Article: The Imus Enablers Are Back

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 “n-word” 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 n-word 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.”

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