An Accident Waiting to Happen
Don Imus has been suspended for two weeks starting next Monday for referring to the Rutger's women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hoes." The suspension will take his MSNBC morning drive time simulcast off cable, and CBS — which owns the New York City station where Imus' radio show originates as well as the company which syndicates him — will also keep him off the air for that period.
Imus has engaged in crude humor with a cast that does terrible and insulting impersonations of public figures for many years. Everyone puts up with it; his program is also flypaper to big-name politicians and a regular staging area for NBC journalists talking up their own projects so it has anchored itself firmly in the mainstream rather than the fringe.
The Rutgers' team are not public figures, and did nothing to even merit his attentions. It is the randomness of the comments, as well as the stinging stereotypes they conjure, that shocked pretty much everyone.
It was really just a matter of time that something Imus said would be considered going to far, and it isn't surprising that a racial remark has stoked a chorus of calls for his resignation or ouster. There is no place in the public discourse for the kind of language Imus used, and it's no excuse that others routinely mock themselves (and make money in the the process) with similar language.
Is Imus a racist? Nobody but Imus knows. But it isn't too much to expect that a two-week hiatus will make it clear to Imus, if in his wisdom, he should continue to fight to keep his job.
The world won't end if Imus retires, and that might be the only way for him to gracefully walk the walk and continue to do the good things he does in the sunlight.
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