The Imus Enablers Are Ba-a-a-ack!

It didn't take long for the Don Imus enablers to re-emerge. Just months after the racist, sexist and homophobic shock jock was fired for his on-air characterization of the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos" -- and less than two weeks after Citadel Broadcasting announced his impending return to radio -- the Big Media and Big Politics elite are crawling out of the woodwork to embrace Imus all over again.

It's no surprise that executives of major media corporations rushed to defend Imus by claiming, as did Citadel Broadcasting CEO Farid Suleman, "He's more than paid the price for what he did." After all, as recently noted in the New York Observer, "redemption and rehabilitation are secondary concerns" for Citadel. Phil Boyce, operations manager at the company's flagship station WABC, spelled it out in stark terms, explaining, "Obviously, there are a couple of reasons to look at him, but the biggest reason is the revenue opportunity. There's a lot of money to be made there. And we're in the business of making money."

But what excuses and explanations are being offered by the many leading journalists and politicians -- some of whom distanced themselves from the self-styled "I-Man" in the wake of the Rutgers controversy -- who now say they will once again appear on his program? No amount of high-toned talk about "guilt and redemption" and "second chances" can obscure the serial offenses of a man who made a career -- and tens of millions of dollars -- from repeatedly using hate speech against women, gays, minorities and foreigners in exchange for cheap laughs, hot controversy and higher ratings.

Consider, for example, the curious case of CNN political commentator James Carville, who had the temerity to compare the travails of Imus to those of his former boss Bill Clinton. "I think I've had some history of defending friends of mine that have been in uncomfortable circumstances," Carville told the Observer. "I defend the speaker, not the speech. If there's no redemption, what are we here for?" Dare I suggest that Carville -- set to appear as a guest on Imus' first day back, December 3 -- is there for publicity, self-aggrandizement, access to the I-Man's audience, and the benefit of the shock jock's well-known ability to help sell books?

Sadly, Carville is not alone in his purportedly principled stance. In fact, many of Imus' previous enablers from the corrupt nexus of politics and media are welcoming him back. Former Senator and presidential candidate Bob Kerrey, for example, recently gave Imus his own "Seal of approval" in an article in the New York Daily News.

Kerrey began by comparing Imus not to President Clinton but to "Freddie Krueger, the terrifying lead character in 'Nightmare on Elm Street.'" To Kerrey, "as with Freddie, there is something about the I-Man that is scary but irresistible." After urging fellow Democrats, particularly those running for president, to "sit down, chit chat and legitimize a man they once reviled as something close to a racist," Kerrey went on to note, "I myself have appeared on Imus before and would welcome the chance to go on the show again."

At least Kerrey was honest about his motivation for doing so: "As offensive as his remarks were about the Rutgers women's basketball team... he will have a big and influential audience," Kerrey said. Moreover, to Kerrey's mind, "Imus adds a lot to the American political debate." Apparently, epithets like "brillohead, dark meat, Mandingos, Uncle Ben, gooks, chinks, slanty-eyed bastards, queers, homos, ho's, lesbos, gorillas, pimps, and knuckle-dragging" African-Americans are among these worthy contributions to our political discourse.

But Kerrey offered "another reason" he believes politicians shouldn't boycott Imus. "If they keep away from the show all the way through next year, it could do real political damage, if not in votes lost, at least in courage points," he says. "We can't afford to start putting our interviewers through purity tests." Instead, Democratic politicians should simply look the other way when confronted with the "impurity" of the I-Man's transparent racism and trade their silent complicity for access to his audience of millions and their votes.

Kerrey's exhortation aside, to date only one current Democratic presidential candidate has decided to return to the racist ranter's airwaves. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson will ignore Imus' history of on-air racial blunders, since, in the words of his press secretary, Tom Reynolds, he "strongly believes this is a society of forgiveness and second chances, and that the radio host has paid his debt for his mistake." On the Republican side, Rudy Giuliani is already on record as saying he would not boycott the shock jock, and Arizona Senator John McCain says he will return to Imus' show, since he thinks the talker deserves -- here we go again -- a second chance. "I believe in redemption, and I've made so many mistakes in my life and I've asked people to give me another opportunity," McCain said. "What he did was unacceptable, but all of us in life, I think, ought to be able to move forward."

In addition to Big Politics figures such as Kerrey, Richardson, Giuliani, McCain and Carville, other leading Imus enablers include such media luminaries as David Gregory, Andrea Mitchell and Tim Russert of NBC News. Russert recently told Aaron Barnhart of The Kansas City Star that he would return to the show, if his bosses at General Electric gave their permission. "If he asked me to come back and talk about political developments, I would absolutely do that," Russert said. "But I guess I'll have to check with the folks at NBC."

Perhaps Russert's corporate overlords will conveniently refuse permission. Here's hoping they follow the lead of Newsweek, whose managing editor Jon Meacham, editor-at-large Evan Thomas, and columnists Jonathan Alter and Anna Quindlen were once Imus regulars as well. They got off the hook last week when a Newsweek spokesperson announced, "We will not participate in the Imus program."

New York Times columnists Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd, along withTimes Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus, also benefited in the past from their appearances with Imus. Given the tone of the apologia Rich penned for the Times last April in the wake of the 'nappy headed ho's' affair, the odds seem good he will return to the program. In his column, Rich accurately included himself "Among the hypocrites surrounding Imus... 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... As a book author, I could always use the publicity." In exchange, Rich explained, he was willing to look the other way: "Of course I was aware of many of his obnoxious comments about minority groups, including my own, Jews." Of course...

Times Book Review editor Tanenhaus -- whose biography of Whittaker Chambers was praised by the I-Man -- also wrote in The Times about his appearances on Imus in the Morning. In the article, entitled "Playing Along with Imus," Tanenhaus mused about the "surprisingly muted signals from some of the most thoughtful people" -- authors and journalists -- "who have traveled in the curious orbit of the Imus in the Morning program." In the wake of the Rutgers controversy, he wrote, "they are sifting through the complex issue of their own culpability and complicity." Suddenly the Times man is having second thoughts. "The whole business felt a little heavy-handed to me." Tanenhaus now says. "There was a lot of piling on. I was one of the piler-on-ers. I assume he's a little chastened, a little chagrined. So let him start all over again. Why not? When I make my own inevitable disastrous screw-up, I hope someone gives me another chance."

Other leading media figures set to return to the Imus airwaves include The New Yorker's Ken Auletta, who really ought to know better, having written extensively about Imus and his transgressions in the past. "I said I wouldn't go on at the time of the controversy," Auletta now says. "But I wouldn't make that same claim today. Because I think people deserve second chances. If you believe in rehabilitation, if you don't believe in the death penalty, you believe that some people can be reformed and changed."

Then there's the curious case of leading media pundit Howard Kurtz of Washington Post and CNN ubiquity. Kurtz is on record as saying, "I don't believe (as a regular listener and very occasional guest on the program) that Imus is in any way racist. He sometimes crosses the line, as he himself would admit, in trying to make people laugh, but it's all shtick. He's no bigot." No bigot? Judge for yourself, from Imus' own description of Kurtz as a "boner-nosed... beanie-wearing Jewboy."

Why would Kurtz put up with such bile? Perhaps it's because, as Auletta noted in his New Yorker article, (quoting a top Simon and Schuster executive,) Imus is "the second most powerful person in the country in terms of selling books." The publisher specifically credited the shock jock with boosting his company's print order for Kurtz's book "Spin Cycle" from twenty-five thousand copies to two hundred thousand. The motivation for Kurtz' acceptance was perhaps best explicated by the novelist, Newsweek and onetime New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen, who when speaking of the market power of Imus, told Auletta, "All you need do is hear him wax poetic about your book and you say, 'Hell, I'd buy that book.'" As Auletta concluded, "Five mornings a week, from five-thirty to ten, Imus in the Morning takes care of his 'guys' -- promoting their books, their columns, and their lives to more than ten million listeners." The payback? "The program generates nearly half of the fifty million dollars a year in revenue which WFAN contributes to its corporate parent, CBS Radio."

Besides book sales, there are other reasons bigwigs continue to enable Imus. Another Imus regular, ex-CNN political analyst Jeff Greenfield (now of CBS News) told Auletta, "For a lot of people, going on Imus is a way for them to be a different person." Greenfield told Auletta he often got more comments for his Imus appearances than for his own television work. "People who talk to Imus are selling themselves as personalities, far removed from, say, the confines of a scripted newscast," Auletta explained. "The television anchors Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather are regulars; another is Mike Wallace, of 60 Minutes, who says, 'You get to feel like you're a member of his club.'" Wallace in particular should have known better than to join the club; he had exposed on 60 Minutes Imus' use of the word "nigger" just a year before speaking with Auletta. (Wallace interviewed an ex-producer who quoted Imus as saying he had hired staff member Bernard McGuirk "to do nigger jokes." Imus responded that the conversation with the producer had been "off-the-record.")

Saddest of all, however, is hearing that the estimable Clarence Page has decided he too will return to the Imus airwaves. Page, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Chicago Tribune who happens to be African-American, once encouraged Imus to take an on-air pledge to stop his racist behavior and, among other things, "cease all simian references to black athletes." Forswearing his minstrel show, Imus and Andy parodies, the I-Man promised Page, "I'll do the best I can with your pledge and rein in these renegades, okay?" Now, despite the many transgressions of the 2001 on-air pledge, Page now says he too will let bygones be bygones. "You make a martyr out of him," Page told the Observer. "It's not worth it. He's not worth it." No word yet on whether Gwen Ifill, another African-American journalist whom Imus once referred to on air as a "cleaning lady," will join Page on the program...

Why can't we all just "lighten up" and "move on," you may ask... Stop being so "politically correct" and "humorless," you may complain. If you don't like what you hear, just "change the station" and "stop listening," you may advise. After all, everyone who's anyone is happy the I-Man is back. Citadel Broadcasting stands to make lots of money. Publishers will still be able to move lots of books by using the Imus show to give a platform to authors. ("I don't think he'll miss a beat," Seale Ballenger, a publicist at William Morrow, said. "I think his show will pick up right where he left off, and I think it'll be just as important as it was in its previous incarnation.") Sponsors will still be able to sell lots of products they advertise there. Impressive guests will return for expressive conversations, and listeners and our very democratic system will benefit greatly, no doubt...

One problem: it's all wrapped around the most vile sort of dehumanizing hate speech, repeated ad nauseum over literally decades. As far back as the turn of the century, the TomPaine.com website chronicled "the sewage spewing from Imus' microphone" in a series of articles by Philip Nobile and others that reached back into programs that aired years before. The website also purchased a prominent op-ed page advertisement in the New York Times and even bought time on Imus' show to raise the issue. Nobile also laid it out in an article for the Columbia Journalism Review entitled, "In the Kingdom of Imus, the Courtiers Are Quiet."

Now the courtiers have returned, and as TomPaine.com executive editor Isaiah J. Poole wrote in the wake of the "nappy-headed ho's" affair, "A lot of people who consider themselves reputable -- both Democratic and Republican politicians, political consultants, journalists and pundits -- have shacked up in this seedy AM radio motel as if it were a five-star forum for serious political discourse. They knew better, as did the advertisers who bankrolled this enterprise and the networks that broadcast it. They have no one to blame but themselves for the soil on their own images as a result, and for whatever consequences they face if they go back in."

Don Imus's Top Ten Enablers
1. James Carville, CNN, analyst, ex-presidential advisor
2. Bob Kerrey, New School president, former senator and former Democratic
presidential candidate
3. Rudy Giuliani, Republican presidential candidate, former mayor
4. Sen. John McCain, Republican presidential candidate
5. Gov. Bill Richardson, Democratic presidential candidate
6. Tim Russert, NBC News anchor
7.Frank Rich, New York Times columnist
8. Sam Tanenhaus, New York Times editor
9. Jeff Greenfield, CBS News analyst
10. Howard Kurtz, Washington Post and CNN media commentator

Comments

[LiberalTrue]

If you want to see the REAL reason Imus was fired, see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3JXUr4vZqM

After Imus exposed Emperor Schumer as having no clothes, Media Matters hunted Imus down with all the PC weaponry in their arsenal, and finally succeeded three weeks later.

[travelea]

Does any one know if Bernard McGuirk is gone? I would be happy if he and Bo Deitl were gone from the show. Then Imus might still be Imus without the extra evil edge. (Yes, Bernard was funny, But he is scarily bigoted.)

[khristmaskathy]

I am counting the days until Imus returns (it's 10, by the way)---and my DirecTV stands at the ready!Proud to be an I-Fan and a so-called "enabler" of Mr. Imus.
December 3rd cannot come quickly enough...

[Bulbul]

What this blog is about ? And why he shouldn`t be back, I don`t see the big deal here !
Just move on, and do not turn the radio on, If some one want`s to watch it or listem to him it is entirely upto them.
I would rather watch him than fox or Joe or tucker or Bill ...etc. If the subject is something I do not care to listen to I will turn it off .
Please enough of this !

[The Collinbrandt]

I have a love/hate relationship with Mr. Imus. I would turn is show off and swear I would never return but, because there is nothing much on cable tv, I would listen in sometimes and hear what he was doing for the kids at the ranch and for the disabled veterans which, to the shame of all the corporate media, the five daddys that control the airwaves, cbs, abc, nbc, fox and, timewarner and the individual evil monsters that control them, they din't care about the maimed troops or kids at the Imus Ranch. I'm sure people like Murdoch and Mr. Red Stone use lots of very evil words when describing the low life pro freedom people like myself. Imus has said bad things that even a poor bastard like myself would condem but, there are others much worse that help to control the empire for those born to wealth and fame. These people don't help the poor around the world, instead they inslave them. To quote an ancient episode of "Dr. Who. 'May their shells be blighted'".(Murdoch, Redstone et. al., that is).

[rich3324]

What part of free speech don't you get? No one is forcing you to watch his show, but he has the right to have his say.

[bvb720]

You know Rory it doesn't matter who enables "IMUS". WABC ( Citadel Broadcasting) and WTKK Boston has enabled him. The reason why he is a money maker.

So if you think it is just for former influential people to speak, it is not. His showcase will be the new studio and RFD-TV broadcasts of popular C and W acts. Comedy, Satire and Parody.

Good luck on your blog. But you are one of a million that try and disrespect an Icon in Broadcasting. Whether you believe it or not.

less then 13 days to go.

[juleso]

Ditto, Rooster!!!

[manymoons]

Say Hallalujah! Say Amen! Take your hands off the Radio!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBTxWLX8ZBw

[manymoons]

Enablers??!! More like the HALL OF FAME!!

Support for Imus is HUGE. WELCOME BACK, I-MAN.

[3fingerbrown]

Note to headline writers everywhere: The "They're B-a-c-k!" model has served you well these many years but is now old and very tired. Please allow it to spend its golden years in well-deserved retirement at the Home for Weary Journalistic Cliches.

[DaveBrentwoodMissouri]

YES, YES, YES!! Finally all of the pieces are falling into place with the RFD-TV simulcast.

Now the joke is on MSNBC & CBS, Sharpton/Jackson, NABJ, NOW & MM.

Do you remember the email IMUS sent to a reporter right after the firing? "I could be back on the air tomorrow. Simulcast, more money..I'm going to the ranch for the summer and spend some time with sick kids."

And on his final show: "Anybody but anybody knows what the deal is. I'm not gonna play forever...I won't be fired without consequences...This story doesn't end here."

It ain't braggin if you can do it-IMUS is a giant in the industry and a man true to his word. A class act. A first rate interviewer, unselfish philanthropist. His taste in music & authors is a bonus!!

The guests will return, talking heads, politico's too and the advertisers will follow-both old & new. Hopefully we will see the Cardinal, Hulk Hogan maybe even "Sharpton"... its clear with IMUS anything can happen.

WHICH DOESN'T BELONG & WHY, WHICH DOESN'T BELONG & WHY?????

A) Al Sharpton
B) NABJ
C) RFD-TV

....Oops I've just been fired from my computer.....Gotta go now and sign up for Direct TV or something.

[manymoons]

I am an Imus enabler and supporter. I cannot wait until his new shows comes back on the air.

The naysayers and critics need to stop their persecution of a man who has done much good. And one who can put together the most entertaining and wonderful shows you will ever hope to see!

[juleso]

Imus enablers are back? What, is he a crack addict or something?! Ridiculous. Imus in the Morning is a wonderful morning program and that's why it's back, not to mention his legions of fans who demanded it return. I can't wait.

[channelXRFR]

Seems more then disingenuous for a columnist of an alternate media publication to be advocating censorship and blacklisting through intimidation! Sadly, that is what we have come to.

Fortunately, Imus' core audience is behind him and polls have shown the vast majority of people in favor of an Imus return. With media outlets Citadel Communications and RFD-TV willing to broadcast his program. Imus returns effective DEC3....