced by the establishment. Why? Because far from challenging the powers that be, it feeds into the divisive messages that perpetuate stereotypes and dims rather than enlightens our national political discourse. Humor that lays bare our culture’s broad hypocrisy – on such topics as politics, media, sex, religion, war, poverty, health and death – is of course anathema to the same establishment. (That’s why Everybody Loves Raymond.)

So when Fineman tells his buddy Imus that “things have changed,” and when he references Barack Obama’s fundraising ability despite his skin color as evidence of such change, what he’s really saying here is: Gee, we might not be able to continue padding our wallets with humor steeped in racism, misogyny and homophobia – you know, the stuff you’ve been doing since I’ve known you. And more pointedly, since so much money is at stake, Fineman is telling Imus: You’re just going to have to be a little more subtle about it. That’s all. When Fineman says, “Most of the people who listen to this show get the joke most of the time,” it's another way of saying that all of Imus' guests know he and his crew say these awful things, but, well, they all know he doesn’t really mean it. If Imus did, that would be another story. Thus, with this, Fineman provides cover for Imus, himself, his fellow guests and even the fans who tune in.

Fineman's following words are quite telling as well: “…and sometimes, you know, as David Carr said in The New York Times this morning, sometimes you go over the line so far you can't even see the line. And that's what happened in this case.” What is the line to which Fineman’s referring? It’s the one that calls any attention to the racist, misogynistic and homophobic banal-athon that occurs regularly on Imus in the Morning.

All of that said, Imus shouldn’t be fired for this unless MSNBC, WFAN and every politician and member of the media who frequent his show denounce the things that Imus and his crew have uttered over the years and apologize for their active patronage. The height of hypocrisy is to hear people like Fineman tell us that Imus has crossed the line. Moreover, I don’t want to see Don Imus apologize to the Rutgers' women's basketball team any more than I thirsted for Michael Richards to hold mea culpa meetings with members of the black community. This is nothing but self-serving PR. Imus didn’t suddenly wake up one morning and decide he shouldn’t say racially offensive things anymore; he’s been doing it for over three decades and it’s made him millions of dollars and he’s spread that wealth to mainstream media and politicians. Rather, it appears he simply got caught in the crosshairs of a moment. Imus himself is probably walking around wondering why that day was any different than the rest. (Incidentally, it is worth noting that Imusgate blew up less than three weeks after the radio host was hounding the Bush administration over its scandal at Walter Reed. Though this may have no correlation whatsoever, given the administration's vindictive track record, coupled with the fact that Imus has been doing the same shtick for years, it's certainly not out of the realm of possibility that that's why Imus' words suddenly hit the fan.)

No, firing Imus won’t achieve much. In fact, it may even backfire at a later date. It’s important to remember that free speech applies to everyone. The responsibility for his success lies with the millions of listers who tune in, the advertisers who fund his show, his bosses who pay his salary, and, of course, the news media figures and politicians who keep coming back for more. And let’s face it, there are far worse popular media figures than Don Imus, ones, for instance, who have openly called for the murder of those who dissented or reported certain news items during the Bush years – media stars like Ann Coulter and Melanie Morgan, who still make regular visits on TV and radio. Or the  comedian Rush Limbaugh. (Just stop by Media Matters for a treasure trove of all the revolting, fascist, xenophobic, racist, anti-gay, anti-women rhetoric spewing forth from radio broadcasts around this country; many of these same hosts either pop up on the networks as guests or, like Bill O'Reilly or Glenn Beck, have TV shows of their own.)

You want to really punish Imus? You want to see him squirm? Keep him on the air but challenge him to be funny without relying on hateful clichéd stereotypes. Fineman said that Imus’ trip to meet with the women at Rutgers would be a “teaching moment” for “us all.” I’d prefer to see Imus attempt humor that strays from his tired vile bag of tricks, and to admit, along with his courtiers and overlords in the media and Washington, that the “nappy-headed hos” comment was all just part of the game, i.e., it pays the bills.

Now that would be a true teaching moment.

Comments

[MediaBloodhound]

Imus and the “Teaching Moment”

[pistol pete]

I really think many people will change their minds about Imus when they discover he has entered therapy. Check out the details on my blog - "Necessary Therapy".

[cheswick]

MSNBC just fired his ass. To hear NBC President Steve Capus tell it to David Gregory and Keith Olbermann tonight, you would think this wasn't about money. Capus says he took into account the feelings of his employees who were very upset and that was the reason for Imus getting the boot. The real reason is that companies were withdrawing their advertising dollars.
From CNN:
At least eight companies have pulled their ads from the show, including Staples, General Motors, Sprint Nextel, GlaxoSmithKline, Procter & Gamble, PetMed Express, American Express and Bigelow Tea.

Most of the MSM emphasized the wrong part of the Imus story. "Is Imus racist" and "Should he be fired?" are the dog bites man questions. Of course he should be fired (long ago). Of course he's a racist. Echoing what you've written, the man bites dog questions would be, "Could you please tell me Mr. Russert, Mr. Lieberman, Mr. Rich, et al...how could you go on Imus' show after he called Gwen Ifill a cleaning lady? And didn't all his previous racist and in at least one case anti-Semitic outbursts these past years make you think twice about appearing on his show?" FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) has been writing for years about these pols and journalists going on this racist old fart's show.

[MediaBloodhound]

"...old fart." Ageism! I may have to ban you. Ha.

Your point is well taken about the advertisers running away. I'm sure that had more to do with it than anything.

I also find a similarity here to the way the lower-rung soldiers took all the heat for committing torture when it had been ordered by their commanders and sanctioned by Rumsfeld and this White House. Imus is one of the establishment media's monkeys. He's wrong to do what he does, but he goes out every day and performs for them and makes them millions of dollars. And now they turn around and feign surprise at the words he used.

[cheswick]

Ageism? Uh-oh, you're right.....cue the now in vogue vague apology: I'd like to apologize to anyone who may have taken offense to my words--in other words, if some of you senile #$%^ couldn't figure out I was kidding, it's on you Methuselah.

Back to NBC Prez Capus: I forgot to mention that Capus told both David Gregory and Olbermann that Imus' firing was a sad day for him because he thinks so highly of Imus and has been a listener to the show himself for years. Well now, that begs the question: If you, Mr. Capus, have been a listener for years and have heard the Gwen Ifill comment and all the other despicable racist Imus comments, why would you continue to employ him until yesterday? Since Capus' decision to fire Imus came only after the advertisers started pulling the plug, the answer is obvious and can be summed up by that great quote which is either from Shakespeare or Grandmaster Flash: "'Cause it's all about money--ain't a damn thing funny."

[scuttle]

NY Times column by Bob Herbert:

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/opinion/12herbert.html?hp

April 12, 2007

Paying the Price

By BOB HERBERT
You knew something was up early in the day. As soon as I told executives at MSNBC that I was going to write about the “60 Minutes” piece, which was already in pretty wide circulation, they began acting very weird. We’ll get back to you, they said.

In a “60 Minutes” interview with Don Imus broadcast in July 1998, Mike Wallace said of the “Imus in the Morning” program, “It’s dirty and sometimes racist.”

Mr. Imus then said: “Give me an example. Give me one example of one racist incident.” To which Mr. Wallace replied, “You told Tom Anderson, the producer, in your car, coming home, that Bernard McGuirk is there to do nigger jokes.”

Mr. Imus said, “Well, I’ve nev — I never use that word.”

Mr. Wallace then turned to Mr. Anderson, his producer. “Tom,” he said.

“I’m right here,” said Mr. Anderson.

Mr. Imus then said to Mr. Anderson, “Did I use that word?”

Mr. Anderson said, “I recall you using that word.”

“Oh, O.K.,” said Mr. Imus. “Well, then I used that word. But I mean — of course, that was an off-the-record conversation. But ——”

“The hell it was,” said Mr. Wallace.

The transcript was pure poison. A source very close to Don Imus told me last night, “They did not want to wait for your piece to come out.”

For MSNBC, Mr. Imus’s “nappy-headed ho’s” comment about the Rutgers women’s basketball team was bad enough. Putting the word “nigger” into the so-called I-man’s mouth was beyond the pale.

The roof was caving in on Mr. Imus. More advertisers were pulling the plug. And Bruce Gordon, a member of the CBS Corp. board of directors and former head of the N.A.A.C.P., said publicly that Mr. Imus should be fired.

But some of the most telling and persuasive criticism came from an unlikely source — internally at the network that televised Mr. Imus’s program. Women, especially, were angry and upset. Powerful statements were made during in-house meetings by women at NBC and MSNBC — about how black women are devalued in this country, how they are demeaned by white men and black men.

White and black women spoke emotionally about the way black women are frequently trashed in the popular culture, especially in music, and about the way news outlets give far more attention to stories about white women in trouble.

Phil Griffin, a senior vice president at NBC News who oversaw the Imus show for MSNBC, told me yesterday, “It touched a huge nerve.”

Whether or not Mr. McGuirk was hired for the specific noxious purpose referred to in the “60 Minutes” interview, he has pretty much lived up to that job description. He’s a minstrel, a white man who has gleefully led the Imus pack into some of the most disgusting, degrading attempts at racial (not to mention sexist) humor that it’s possible to imagine.

Blacks were jigaboos, Sambos and Brilloheads. Women were bitches and, above all else, an endless variety of ever-ready sexual vessels, born to be degraded.

The question now is how long the “Imus in the Morning” radio show will last. Just last month, in a reference to a speech by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Selma, Ala., Mr. McGuirk called Mrs. Clinton a bitch and predicted she would “have cornrows and gold teeth” by the time her presidential primary campaign against Senator Barack Obama is over.

Way back in 1994, a friend of mine, the late Lars-Erik Nelson, a terrific reporter and columnist at The Daily News and Newsday, mentioned an Imus segment that offered a “satirical” rap song that gave advice to President Clinton on what to do about Paula Jones: “Pimp-slap the ho.” Mr. Nelson also wrote that there was a song on the program dealing with Hillary Clinton’s menstrual cycle.

So this hateful garbage has been going on for a long, long time. There was nothing new about the tone or the intent of Mr. Imus’s “nappy-headed ho’s” comment. As Bryan Monroe, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, told me the other night, “It’s a long pattern of behavior, and at some point somebody has to say enough is enough.”

The crucial issue goes well beyond Don Imus’s pathetically infantile behavior. The real question is whether this controversy is loud enough to shock Americans at long last into the realization of just how profoundly racist and sexist the culture is.

It appears that on this issue the general public, and the women at Mr. Imus’s former network, are far ahead of the establishment figures, the politicians and the media biggies, who were always so anxious to appear on the show and to defend Mr. Imus.

That is a very good sign.

[MediaBloodhound]

"The crucial issue goes well beyond Don Imus’s pathetically infantile behavior. The real question is whether this controversy is loud enough to shock Americans at long last into the realization of just how profoundly racist and sexist the culture is."

How can it be if no one - not his bosses or patrons or fans - admit that they're culpable, having been well aware of his egregious shtick for decades? Imus will probably just go to satellite radio. The politicians and news media figures who frequented his show all realize that this will be forgotten in a couple of weeks, and their association with Imus along with it (which hardly comes up in the national discussion even now). Maybe I'm being cynical, but I doubt it will change anything.

[sybil]

Sometimes I think Imus should've been fired and sometimes I don't.
Frank Rich is confused, too:

Everybody Hates Don Imus

By FRANK RICH (NY Times, 4/15)

FAMILIAR as I am with the warp speed of media, I was still taken aback by the velocity of Don Imus’s fall after he uttered an indefensible racist and sexist slur about the Rutgers women’s basketball team. Even in that short span, there’s been an astounding display of hypocrisy, sanctimony and self-congratulation from nearly every side of the debate, starting with Al Sharpton, who has yet to apologize for his leading role in the Tawana Brawley case, the 1980s racial melee prompted by unproven charges much like those that soiled the Duke lacrosse players.

It’s possible that the only people in this whole sorry story who are not hypocrites are the Rutgers teammates and their coach, C. Vivian Stringer. And perhaps even Don Imus himself, who, while talking way too much about black people he has known and ill children he has helped, took full responsibility for his own catastrophic remarks and didn’t try to blame the ensuing media lynching on the press, bloggers or YouTube. Unlike Mel Gibson, Michael Richards and Isaiah Washington, to take just three entertainers who have recently delivered loud religious, racial or sexual slurs, Imus didn’t hire a P.R. crisis manager and ostentatiously enter rehab or undergo psychiatric counseling. “I dished it out for a long time,” he said on his show last week, “and now it’s my time to take it.”

Among the hypocrites surrounding Imus, I’ll include myself. I’ve been a guest on his show many times since he first invited me in the early 1990s, when I was a theater critic. I’ve almost always considered him among the smarter and more authentic conversationalists I’ve encountered as an interviewee. As a book author, I could always use the publicity.

Of course I was aware of many of his obnoxious comments about minority groups, including my own, Jews. Sometimes he aimed invective at me personally. I wasn’t seriously bothered by much of it, even when it was unfunny or made me wince, because I saw him as equally offensive to everyone. The show’s crudest interludes struck me as burlesque.

I do not know Imus off the air and have no idea whether he is a good person, any more than I know whether Jerry Lewis, another entertainer who raises millions for sick children, is a good person. But as a listener and sometime guest, I didn’t judge Imus to be a bigot. Perhaps I felt this way in part because Imus vehemently inveighed against racism in real life, most recently in decrying the political ads in last year’s Senate campaign linking a black Tennessee congressman, Harold Ford, to white women. Perhaps I gave Imus a pass because the insults were almost always aimed at people in the public eye, whether politicians, celebrities or journalists — targets with the forums to defend themselves.

And perhaps I was kidding myself. What Imus said about the Rutgers team landed differently, not least because his slur was aimed at young women who had no standing in the world of celebrity, and who had done nothing in public except behave as exemplary student athletes. The spectacle of a media star verbally assaulting them, and with a creepy, dismissive laugh, as if the whole thing were merely a disposable joke, was ugly. You couldn’t watch it without feeling that some kind of crime had been committed. That was true even before the world met his victims. So while I still don’t know whether Imus is a bigot, there was an inhuman contempt in the moment that sounded like hate to me. You can see it and hear it in the video clip in a way that isn’t conveyed by his words alone.

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.

Liberals are kidding themselves if they think the Imus firing won’t have a potentially chilling effect on comics who push the line. Let’s not forget that Bill Maher, an Imus defender last week, was dropped by FedEx, Sears, ABC affiliates and eventually ABC itself after he broke the P.C. code of 9/11. Conservatives are kidding themselves if they think the Imus execution won’t impede Ann Coulter’s nasty invective on the public airwaves. As Al Franken pointed out to Larry King on Wednesday night, CNN harbors Glenn Beck, who has insinuated that the first Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, is a terrorist (and who has also declared that “faggot” is nothing more than “a naughty name”). Will Time Warner and its advertisers be called to account? Already in the Imus aftermath, the born-again blogger Tom DeLay has called for the firing of Rosie O’Donnell because of her “hateful” views on Chinese-Americans, conservative Christians and President Bush.

That said, corporations, whether television or radio networks or movie studios or commercial sponsors, are free to edit or cancel any content. No one has an inalienable right to be broadcast or published or given a movie or music contract. Whether MSNBC and CBS acted out of genuine principle or economic necessity is a debate already raging. Just as Imus’s show defied easy political definition — he has both kissed up to Dick Cheney as a guest and called him a war criminal — so does the chatter about what happened over the past week. MSNBC, forever unsure of its identity, seems to have found a new calling by turning that debate into a running series, and I say, go for it.

The biggest cliché of the debate so far is the constant reiteration that this will be a moment for a national “conversation” about race and sex and culture. Do people really want to have this conversation, or just talk about having it? If they really want to, it means we have to ask ourselves why this debacle has given permission to talking heads on television to repeat Imus’s offensive words so insistently that cable news could hardly take time out to note the shocking bombing in the Baghdad Green Zone. Some even upped the ante: Donna Brazile managed to drag “jigaboo” into Wolf Blitzer’s sedate “Situation Room” on CNN.

If we really want to have this conversation, it also means we have to have a nonposturing talk about hip-hop lyrics, “Borat,” “South Park” and maybe Larry David, too. As James Poniewozik pointed out in his smart cover article for Time last week, an important question emerged from an Imus on-air soliloquy as he tried to defend himself: “This phrase that I use, it originated in the black community. That didn’t give me a right to use it, but that’s where it originated. Who calls who that and why? We need to know that. I need to know that.”

My 22-year-old son, a humor writer who finds Imus an anachronistic and unfunny throwback to the racial-insult humor of the Frank Sinatra-Sammy Davis Jr. Rat Pack ilk, raises a complementary issue. He argues that when Sacha Baron Cohen makes fun of Jews and gays, he can do so because he’s not doing it as himself but as a fictional character. But try telling that to the Anti-Defamation League, which criticized Mr. Baron Cohen, an observant Jew, for making sport of a real country (Kazakhstan) and worried that the “Borat” audience “may not always be sophisticated enough to get the joke, and that some may even find it reinforcing their bigotry.”

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.”

Listening to Les Moonves of CBS speak with such apparent sincerity of how his network was helping to change the culture by firing Imus, I couldn’t help but remember that one of CBS’s own cultural gifts to America has been “Big Brother,” the reality game show that cloisters a dozen or so strangers in a house for weeks to see how they get along. Maybe Mr. Moonves could put his prime-time schedule where his mouth is and stop milking that format merely for the fun of humiliation, voyeurism and sexual high jinks. If locking Imus and his team in a house with Coach Stringer and her team 24/7 isn’t must-see TV that moves this conversation forward, then I don’t know what is.