April 06, 2007
Imus Sorry, So Sorry
The lawmakers investigating Alberto Gonzales' role in the U.S. attorney firings have told the attorney general that he can only clarify his previous statements so many times before they stop believing him. Might that not also apply to Don Imus, frequent offender of black Americans?
The widely syndicated talk radio host, who once delivered an address to the Radio and Television Correspondents Association that makes M.C. Rove look like something out of "Masterpiece Theater," said of the Rutgers University women's basketball team yesterday, "That's some nappy-headed hos there." Both he and MSNBC, which televises his radio show every weekday morning, issued swift apologies today.
(On yesterday's show, one of Imus' producers also called the Scarlet Knights "jigaboos," an old-timey, derogatory term for blacks. A transcript of the exchange can be found on Media Matters, and FAIR has a compilation of older incendiary quotes from Imus.)
The Philadelphia Inquirer's Howard Gensler believes "Imus has said so many offensive things, they're like white noise." The National Association of Black Journalists is calling for a boycott of Imus' show.
The flap is reminiscent of Ann Coulter's use of the word "faggot" at last month's CPAC conference, but it is unclear if the fallout will be the same. A handful of newspapers dropped Coulter's column after she applied the slur to presidential candidate John Edwards, but Imus has emerged from similar incidents relatively unscathed before. Even after he referred to then-New York Times White House correspondent Gwen Ifill* as that paper's "cleaning lady," top politicians and reporters continued to appear on his show.
But the difference here may be that the outrage over CPAC was very much driven by the conservative media, which called on its own to disassociate from the seemingly radioactive columnist/author. With Imus, it's unclear if he represents one group more than any other -- with the possible exception of the media itself.
*Ifill is the host of PBS' "Washington Week With Gwen Ifill," which is affiliated with National Journal.
