And now, with iconoclastic Don Imus’ career significantly downsized if not effectively totally over with news that CBS radio has fired him, the questions begin:
Is this the end of an era — or the end of one?
Will the furor over over-the-edge racial humor spread to over-the-edge political humor?
On the face of it, the news about Don Imus — all the rage for years among Washington’s elite, a loyal audience (who often included people who were not fans of his arch rival Howard Stern) is fairly simple. The New York Times:
CBS brought the tumultuous weeklong crisis over racially insensitive remarks by the radio host Don Imus to an end late this afternoon when it canceled the “Imus in the Morning� program, effective immediately.
The move came one day after MSNBC, which has simulcast Mr. Imus’s radio program for the past 10 years, removed the show from the cable network’s morning lineup. The two moves together mean that Mr. Imus, who has been broadcasting his program for more than 30 years, no longer has a home on either national radio or television.
Mr. Imus received the news in a telephone call to his home. Many of his listeners learned of it during the afternoon radio show “Mike and the Mad Dog,� which announced it on WFAN, the same New York station owned by CBS that carried Mr. Imus’s program.
The CBS chairman, Leslie Moonves, held a meeting this afternoon with the Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the leaders in what became a national movement to have Mr. Imus removed from the air in the wake of comments in which he disparaged members of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. On his program of April 4, Mr. Imus referred to the women on the team as “nappy-headed hos.�
Both CBS and MSNBC had been under pressure from black leaders, women’s groups and advertisers, many of which said they intended to pull their commercials from Mr. Imus’s program.
Simple enough? Perhaps not.
Because in the aftermath of this firing there will be issues swirling around far bigger than the non-issue of Mr. Imus’ livelihood: he is quite well off and from the standpoint of income, he won’t be seen in front of a 7-Eleven with a sign reading: “Will insult for food.”
Here are just a few of the issues and features of this quintessential early 21st century firestorm, with the fires of controversy fanned and spread by the internet, a mega-second news cycle and activists groups unwilling to let behaviors or language deemed tolerable in the past be tolerated any longer:
New York Dailiy News columnist Erroll Lewis writes:
While Imus was off plying his ugly trade, a little-noticed national movement has been forming – documented by my colleague Stanley Crouch and me in the Daily News – that repeatedly challenges the demeaning and offensive lyrics, images and real-world violence of gangsta rap.
Web sites have started that call for an end to use of the N-word. Women’s groups have formed to blast rappers for using sexist, degrading lyrics and images. And grassroots coalitions succeeded in getting deejays at Hot 97 and Power 105 suspended or fired in recent years for crossing lines of basic decency.
Imus was probably unaware that a small but determined army of people has been mobilizing every few months to push back against one form or another of gutter-level bile disguised as entertainment.
So what will happen next?
–Will CBS try to replace Imus with a similar host? Or will CBS or MSNBC opt out and not fill their slots with another radio talker? OR will they try a different approach and try out a progressive host such as an Ed Schultz? There isn’t a “been there, done that” on the scale of Imus.
And will hosts such as CNN/ABC’s Glenn Beck be given a harder look by groups upset by what they say — and face stronger protests in the future?
Shouldn’t they be re-reading — and perhaps re-editing –their scripts right now?
Perhaps….if it’s the end of an era…or the beginning of a new one. A better one? Or will there be controversies within controversies — all welcome material by the now instanteanous oldmedia/newmedia news cycle?
SOME OTHER RESOURCES:
—Here’s the post on CBS’s Public eye blog announcing Imus’ firing.
—Dean Esmay has revised his post which offers a different take on this issue.
–Pioneer tart-tongued hot talk show host Bob Grant (a longtime favorite in the New York market) was himself fired by Disney but feels Imus has gotten way with “slander” for years. He also argues that there is a double standard on outrageous statements. DETAILS HERE.
UPDATE: CBS’s Dick Meyer offers THIS MUST READ perspective:
We have become serial character assassins.
Don Imus is just the latest example of something sad and unattractive: we have an insatiable, mean bloodlust for bringing people down.
By “we” I mean me. And you. And Imus, who of course has made millions tearing people apart and cackling at the demise of other famous high and mighties.
The collective “we” that is, I suppose, contemporary American culture has made character destruction and celebrity-slaughter the gladiator sport of our day.
People don’t get ruined in football and boxing except by accident. But it is the goal of the culture of the character assassins. And the Coliseum is columns like this, Web sites like this and television networks like this. The Coliseum is filled with people like you and me.
We are all part of it. Who hasn’t enjoyed the downfall of some famous person — be it Mark Foley, Ted Haggerty, Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger, Britney Spears or Martha Stewart?
The merits or demerits, guilt or innocence of any of these names in the news are absolutely irrelevant to what I’m talking about. Some of us hate some people. Period.
Read it in its entirety.
UPDATE: The Washington Post’s Marc Fisher looks extensively on what comes next. Here’s a small part of his piece:
What next? Imus will go silent for a time, and then he will return, almost surely not on network broadcast radio, but somewhere, either on a New York radio station that is hard up for ratings and publicity, or in the safe environs of satellite radio, where the bad boys go to deliver their fare unrestricted by concerns about federal licenses or nervous Nellie sponsors.
And the rest of the guys on the radio will pretend to be good boys for a little while, and then their bosses will very subtly let them know that it’s safe to go back into the water, because the ratings need a boost and nobody’s looking anymore, and we can all resume our lives of contradictions and antagonisms and fantasies about saying the things that the bad boys on the radio get to say every morning. Except when they don’t.
Read it all.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.