Imus and the Media Hose
Jesse Walker | April 16, 2007, 9:42am
You still see it, in certain circles, when the topic turns to Anna Nicole Smith. The speaker turns his nose toward the air, adopts a tone of resigned disgust, and sighs,
This story is so unimportant, but it's EVERYWHERE. Why can't I avoid it? Since I have avoided virtually all coverage of the Smith story without any effort at all -- indeed, I've been meaning to Google her and catch up on what I've missed -- my sympathy is limited. In the Internet age, it's nearly impossible for a topic to so dominate the media that it becomes literally unavoidable. But here we are, entering week two (or three? or 42? it feels like a year) of the Imus affair, and though I'd rather be paying attention to, say,
this, I can't escape the chatter. Even my local newspaper has been giving it front-page coverage, as though the people of Baltimore are overwhelmed with curiosity about the fate of an aging shock jock.
This was an actual page-one, over-the-fold headline last week:
Controversy steals shining moment
Rutgers team voices hurt; Imus' remarks speak to struggle facing female athletes
"Controversy"?
Everyone is on the team's side. Even Imus' defenders say the joke was out of line. Does it "hurt" to have the entire country come to your defense after a throwaway putdown by a morning DJ?
So at last I understand how you Anna Nicole Smith people feel. You have my condolences. We'll meet again in news-snob heaven.
Unfortunately, these faux outrages have a way of making themselves significant, as every interest group tries to widen the attacks to include its own targets of choice. Tom DeLay
says, "If the Left takes Imus, we'll take Rosie." The watchdog group Media Matters has a
long list of right-wing talkers it probably wouldn't mind "taking" as well. There have been roughly seven trillion cookie-cutter op-eds comparing Imus to rap lyrics. They're all variations on the same theme: that we've only just begun to clean up the country's polluted airwaves. Naturally, there are calls for the FCC to
get involved. It's a nipplegate for news nerds.
Speaking of rap, here's one of the few genuinely entertaining comments to come out of the affair -- Snoop Dog
explaining why the two uses of "ho" aren't comparable:
It's a completely different scenario. [Rappers] are not talking about no collegiate basketball girls who have made it to the next level in education and sports. We're talking about ho's that's in the 'hood that ain't doing sh--, that's trying to get a n---a for his money.
So that settles that.
lunchstealer | April 16, 2007, 4:59pm | #
(Note to the normal: "lunchstealer" is obviously not a grad of Winchester and Cambridge. "Perfidious" means "deceitful" and/or "untrustworthy." He/She has used a 10-dollar-word in hopes of fooling those of us with 50-cent educations; do not be fooled. When he/she can show how I have been deceitful, I will acknowledge his/her superior wit. Not goddam likely--probably an Oxonian.)
A - I wasn't the first to use it. That honor goes to P Brooks, and joe's early comments about 'perfidious albion'. I was just carrying on the riff.
B - Seriously, do you REALLY think I was calling you perfidious? It was a further riff on the "I think what our bright young friend is saying is..." chestnut out of crappy old '50s B-scifi movies. I threw 'perfidious' in instead of 'bright' because it sounds slightly absurd, and I thought it seemed funny. YMMV.
C - "Superior wit?" It's not a competition, and if it was, Stevo, Herr Crane, and His Moosliness (mooseliness?) would have long since driven either of us from the field. I could give a rats ass if your wit is superior to mine. Besides, joe's misuse of 'hoary' is funnier than anything I've posted.
D - I was not seriously calling you 'perfidious'. If you felt that I was, I appologize, to my knowledge you are in no way treacherous. It did not occur to me that you might take it personally, and had no intention of hurting your feelings. One assumes you'd have had no problem with the epithets 'peevish' or 'pedantic'.
E - There are more uses of 'perfidious Albion' out there than just wikipedia, and yeah, it is an old insult to England - referring to their reputation for making an agreement with a group of natives and then turning around and colonizing them. Examples abound.
F - I'm really not trying to make a point, other than "Dear God, please, can we just get over our goddamned selves, at least for a few goddamned minutes?"
Ron Hardin | April 16, 2007, 7:18pm | #
Even Imus' defenders say the joke was out of line.
No, not true. Imus is a sucker for black preachers, and one he talked to over the weekend convinced him that he had committed a grievous sin. Imus is a sucker for the helpless, or anybody he can contextualize as helpless.
But what Imus was doing in the remark was stating amusingly what was going down : a tattooed tough team was taking on a cuter looking team. With women's basketball, that's about all the attention sports guys give it.
The question to ask is whether his observation was accurate as well as amusing. If is, it's appropriate and right on. I bet it's pretty good, myself.
To act as if grown women can't cope with this, women being fragile flowers containing fine souls, attacked by a male idea, is ludicrous, and itself demeaning to women.
So, to summarize, what Imus said was not out of the ordinary, not racist, and not offensive, and is exactly what he was paid to say and amused the people he was paid to amuse.
The vulnerability to a MSM hit is the disturbing thing.
I could argue further about how narcissistic black culture is, believing that whites are even interested in the intraracial fine points of nappiness and skin lightness, when all whites know is that it sounds funny; which is why Imus used it.
