So his MSNBC simulcast is gone, his CBS show is hanging by a thread, but hey, Imus still has his charities. The annual telethon went on as planned today, sans TV. And from what Drudge is reporting (though his reporting is a bit dubious these days,) he's getting on with some attitude on the air, saying "the bastards" got him, but they "didn't catch him asleep," whatever that means... Imus is said to be very upset about the goings on, particularly the fact that NBC didn't give him a chance to have his meeting with the Rutgers girls. That's the market, Don. They lose money, you lose gig... Here's the transcript, according to Drudge:
Patrick Gavin with FISHBOWLDC reports on Imus's radio show this am...
Barely 12 hours after being fired from MSNBC...
6:12 AM: On Imus' radio program (no longer simulcast on MSNBC) this morning, Chris Carlin, who covers sports for the program, discussed yesterday's dismissal of charges against the Duke lacrosse players.
(rough transcript)
DON IMUS: When will Al Sharpton be apologizing to them?
(LAUGHTER)
CARLIN: I'm unaware of such a press conference.
IMUS: I'll be darned...
UPDATE 6:28 AM: After a station break, Imus came back to discuss MSNBC's decision. He said he was recently chatted with "another big time broadcasting executive" who was "complaining that [MSNBC] had cancelled the simulcast twelve hours before we were getting ready to conduct this radio-thon for these three charities."
Imus: "My position on all of this is not whining about the hideously hypocritical coverage from the newspapers -- from everybody -- or the lack of support, say, from people like Harold Ford, Jr. who I had my life threatened over supporting and all these kind of things. It all began, and it doesn't make any difference -- like [James] Carville said -- stop talking about the context, it doesn't make any difference. If I hadn't have said it I wouldn't be here. So let's stop whining about it...You gotta stop complaining. I said a stupid, idiotic thing that desperately hurt these kids. I'm going to apologize but we gotta move on."
UPDATE 7:37 am. IMUS: "The hypocrisy is absurd...Everybody knows what the deal is. And this is not over. This story does not end here."
Meanwhile, the Rutgers girls are Oprah bound today, and 37 percent of nearly 180,000 respondents to an MSNBC online poll say the I-man shouldn't have been fired -- he's a shock jock, after all.
In the public debate, I think that today, the question now officially turns from racial insensitivity to the policing of thought vs. free speech. Time asks the question this way: "who can say what?"
Drudge claims Sharpton puts it this way:
'It is our feeling that this is only the beginning. We must have a broad discussion on what is permitted and not permitted in terms of the airwaves'...
our culture has experienced an almost psychotic outburst of -isms in the past year. Michael Richards and "nigger." Isaiah Washington and "faggot." Senator George Allen and "macaca." Mel Gibson and "f__ing Jews."
But we also live in a culture in which racially and sexually edgy material is often—legitimately—considered brilliant comment, even art. Last year's most critically praised comedy, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, won Sacha Baron Cohen a Golden Globe for playing a Kazakh journalist who calls Alan Keyes a "genuine chocolate face" and asks a gun-shop owner to suggest a good piece for killing a Jew. Quentin Tarantino has made a career borrowing tropes from blaxploitation movies. In the critics-favorite sitcom The Sarah Silverman Program, the star sleeps with God, who is African American and who she assumes is "God's black friend." And the current season of South Park opened with an episode about a Michael Richards-esque controversy erupting when a character blurts the word niggers on Wheel of Fortune. (He answers a puzzle—N-GGERS—for which the clue is "People who annoy you"; the correct answer is "naggers.") ...
...Imus crossed a line, boorishly, creepily, paleolithically. But where is that line nowadays? In a way, the question is an outgrowth of something healthy in our society: the assumption that there is a diverse audience that is willing to talk about previously taboo social distinctions more openly, frankly and daringly than before. It used to be assumed that people were free to joke about their own kind (with some license for black comedians to talk about how white people dance). Crossing those lines was the province of the occasional "socially conscious artist," like Dick Gregory or Lenny Bruce, who was explicit about his goals: in Bruce's words, to repeat "'niggerniggernigger' until the word [didn't] mean anything anymore."
Now, however, we live in a mash-up world, where people—especially young people—feel free to borrow one another's cultural signifiers. In a now classic episode of Chappelle's Show, comic Dave Chappelle plays a blind, black white supremacist who inadvertently calls a carload of rap-listening white boys "niggers." The kids' reaction: "Did he just call us niggers? Awesome!" The country is, at least, more pop-culturally integrated—one nation under Jessica Alba, J. Lo and Harold & Kumar—and with that comes greater comfort in talking about differences.
But that's a harder attitude for older people—who grew up with more cultural and actual segregation—to accept or to mimic. Part of the problem with Imus' joke was that it was so tone-deaf. "That's some rough girls from Rutgers," he said. "Man, they got tattoos ... That's some nappy-headed hos there." The joke played badly in every community, raising memories of beauty bias (against darker skin and kinkier hair) that dates back to slavery. Tracy Riley, 37, of Des Moines, Iowa, who is of mixed race, said the incident was among her four kids' first exposures to overt racism. "Our kids don't see color the way we do," she said. "They don't see it as much. 'You're my friend or not, but it's not about race.'"
And then there's this idiot from Pennsylvania. How stupid do you have to be to get yourself fired from your radio show for mimicking Imus AFTER he got canned?
And should Imus lose his job at CBS, something I still doubt will happen -- I guess I'm just an iconoclast -- and he doesn't choose to take $100 million to go to satellite radio, I'm thinking his next gig might be prime minister of England...
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"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
