Give Imus and Rosie a Break
Steve Shives
April 09, 2007
This past Wednesday on his nationally syndicated radio show, also aired on television live on MSNBC, Don Imus referred to the predominantly black Rutgers University women’s basketball team as “some nappy-headed hos.” The comment, said during an exchange with producer Bernard McGuirk and intended as a joke, has black leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton demanding either his resignation or termination, and repeated, increasingly penitent apologies from Imus have done nothing to back them off.
Too often we (especially white folks like me) think of racism in the past tense, as a solved problem, so I get why Sharpton, Jackson, et al are upset by what Imus said. What I don’t get is why they are so eager to silence the man, who has been a dependable supporter of liberal and Democratic causes in the past (though he insists he is not a liberal, Imus vocally supported Harold Ford Jr. and Joe Lieberman this past election, and John Kerry’s 2004 bid to unseat George W. Bush), for making a racially insensitive joke.
Several weeks ago at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., Ann Coulter ignited a similar firestorm by calling John Edwards a “faggot” at the conclusion of her remarks to the conference. Voices from all sides—including me, emphatically not including any major Republican presidential candidate—denounced Coulter’s remarks and Coulter herself. But there are differences between Coulter’s slur and Imus’s.
For one thing, Don Imus clearly has no serious racist intentions. Though he has presented his show as an informal political forum the last twenty years or so and especially since the MSNBC simulcasts began in 1996, he is still first and foremost an entertainer. The majority of the show is comprised of banter between Imus, his newsman, his sports reporter, and his various producers who chime-in on the air about whatever they happen to be talking about. When politicians and pundits call in as guests, Imus often regards even the ones he claims to be fond of with muted contempt. One of the few guests toward whom Imus is unabashedly admiring is Harold Ford Jr., the black former congressman who unsuccessfully ran for a U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee this past November. When TV ads ran in Tennessee implying that Ford was a frequent guest at the Playboy Mansion and had a particular taste for white women, Imus was among those labeling the ad racist and strenuously calling for Ford’s opponent to retract it.
Coulter is a hateful and ignorant woman and CPAC and like organizations ought to avoid her lest her reek rub off on them. Imus is a legitimate independent voice in the political media and it would be a real shame to lose him. Is he politically incorrect? Of course he is. Was he right to apologize for what he said? Certainly he was. Unlike Coulter, Imus has readily offered apology after apology in the few days since he made his “nappy headed hos” remark. Should the guy—who also uses his show to raise awareness of problems facing disabled veterans, and the possible connection between mercury in vaccines and autism, and many other worthwhile causes—be fired from his radio and TV gig? Absolutely not.
I’m alarmed by the increasingly reflexive demands from both the conservative and liberal camps that dissonant voices be silenced. Imus’s isn’t the only head being called for; conservatives have been ratcheting up their campaign to have Rosie O’Donnell removed as host of The View. Rosie’s trespass: bitter, unceasing criticism of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and the war in Iraq; and recently touting the delusional theory that the U.S. government perpetrated the 9/11 attacks itself. For expressing these views, some say, Rosie no longer deserves a forum on national television.
Rosie O’Donnell is one of the most unlikable personalities on television (right there with Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, for my money). I don’t find her funny or intelligent and I think the “inside job” theory of 9/11 is ridiculous and pathetic. If ABC wants to fire her, that’s up to them, as it’s up to MSNBC and WFAN if they want to can Imus. There’s just something very troubling about wanting to remove people from the conversation for saying something insensitive or unpopular.
Sharpton calls for the termination of Imus, but what about Glenn Beck? Beck’s radio show and TV program on CNN Headline News is constantly a forum for bigotry, misogyny, religious intolerance, and war mongering, and yet Sharpton has been a guest of Beck’s on multiple occasions. Beck is cut from the same cloth as Coulter, a proudly, willfully ignorant man who spews racism, sexism and homophobia to a nationwide audience on a daily basis. Yet it’s Beck whom Sharpton engages, and Imus whom he tries to destroy.
And I could cite still more examples. The campaigns of liberal bloggers on valuable websites like Think Progress to encourage the Congressional Black Caucus to cancel debates aired on Fox News because of a lame joke made by Roger Ailes at the expense of Barack Obama. Ailes is a transparently partisan guy, his “Obama/Osama” joke wasn’t funny, and his channel is anything but fair and balanced, but why is ignoring the other side better than engaging it? How is holding a debate in the friendlier environment of CNN better than taking the fight right to the opposition on Fox?
This is the real danger of political correctness. Conservatives whine and complain about having to use terms like “African American” and “Native American” and “alternate lifestyle,” but these are juvenile, superficial gripes. The real reason to resist political correctness is that it stifles communication. Too much political correctness makes it impossible to actually talk about anything. It makes you wary of frank and open discussion. That’s where we find ourselves now in our politics, with politicians repeating and rephrasing the same bland, meaningless platitudes and euphemisms they’ve been throwing at us all our lives, and most of the press only too happy to play along.
We might not always like what Imus or Rosie O’Donnell (or Glenn Beck or Ann Coulter, much as it pains me to include them) have to say, but at least they tend to actually say things. In today’s idea- and honesty-free politics, that’s too precious a thing to just throw away over a bad joke.
Too often we (especially white folks like me) think of racism in the past tense, as a solved problem, so I get why Sharpton, Jackson, et al are upset by what Imus said. What I don’t get is why they are so eager to silence the man, who has been a dependable supporter of liberal and Democratic causes in the past (though he insists he is not a liberal, Imus vocally supported Harold Ford Jr. and Joe Lieberman this past election, and John Kerry’s 2004 bid to unseat George W. Bush), for making a racially insensitive joke.
Several weeks ago at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., Ann Coulter ignited a similar firestorm by calling John Edwards a “faggot” at the conclusion of her remarks to the conference. Voices from all sides—including me, emphatically not including any major Republican presidential candidate—denounced Coulter’s remarks and Coulter herself. But there are differences between Coulter’s slur and Imus’s.
For one thing, Don Imus clearly has no serious racist intentions. Though he has presented his show as an informal political forum the last twenty years or so and especially since the MSNBC simulcasts began in 1996, he is still first and foremost an entertainer. The majority of the show is comprised of banter between Imus, his newsman, his sports reporter, and his various producers who chime-in on the air about whatever they happen to be talking about. When politicians and pundits call in as guests, Imus often regards even the ones he claims to be fond of with muted contempt. One of the few guests toward whom Imus is unabashedly admiring is Harold Ford Jr., the black former congressman who unsuccessfully ran for a U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee this past November. When TV ads ran in Tennessee implying that Ford was a frequent guest at the Playboy Mansion and had a particular taste for white women, Imus was among those labeling the ad racist and strenuously calling for Ford’s opponent to retract it.
Coulter is a hateful and ignorant woman and CPAC and like organizations ought to avoid her lest her reek rub off on them. Imus is a legitimate independent voice in the political media and it would be a real shame to lose him. Is he politically incorrect? Of course he is. Was he right to apologize for what he said? Certainly he was. Unlike Coulter, Imus has readily offered apology after apology in the few days since he made his “nappy headed hos” remark. Should the guy—who also uses his show to raise awareness of problems facing disabled veterans, and the possible connection between mercury in vaccines and autism, and many other worthwhile causes—be fired from his radio and TV gig? Absolutely not.
I’m alarmed by the increasingly reflexive demands from both the conservative and liberal camps that dissonant voices be silenced. Imus’s isn’t the only head being called for; conservatives have been ratcheting up their campaign to have Rosie O’Donnell removed as host of The View. Rosie’s trespass: bitter, unceasing criticism of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and the war in Iraq; and recently touting the delusional theory that the U.S. government perpetrated the 9/11 attacks itself. For expressing these views, some say, Rosie no longer deserves a forum on national television.
Rosie O’Donnell is one of the most unlikable personalities on television (right there with Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, for my money). I don’t find her funny or intelligent and I think the “inside job” theory of 9/11 is ridiculous and pathetic. If ABC wants to fire her, that’s up to them, as it’s up to MSNBC and WFAN if they want to can Imus. There’s just something very troubling about wanting to remove people from the conversation for saying something insensitive or unpopular.
Sharpton calls for the termination of Imus, but what about Glenn Beck? Beck’s radio show and TV program on CNN Headline News is constantly a forum for bigotry, misogyny, religious intolerance, and war mongering, and yet Sharpton has been a guest of Beck’s on multiple occasions. Beck is cut from the same cloth as Coulter, a proudly, willfully ignorant man who spews racism, sexism and homophobia to a nationwide audience on a daily basis. Yet it’s Beck whom Sharpton engages, and Imus whom he tries to destroy.
And I could cite still more examples. The campaigns of liberal bloggers on valuable websites like Think Progress to encourage the Congressional Black Caucus to cancel debates aired on Fox News because of a lame joke made by Roger Ailes at the expense of Barack Obama. Ailes is a transparently partisan guy, his “Obama/Osama” joke wasn’t funny, and his channel is anything but fair and balanced, but why is ignoring the other side better than engaging it? How is holding a debate in the friendlier environment of CNN better than taking the fight right to the opposition on Fox?
This is the real danger of political correctness. Conservatives whine and complain about having to use terms like “African American” and “Native American” and “alternate lifestyle,” but these are juvenile, superficial gripes. The real reason to resist political correctness is that it stifles communication. Too much political correctness makes it impossible to actually talk about anything. It makes you wary of frank and open discussion. That’s where we find ourselves now in our politics, with politicians repeating and rephrasing the same bland, meaningless platitudes and euphemisms they’ve been throwing at us all our lives, and most of the press only too happy to play along.
We might not always like what Imus or Rosie O’Donnell (or Glenn Beck or Ann Coulter, much as it pains me to include them) have to say, but at least they tend to actually say things. In today’s idea- and honesty-free politics, that’s too precious a thing to just throw away over a bad joke.