Imus in the Mourning

I remember the Imus show from his beginnings in New York. He was on WNBC. Well, he sort of was on WNBC. He missed so many shows because he was either drunk or stoned that NBC fired him and exiled him to Cleveland for a coupe of years before bringing him back to New York. I was a bit of a fan for some of his bits, such as the pompous evangelist Rev. Billy Sol Hargas (“I don’t care if it rains or freezes/ long as I got my plastic Jesus/ riding on the dashboard of my car”), but on the whole, I didn’t really care. I was more than surprised when he returned to New York and became a major hit, so much so that big-time politicians and serious writers clamored for airtime with him.

Imus has been doing his current shtick for many years and many people are flabbergasted that he got canned for his “nappy haired ho’s” comment regarding the Rutgers women’s basketball team. The claim is that Imus used language common to rap and hip-hop music for more than a decade.

So what went wrong and why was Imus canned? CBS corporate suits caved like a West Virginia coal mine when Rev. Sharpton et al. called for Imus’s head on a platter. CBS, through its other entertainment arms, has long profited from the racism, vulgarity and crudity of rap and hip-hop. What gave their corporate cowardice adequate cover was that Imus made a fatal mistake: previously, he would insult groups or specific public figures who certainly were both deserving of or capable of withstanding attack by dint of their public positions or publicity seeking, here he attacked specific individuals who had done nothing to warrant this attack.

This verbal assault on the Rutgers women certainly deserved action by CBS, and the initial announcement of a two-week unpaid suspension sounds just about right. In light of his mea culpas at the feet of Al Sharpton (why did he gave Sharpton this power to grant absolution?), and his face-to-face apology to the Rutgers women’s basketball team, Imus’s termination was nothing less than a corporate lynching to satisfy a racist mob.

What does it all mean? This country is marked by the permanent stain of slavery and racial prejudice. Efforts over the past 50 years to make amends for our national history have made progress in admitting our past and correcting our present, but racism and its legacy remain a clear and present danger to our future. Racism exists in all communities, black and white, and to various degrees, from subtle and silent to outspoken and violent. The chasm between certain segments of our society is wide and the space between us is filled with the corrosive acid produced by the professional provocateurs and their willing associates. Sometimes the issue of race is just a race to the bottom.