Don Imus Thinks He's Back on Television

Here are two facts that you should not reveal to Don Imus.

1. "Fox Business" is not a real television station that people watch or have even heard of; it's simply a shady tax write-off for Rupert Murdoch. (Let him feel like he has some self-esteem with a camera aimed at him even if no one is watching at the other end. He and Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and Karl Rove can sit around talking to each other trying to convince themselves that they are sane and important and visible, but no one will get hurt or offended in the process.)
2. The twenty-gallon hat* and the inch-thick pancake makeup still make you look like a 85-year-old douchebag trying to relive your glory days as a vital 67-year-old faux cowboy.
   

Why does a Rutgers football blog care to comment about this mumbling senile old fart? Click on the "Imus" tag below, or read this one post from April 2007.

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*If Rutgers fans are going to pick political commentators by their headgear, we'll go with Michael Moore.

Did Don Imus help create a Rutgers Basketball Dynasty?

This Sunday all Scarlet eyes will be on the Sweet Sixteen game between Rutgers and George Washington in Greensboro, North Carolina (while trying hard not to look forward to meeting UConn again in the Elite Eight and Tennessee again in the Final).

But earlier this week at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee, it was the Rutgers stars of the future dominating the McDonald's All-American Game. Future Knights Nikki Speed of California and Brooklyn Pope of Texas were the co-MVPs for the winning West team. The West team had a third Scarlet Knight, Jasmine Dixon of California, and the East team also featured future Rutgers players April Sykes of Mississippi and Chelsey Lee of Florida.

Five MickeyD All Stars coming to the banks in one year! Rutgers has recruited stars from outside the New York metropolitan area in recent years (WNBA Rookie and Finals MVP Cappie Pondexter from Chicago comes immediately to mind), but they haven't previously had this ability to pick the biggest high school stars from every corner of the nation. Making it to the NCAA finals last year probably had something to do with their increased stock among the high-school elite, but I have to believe that Don Imus's racist and sexist rant, and the Knights' memorably classy response to that juvenile attack, put the Scarlet Knights firmly on the national map, and near the top of every recruits' wish list of top schools. So thanks Don (you jerk).

And aren't Nikki Speed and Brooklyn Pope two of the best names that you've ever heard?? I can't wait until they take the floor with Epiphanny Prince next year! Speed to Pope to Prince! They sound quick.

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Update 3/28: Here's a Harvey Araton article that appeared in the New York Times on March 8 that talks directly about the appeal of the team to the players and their families in the aftermath of the Imus attack.

This is why you don't throw your white uniforms in the same washer with the scarlet ones!

The Rutgers women will be playing their rematch of last year's NCAA Championship game against Tennessee on Monday, February 11 down in Knoxville. Our team will be wearing the outfits to your left, not because of a foul-up in the laundry, but to support a cause.

Let's hope that Imus & Friends think that they look pretty in pink (though we don't really give a fuck what that old fart thinks).

Seriously though, with Rutgers having beaten #1 Connecticut this past Wednesday, Tennessee will move up into the top spot by the time Epiphanny Prince and friends travel south. Can the Scarlet Knights knock off the #1 team in the country two weeks in a row?

ABC: "Hey, we can be as racist and sexist as the next major American network!"

It's nice to see that Don Imus has paid his debt by getting a 6-month vacation and $20 million payoff from his former employers.
Now that we've all forgotten what he said on April 4th about the very young and talented women of Rutgers whose only sin was making it to the televised NCAA finals, ABC is free to prove that it can support racism and sexism for profit just as much as its identical siblings CBS and NBC.

"Only," as Don King likes to say, "in America."

If this is really were a free speech issue (which, of course, it's not), rather than an argument about what kind of lucrative speech all three of the major American networks choose to broadcast on the airwaves handed to them in trust by the public, then we should be free to chant FUCK IMUS at every Rutgers athletic event at which ABC or its child ESPN are present.
But, of course it won't come to that, since this is only a rumor, and ABC (and its corporate overlord, Mickey Mouse), would never allow this to really happen.

Never leave off the last "s" for savings, or "Nobody ever died for dear old Rutger Hauer"

Please click on the picture to enlarge for legibility.

This tastefully typeset block of type about ignorance appears this morning in the center of an otherwise blank page of this morning's New York Times. The only other items printed on the page are the header for page 5 of the April 15, 2007 Sports Sunday section and a small Nike swoosh at the foot of the page.

First of all, the sentiment is fine and should, at this point, be universal.

However, the University from which we graduated was named after Col. Henry Rutgers, and not Rutger Hauer, so line three of Nike's public service announcement should salute "the Rutgers team" and not "Rutger's team". Of course this is probably just an example of faulty copyediting (the same line ends with a sentence fragment and the first line is punctuated to make us believe that ignorance is thanking the reader rather than Nike thanking ignorance) or the same inexplicable theory of punctuation that leads people to put signs that say "The Smith's" rather than "The Smiths" on their front lawns and RVs. However, we can't help thinking Nike's mistaken belief that the team we root for is the "Rutger Scarlet Knights" is due to the fact Rutgers' athletic program still isn't high on Nike's radar screen. After all, we can't imagine America's big sneaker company making a similar mistake when writing about the Louisville Cardinals (little birds) and the Stanford Cardinal (like Scarlet and Crimson, a shade of red).

Despite the recent surge of notoriety, we may have to wait for the 2007 football season before that widespread ignorance about the school on the banks of the old Raritan finally changes forever.

The Rutgers Women get the final victory of their magical 2007 season

The name of the man in the picture to the right will be forgotten before long. This is the first and last entry that will confront the readers of this blog with a picture of Don Imus, but the crawl at the bottom of the screen as he was uttering the slur heard round the world is telling. It shows something about the speed of news cycles; "..H RICHARDS SAID HE ONCE SNORTED..." of course refers to the big scandal that was breaking right before Imus created his own scandal, that Keith Richards said he had snorted his father's ashes in a cocaine mix. That story had legs about one inch long.

Now that CBS has followed NBC's lead by firing the original shock jock, he will quickly be replaced by another scandal on the front pages. But his story will be remembered and taught for years by those who work in the mass media. The uttering of casually sexist and racist "jokes" on the public airwaves (or basic cable) is now as clearly taboo as accidentally flashing a female breast during the Super Bowl halftime show or dropping an f-bomb. There's no gray area here. The next Imus who says something similar on the air will have his microphone pulled during the next commercial break.


And Don Imus will remember that it's not nice to fool with the Scarlet Knights. He started the conversation that ended his career by saying, "That's some rough girls from Rutgers." He had no idea. He had no idea that the real strength of these talented young women was in their intelligence and their quiet dignity. While others (including this blogger) immediately jumped into the fray, they showed how vile Don Imus's comments were just by being themselves (and making all of us with connections to Rutgers even prouder to be Scarlet Knights than we already were!).

Timeline of the past week in Rutgers women's basketball news

In case you hadn't heard, the Rutgers women's basketball team was attacked in racist and sexist terms on the day after they played in the National Championship game (and on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination) by a wrinkled and cowboy-hatted shock jockey on CBS radio (and formerly of MSNBC). Media Matters for America did a great job of bringing this outrage to light with video and transcripts on April 4, and now they've published an informative timeline of the past week's events that runs from the 4th up until last night's action by MSNBC.

They also provide this important CBS Radio contact info:

• Karen L. Mateo Vice President, Communications (212) 846-7638
• Whitney Pray Communications Coordinator (212) 846-3906
• Dana McClintock Senior Vice President, CBS Communications Group (212) 975-1077

You can also write to fanmail@wfan.com ; put in a snappy subject line ("Fire Imus" is short and to the point) and please mention why you feel that way, and if you're writing because of a personal connection to Rutgers.
I'm also writing a thank you note to viewerservices@msnbc.com

MSNBC does the right thing (for the obvious reason); all pressure now shifts to CBS

ALL ABOUT THE MONEY

It may turn out to seem like a Pyrrhic victory when some right-wing pressure group leans on sponsors to get rid of something we like on the radio (though we only listen to NPR, which doesn't have sponsors), but for now it's just a victory. It was for the money (or fear of losing it) that major American corporations, afraid of being tarred as sponsors of racism, caused another major American corporation, NBC Universal (a subsidiary of General Electric), to pull the plug on the cameras this evening.

It would have been nice if NBC has made the decision immediately, a week ago, for less mercenary reasons, but it still feels good to know that this insult against the Scarlet Knights, women, and African Americans, has finally been appropriately addressed.The online announcement included the key lines here:

The network’s decision came after a growing list of sponsors — including American Express Co., Staples Inc., Procter & Gamble Co., and General Motors Corp. — said they were pulling ads from Imus’ show for the indefinite future.

But it did not end calls for Imus to be fired from the radio portion of his program. The show originates from WFAN-AM in New York City and is syndicated nationally by Westwood One, both of which are managed by CBS Corp. For its part, CBS has not announced plans to discontinue the show.

If the sponsors don't get to WFAN, then the pressure has to be put on athletes to follow Cal Ripken's example and refuse to deal with Imus or his station. I don't think it will take even that much though. CBS will not want to look more racist than NBC. It's as simple as that, or it should be.

OBAMA & HILLARY ARE TIED

Later in the MSNBC announcement was this bit about Barack Obama's statement today on Imus and the young women of Rutgers:

Before the announcement was made, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) had appeared on the MSNBC program "Hardball," where host David Gregory asked the senator and presidential candidate if he thought Imus should be fired.

"I don't think MSNBC should be carrying the kinds of hateful remarks that Imus uttered the other day," Obama said.

He went on to note that he and his wife have "two daughters who are African-American, gorgeous, tall, and I hope, at some point, are interested enough in sports that they get athletic scholarships. ... I don't want them to be getting a bunch of information that, somehow, they're less than anybody else. And I don't think MSNBC should want to promote that kind of language."

Obama went on to say that he would not be a guest on Imus' show in the future.

So, based on the statement I made in my last entry, both Obama and Clinton gained a point today in my early calculations to see who I'm voting for in the New Jersey primary next year.

Hillary Clinton's Respect for Rutgers Campaign

The Rutgers Women are starring on the front page of HillaryClinton.com this afternoon with a call to "Join Hillary in sending the young women of Rutgers a message of respect and support."

We here at BeatVisitor.com haven't yet made our decision about who we're voting for in the primary of 2008, but we have to say that putting the women of our favorite university on your splash page certainly earns you a brownie point (we should also warn candidates that any appearance on Imus in the Morning that we hear about will earn a candidate a minimum of 10 demerits -- yes, we are keeping very careful score!)

Now go send your message of Respect for Rutgers.

Then give to the charity Don Imus should be supporting (and the place where the bulk of my yearly charitable donations have gone for the last decade or so): The Rutgers University Foundation

GO KNIGHTS!

Where our focus belongs: Essence Carson & Heather Zurich

It's time to accentuate the positive.

It's definitely time for us to start focusing on the direct victims of last week's attack, and not on their soon-to-be-ex-shockjock attacker.

Read these transcripts of today's remarks from Heather Zurich: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/business/media/10cnd-rptext.html
And Essence Carson:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/business/media/10cnd-rctext.html

The difference between the poise of these well-spoken students and the slime of Mr. Imus could not be greater. They make me so proud of my alma mater on the banks of the Raritan!

Go Knights!!

Thank You Al Roker!

http://allday.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/04/10/116906.aspx

Yesterday I asked: "Where are the high profile CBS and NBC personalities? Are they working behind the scenes to cleanse the racism from their organization? Do any of them have the guts to actually speak out about this stain on the network that feeds them? "

Well, here's one, as far as I know the first one, Al Roker, and he does so with logic and without pulling his punches:

The “I’m a good person who said a bad thing” apology doesn’t cut it. At least he didn’t try to weasel out of this by hiding behind alcohol or drug abuse. Still, he said it and a two-week suspension doesn’t cut it. It is, at best, a slap on the wrist. A vacation. Nothing.

The general manager of Cartoon Network resigned after a publicity stunt went wrong and caused a panic in Boston. He did the right thing. Don Imus should do the right thing and resign. Not talk about taking a two-week suspension with dignity. I don’t think Don Imus gets it.

After watching and listening to him this morning during an interview with Matt Lauer, Don Imus doesn’t get it. Maybe it’s being stuck in a studio for 35 years or being stuck in the 1980’s. Either way, it’s obvious that he needs to move on. Citing “context within a comedy show” is not an excuse.

He has to take his punishment and start over. Guess what? He’ll get re-hired and we’ll go on like nothing happened. CBS Radio and NBC News needs to remove Don Imus from the airwaves. That is what needs to happen. Otherwise, it just looks like profits and ratings rule over decency and justice.

(http://allday.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/04/10/116906.aspx)

THANK YOU AL, but where are your white colleagues? Without a broad multi-hued opposition, we'll continue to see comments like those at the bottom of your blog entry -- the typical boilerplate racist defenses of Imus and non-sequiturial and nonsensical attacks on Al Sharpton and gangster rappers (I didn't read them all, but you just know that some "wit" has already decided to call you "Reverend Al Roker").

crossposted at TrueBlueLiberal.org

UPDATE 11 April 07:
PLEASE READ THE FIRST COMMENT TO THE CROSSPOST AT TRUEBLUELIBERAL.ORG FROM ANONYMOUS FOR ANOTHER UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE ON "IMUS IN THE MORNING" FROM A THOUGHFUL AND INSIGHTFUL EX-LISTENER

This is NOT About Don Imus, It's About the Racism of CBS and NBC

When Don Imus said to Al Sharpton this afternoon, "I can't get anyplace with you people," it became more obvious than ever that he lives in a world that is sharply divided between black and white. "You people" can only be taken one way. The other key statement from his interview with Reverend Sharpton is that he has no intention of resigning. It's also clear, after 40 years in the business, that he's not changing his stripes. He is who he is, and he's not leaving on his own.

The FCC (according to reports on CBS News tonight) will take no action because no nipples or f-words were involved.

So, with neither resignation nor government action imminent, the ball is now totally in the court of CBS (owner of his radio outlet) and NBC (owner of his television simulcaster). They either need to pull the plug on his microphone, or they are officially condoning racist slurs and the ability of old men to comment on the appearance and sexual habits of very young women.

This evening MSNBC administered its first wrist slap, but a two-week hiatus in the simulcast cannot be considered a punishment

And by the way, "You People" does not just include the "You People" of whom Al Sharpton is a member. There is also the sexist component of the term "nappy-headed hos" that has millions of women understandably upset. Here is an easy to follow campaign organized by the National Organization for Women that will help you send letters to the appropriate people at CBS and NBC.

Where are the high profile CBS and NBC personalities? Are they working behind the scenes to cleanse the racism from their organization? Do any of them have the guts to actually speak out about this stain on the network that feeds them? THAT probably would lead to a firing. This is America in 2007, where you can say anything you want about people younger and darker and weaker than you, but leave your bosses alone.

Where are the high profile professional athletes? How quickly would WFAN-AM in New York drop Imus if Derek Jeter and Eli Manning and David Wright refused to interact with that sports radio station until the I-man was gone? Beat Visitor is pleased to see that Cal Ripken is the first guest to cancel a scheduled Imus appearance, so maybe that wall is breaking too, but it is amazing to see, over and over again, how people get more cowardly when they have more to lose.

So, NBCBS overlords, please drop him soon, so I can get back to writing about Rutgers football before the Scarlet-White Game on April 21. If he's not gone by then, it will become the "April 21 Anti-Imus Rutgers Stadium Rally."
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UPDATE: Now CBS Radio has suspended Imus for two weeks "due to the events of the past week." (i.e., the protests, not the hateful comments about Rutgers women made on April 4). If he comes back onto CBS radio and MSNBC simulcasting in 2 weeks, it means that NBCBS is knowingly rehiring a racist, and the protest, at least on this site, will be twice as loud.

This Picture Should Destroy a Few Stereotypes . . .

... and destroying stereotypes seems to have become the raison d'être of this blog all of a sudden. (Don't worry, we'll get back to Rutgers football by the time of the Scarlet and White game on April 21.)

There's a real danger that with the entry of Al Sharpton into the debate about Don Imus's right to use the public airwaves to call young women of Rutgers by hateful sexist and racist names, Imus's defenders will now try to turn this into the Don vs. Al Show, a show that goes back at least a decade. So I looked for instances where these men have interacted in the past. Along with the expected finds about Rev. Sharpton's voice being imitated on the show in an Amos'n'Andy Show manner, I found the following coincidental juxtaposition of articles in a Media Life Magazine news page from March 28, 2005. It was well worth a screen capture; just click the picture to enlarge it to full screen or click here and scroll to the bottom to see it in its original setting.

• The Imus article at the top of the screen is an answer to the Imus fans who say, "Don't attack Don. He does more for charity than anybody!" (It also says a little something about his legendary thin skin)
  
• The Sharpton article is an interesting answer to the other point made by those fans: "Don't attack Don for calling people 'nappy-headed ho's' unless you attack the rappers who use that language too." (not that too many of those rappers are simultaneously broadcast by CBS & NBC every morning)
  

I hope that this issue -- this important debate about the acceptability of casual racism and sexism on the air -- doesn't boil down to the Don vs. Al Show, but if it does, I'm 100% on Rev. Sharpton's side!


Cross posted at TrueBlueLiberal.org

Filing a Complaint with the FCC is Easy

http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/complaints.html

The real question is not a question of free speech, though Imus's apologists would have you believe it is.

The real issue is why CBS (owners of WFAN-AM) and NBC (his Cable TV simulcasters) are not RACING to fire Imus to see which is more anxious to remove its corporate imprimatur from the racist and sexist "jokes" being broadcast during family listening and viewing hours.

Since neither CBS nor NBC feels the need to respond to nor acknowledge correspondence from the public, our only recourse is to directly contact the government agency charged with protecting the public airways against indecency.

They make it very easy to register your complaint at http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/complaints.html

No Absolution Received

Here's the terse joint statement just issued this afternoon by the President of the NCAA, Myles Brand, and Rutgers University President Richard McCormick:

"The NCAA and Rutgers University are offended by the insults on MSNBC’s Don Imus program toward the 10 young women on the Rutgers basketball team. It is unconscionable that anyone would use the airways to utter such disregard for the dignity of human beings who have accomplished much and deserve great credit.

“It is appropriate that Mr. Imus and MSNBC have apologized.”

I'm very impressed by the skillful way in which the "apology" of Mr. Imus and his employers was acknowledged without being accepted.

To bring this controversy back to the original narrow focus of this blog, i.e. Rutgers Football, I can't help thinking about these same comments in a slightly different context.

Imagine that instead of reading the transcript of a radio show about a Rutgers-Tennessee basketball game from 2007, we were reading an article about a Rutgers-Princeton football game from 1917. Imagine our retroactive shock at reading a description of the great Paul Robeson of Rutgers as ugly and "nappy-headed" compared to the "cute" Princeton backfield of Mitt Buffington, Peter "Pippi" Longstocking, and P.T. Boatwright the Fourth. Of course we'd label that article a sad remnant of America's shameful racist past.

But what is Don Imus doing playing with the same hateful stereotypes on national radio and television in the 21st century? You don't have to imagine that one of these very dedicated and very young women is your sister or daughter to imagine the pain that this show is causing. There are stupid people everywhere (just look at some of the hundreds of comments generated by this article, "Don Imus Calls Rutgers Women's Team 'Nappy-Headed Hos' "), so Imus doesn't get all the blame; the lion's share of the blame has to belong to the businesspeople who have given him his money and his airtime ( You can reach them here at viewerservices@msnbc.com and Imus@msnbc.com).
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ADDED CONTACT INFORMATION, 6 April 07 @ 8:30 pm: Because MSNBC keeps on disclaiming responsibility for anything broadcast by Imus, here's the contact information for his radio station
WFAN (A CBS Company)
Email: fanmail@wfan.com (use a catchy subject line)
Main Phone Number: 718-706-7690
On-Air hotline to talk with our hosts: 718-937-6666Contest Line: 800-821-6611
Mailing Address:
WFAN-AM
34-12 36th Street
Astoria, NY 11106
So his main enablers are a CBS company and an NBC company? Is this racist somewhere on ABC too?

ADDED CONTACT INFORMATION, 7 April 07 @ 9:30 am: Here's a list of the 96 radio stations on which he appears around the country (ZERO in the proud state of New Jersey!) in case you want to write to your local Imus outlet.
In the Boston Herald this morning, the response to the local station is noted:

Phil Redo, vice president and market manager for Greater Media Boston, which owns WTKK (96.9 FM), said the Boston station hadn’t received any complaints.
“I can’t defend it because it’s indefensible,” Redo said of the remarks. “I’m glad that he apologized and he should have. It was a stupid comment. It was a terrible thing to say.” [emphasis added]

Even just one email or phone call to these local stations (cc'd to local sponsors) should have some ripples. If you hear a response to any of your complaints, please let me know in the comments.

Racist Zombies Attack Rutgers Women

Can you find the one remaining Imus fan in Rutgers Stadium? (Click to Enlarge)

Is there ANY reason that Don Imus and his two stooges haven't been fired yet??
Another inevitable empty Imus apology ("Sorry, we were all drunk and senile again") should not be enough.

This is from the April 4 edition of MSNBC's Imus in the Morning (I've copied this transcript from the Media Matters for America site where there's also a video record of this racist outrage):

IMUS: So, I watched the basketball game last night between -- a little bit of Rutgers and Tennessee, the women's final.

ROSENBERG: Yeah, Tennessee won last night -- seventh championship for Pat Summitt, I-Man. They beat Rutgers by 13 points.

IMUS: That's some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and --

McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos.

IMUS: That's some nappy-headed hos there. I'm gonna tell you that now, man, that's some -- woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like -- kinda like -- I don't know.

McGUIRK: A Spike Lee thing.

IMUS: Yeah.

McGUIRK: The Jigaboos vs. the Wannabes -- that movie that he had.

IMUS: Yeah, it was a tough --

McCORD: Do The Right Thing.

McGUIRK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

IMUS: I don't know if I'd have wanted to beat Rutgers or not, but they did, right?

ROSENBERG: It was a tough watch. The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the Toronto Raptors.

IMUS: Well, I guess, yeah.

RUFFINO: Only tougher.

McGUIRK: The Grizzlies would be more appropriate.

PLEASE WRITE TO MSNBC HERE: viewerservices@msnbc.com and Imus@msnbc.com
More contact information on their Contact Page. I don't have cable TV, so I'm telling them why I'm boycotting all other NBC outlets. What you want to tell them is up to you.

And our most heartfelt congratulations to the fine women of Rutgers Basketball for reaching the National Championship game. Next year the trophy is yours! You've made us all proud to wear scarlet!