IMUS fired from MSNBC TV for his racist slur of Rutgers women's basketball team...

(click our headline-link for the full story from the New York Times:)

NBC News dropped Don Imus yesterday, canceling his talk show on its MSNBC cable news channel a week after he made a racially disparaging remark about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.

The move came after several days of widening calls for Mr. Imus to lose his show both on MSNBC, which simulcasts the “Imus in the Morning” show, and CBS Radio, which originates the show.
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Below is a great op-ed we caught by Clarence Page - an African-American reporter who has been on Imus' show - highlighting the ups-and-downs of Imus' career. Imus' major "up" was mastering the talk-radio shtick of skirting close to the edge of controversy over the 3 decades of his career, without crossing it so badly that he got fired. As a talk-radio survivor with an edgy show, he gradually amassed a listening audience, which commanded him a fortune in America's mega-media infotainment industry.

But there was nothing exceptional about Imus' show.
He did interview top candidates, news-makers, and 'news personalities' - the talking heads who now dominate the nation's news and political discourse. (Aside: WILLIAM SAFIRE, of the NEW YORK TIMES, was demonstratively WRONG about almost EVERYTHING he ever wrote about the Clintons - "indictments will be handed down to the Clintons later this week!" was only the most fervid of Safire's "journalistic" excesses given unrestrained syndication from the whore Times - but in part because of Safire's relentless haranguing, the Republicans were able to create a $70 million Ken Starr "independent" Whitewater investigation- into a routine real-estate flop in which the Clintons lost $250,000! The "Whitewater" financial witch hunt of course morphed into the "Monica- did she, or didn't she?" scandal, which led to the Republcian lame-duck impeachment of President Clinton.)

In interviewing top candidates and news personalities, Imus has been far less deferential to his guests (much less reverential) than on most typical news interviews, so he has been able to ask more pressing questions, for example asking Kerry directly about his "wimp" or "flip-flopper" images re the Iraq war. (Unlike Katie Couric's interview of the Edwards, where Couric thought that harping on one question - Elizabeth Edward's cancer diagnosis - was an in-depth interview.)

But Imus' caustic brand of biting interview left our political discourse only slightly better informed than before we heard candidates grovel at his microphone, and in the end Imus is a big part of the CYNICISM that, until recently, led the American people to feel that they were HELPLESS in the face of STOLEN VOTES, rigged voting machines, FEMA incompetence after Katrina, lies-to-war, etc., etc., etc.

Oh - and is now a good time to remind that TIMMOTHY McVEIGH blew up the Oklahoma City Government building - only after listening to years worth of RIGHT-WING HATE RADIO?? Including such "MORAL VALUES" stalwarts as convicted Watergate burglar G. GORDON LIDDY telling his hate-radio listeners that, when shooting at "jack-booted federal law enforcement officers" one should "aim at the head to avid hitting body armor."

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Don Imus' trail of woe
2-week suspension is dust-up's only surprise
by Clarence Page
April 11, 2007
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0704100426apr11,1,6159157.column?coll=chi-news-hed

WASHINGTON -- As she faced the world's television cameras to respond to a gross insult by radio and television showman Don Imus, a member of the Rutgers University women's basketball team spoke volumes with one sentence:

"I'm not a ho," she said Tuesday at the team's first news conference after the incident that history may well remember as the Don Imus "nappy-headed hos" eruption. "I'm a woman and . . . I'm somebody's child," she added.

Indeed, she is. So are the rest of Rutgers' Scarlet Knights. And anybody who would make them out to be anything else should be ashamed. Unfortunately, shame is in short supply in the field of shock radio.

Just before the Easter weekend, Imus apparently thought he could get away with a brief apology at the beginning of his program for his racially charged remarks. But by Monday the controversy had percolated to the boiling point. Civil rights activists called for him to be fired. He was apologizing all day long, including on Rev. Al Sharpton's syndicated radio program.

By day's end, his employers, CBS Radio and MSNBC, had suspended Imus for two weeks.

The Imus controversy was not a big surprise to me, although the punishment was. Back in 2001, I led Imus in an on-air pledge in which he promised to avoid humor that relied on inflammatory racial or gender stereotypes, including "simian references to black athletes" and other abuses of which he had been accused.

I had been part of his stable of journalists and commentators who appeared on his show for more than five years. We were invited to the show to offer political views. He took the pledge and we continued with our usual interview, although interestingly I have not been invited back since.

That's probably not surprising. For more than three decades Imus has been one of America's most popular radio personalities, combining some of the shock-jock elements of a Howard Stern, for example, with the irreverent political sense of, say, a Bill O'Reilly.

But when you dance along the edge, you run the risk of slipping. What made the backlash from the Rutgers statement more serious than his previous dust-ups? For one, it was such an obvious cheap shot. The rich and famous, such as Paris Hilton or Whitney Houston, might be fair game, but why pick on a group of college women basketball players?

Second, it was a slow holiday news weekend, which only brought additional attention, spurred by insatiable 24-hour news cycles.

And third, I have a theory, based on the impact of bloggers, YouTube and other Internet-era phenomena, that mass anger of all types has new ways to grow farther, faster and hotter than ever before. After years of surviving controversies that have cost other shock jocks their jobs or at least a month's pay or more, Imus and those who profit from his talents finally found themselves feeling a pinch in their pocketbooks and their reputations.

Now in full damage-control mode, Imus' cleverest move may have been to go immediately to the national confessional that Sharpton's radio show has become for racial transgressors. What could make Imus look more sympathetic than to be berated for an hour or more by a man widely despised by Imus' core audience of mostly white males.

And the ironies don't end there. After all, if Imus offended black folks with his use of words such as "ho" and "nappy head," it was today's black culture that gave him the vocabulary. I understand those who ask whether it is fair to condemn Imus for using language that gets a pass when black rappers use it. Actually I have condemned the demeaning language of rap. So have Sharpton, Rev. Jesse Jackson and innumerable other black commentators.

Still, it is not enough. We must passionately condemn the language of hate, not only when others direct it against us, but also when we direct it against ourselves.

If anything good came out of this episode it is the opportunity it gave us to see the women of Rutgers' basketball team. In contrast to the negative images of raunchy radio, they showed the world grace, intelligence, determination and dignity. They had given the world their best. They deserve better than what Don Imus sent back to them.
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Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune's editorial board. E-mail: cptime@aol.com