No Imus, no fuss

Hopefully, most of the Imus hand wringing is over (although he could be indirectly be held responsible for the car accident that led to serious injuries to the New Jersey governor since he was on his way to moderate the discussion between the Rutgers team and Imus) because the whole storm over his comments has been ridiculous on so many levels.

Flax seems to have expressed a lot of the same feelings I have toward the whole thing, and it could be because we both grew up as regular listeners of the program growing up. I think that context is important in how people look at this controversy because most of the people calling for his head (and I’d imagine the Rutgers women’s team) had never listened and would never listen to the show. Of course, the history of offensive remarks is there and I suppose at some point he was going to pay for his words, especially since he was always playing with fire. But as many of us wonder, why here and why now?

Was it because he picked on a women’s college basketball team in particular? I’m sure most people didn’t realize Rutgers had played for a national title the day before, which is the only reason they were brought up on the show in the first place. Of course, it was really unfortunate that Imus’ regular sports guy Chris Carlin wasn’t there that infamous day. Carlin is the play-by-play voice of Rutgers football, and you know darn well the talk wasn’t going to go that far had he been there. Instead, it was Sid Rosenberg, who was “banned for life” from Imus’ show for a litany of problems with drugs and offensive remarks (worse than the ones that got Imus kicked out), who was in there and helped let things go overboard.

I actually think I can buy the fact that the Rutgers’ women’s team felt their season was “ruined” by the remarks because, as mentioned before, the comments probably marked the only time 99.99% of the country would be exposed to women’s college basketball. That’s not the way you want to be introduced to the general public. And while they’ve been commended on how they’ve handled the situation, I was intrigued that the two players they asked to speak at length at Tuesday’s press conference, they picked one white and one black player. There’s eight black players and just two white players on the roster.

The involvement of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson made sure this controversy was going to be blown out of proportion. Rutgers didn’t ask these people to represent them, but at the same time, the team wasn’t going to get their chance to talk with Imus if they didn’t generate the whole storm in the first place. But it’s unfortunate that such a level-headed response was only going to get attention because everyone was screaming "I'm offended" first.

But while a couple of us wondered which part of the slur was more hurtful “nappy-haired” or “ho,” I wonder if the word dyke had been thrown into the slur, would there be the same outcry. Players in women’s team sports often get slapped with that very unfair stereotype (although Rutgers’ first opponent in the Final Four, LSU, lost its woman coach due to an alleged inappropriate relationship with a former player), and it would be just as easy for Imus to say something like that. But then again, I’m guessing Sharpton will ruffle more feathers in this instance than GLAAD.

(BTW, one poster on TV Barn, I think, said this issue got a lot of extra attention because Rutgers is a New York-area team. I'd like to believe that except for the fact that New York-area reporters referred to Rutgers as being in South Jersey. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Where Gov. Corzine was injured -- that's South Jersey. Rutgers is very much in Central Jersey -- it's about 15-20 minutes from my house. For goodness sake, ESPN made Rutgers Stadium feel like it was just down the street from the Empire State Building; but to Manhattan-centric folks, the Rutgers area might as well be on Mars.)

Imus did dig a major hole for himself, first with his dismissal of the initial statements to The New York Times, and then going on Sharpton’s show and also talking about his charity work in trying to defend himself. Remember, you can do all the charity work in the world, but people don’t remember good things about you, only bad things. With that said, the Imus furor, not to mention his firing in the midst of his radiothon actually helped his charitable causes since people like me actually decided to tune in and make a donation rather than give it a slight acknowledgement and move on.

In some ways, the charity stuff and his attention to politics and current events (I can still remember him moderating a particularly nasty New York senate debate in 1992) actually burned him. You can’t have it both ways. You’re either a boorish, offensive personality, or you’re a current events talk show. The former kept him in drive time because the latter -- if he doesn’t get such high-profile guests -- would’ve shunted him to Sunday mornings at 5 a.m. But the former got him a prime spot that made sure the Tim Russerts and John McCains would show up to talk politics. Maybe if Imus had gone the Dennis Miller route and dropped all humor to go political (but still promoting his country and classic rock music friends), he wouldn’t have painted himself into a corner. Or maybe not.

Finally, it’s been a great year for Rutgers athletics, and yet their two biggest moments of glory have been hounded by controversy. In football, getting selected to the Texas Bowl led to the governor appealing the NFL Network to solve their battles with cable companies for carriage. Only a last-second deal prevented the entire state from turning against a cable channel and a cable company. Now, a trip to the national title game is “sullied” because of offensive comments made by someone they wouldn’t listen to about a team he would never watch.

Anyway, TV Barn has some interesting thoughts on the situation, and Time’s cover story hits on a bunch of things, including wondering why Imus gets fired but everyone loves Borat despite saying similar things.