Imus at a Tipping Point

The upside to every one of these Don Imus-style broadcast faux pas is the “national dialogue” we get for a few days afterward. Everyone reports and weighs in, usually expressing dismay at the blunder and/or condemnation at the commonplace nature of this kind of stuff. It’ll disappear with the next Anna Nicole DNA report, but it’s worth having.

What with Proctor & Gamble and a couple other major sponsors bailing on Imus’s show the old goat appears likely to suffer more than I first expected. That’ll be for the good. (There is also a report that he will donate his two weeks’ salary to charity. Also good. But let’s not be chumps on that point. Demand he specify who gets the dough and take notice when the check gets cashed.) It’s money that matters.

Among the better facets of the “dialogue” over the Imus affair is how much the sexist imagery and attitudes of hip-hop contributed to his comfort level with witty street-crede jive like “nappy-headed hos”. Imus clearly figured the culture norms had moved his way on jargon like that. So it’s a fair and valuable point of conversation asking why the hell successful black “artists” get a pass on that kind of obnoxious crap if it’s offensive enough to pillory a white millionaire talk jock? A couple of the women on the Rutgers basketball team responded to exactly that question by saying they thought the excesses of hip hop were just as offensive.

The growth in the national dialogue I’d like to see is where the trans-racial consensus is equally comfortable condemning a grizzled old coot like Imus AND the producers of the kind of absurdly misogynist “entertainment” that gets regular play on cable and mainstream TV and radio. I mean, the Rutgers women have every reason to be personally offended, but the Imus act, and all the Imus-like morning drive clods — Opie & Anthony, Bubba the Love Sponge, and on and on all across the country — are just as offensive to reasonably broad standard of decency. I say they all deserve a ripping.

But don’t pull them off the air. Let the marketplace decide their fate.

Keep their advertisers notified of exactly the kind of asinine spew they’re trading in. The sponsor-boycott of Don Imus will make an infinitely bigger impact on the standards of CBS Radio and NBC than any FCC fine.

But I’m still curious, “Why now?” Imus, as I say, has a long, long history of saying obnoxious things about women and minorities — and like his imitators on morning drive around the country — it is very consciously contrived act, built to appeal to the large, “don’t screw with me” lunkhead demographic.

But something in the air made this particular blast of stupidity resonate like never before. Imus, I think, has met a tipping point of some kind.

Has, I wonder, the mass of media watchdogging coalesced with the mass of the instantly interactive cyber community to the point where garden variety vulgarity like Imus’s gets immediately flagged? Has the backlash to a decade and a half of ever-coarser commercial bullshit matured into a permanent, potent force for civility? A bona fide vox populi? Is there any connection to the newly invigorated liberal sensibility, disgusted by government and corporate corruption and corrupting influences wherever they emerge?

I don’t know. But Don Imus has to be asking himself, “What in the hell hit me?”