Jock Shocked

NEW YORK—Shock Jock Don Imus has sunk into the pleasant mire of obscurity, but it seems his fans are loath to see him go so gently. So they organized a day of activities last Friday to protest his departure from his daily slot on CBS radio and MSNBC.

I got in contact with the Imus diehards loosely organized around the website supportimus.org, though not affiliated with the I-man himself. An email soon resulted in a phone call from Laree Lee, a 50-year-old woman from Missoula, MT, with a gentle laugh.

“The man affected so many people,” she began, telling me that Imus—who was fired from his CBS show after controversy erupted surrounding his description of the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos”—was not a racist, he was engaged in a parody of racism intended to discredit it. And he supports the troops. And have you heard about his extensive charity work?

Well, yes. But despite these sterling qualities, Imus’ comments weren’t just a slip of the tongue or one off-color joke gone wrong; he’s had a history of prejudicial attacks on all kinds of minority groups, from blacks and gays to women and Asians. (Slate has compiled some of the hits here.)

The next morning, I woke up at the ungodly hour of 6 a.m. to visit the Imusketeers at Rockefeller Plaza, where they had joined the screaming throngs outside NBC’s “Today Show,” signs in hand. I met five or six standing outside the barricades on the sidewalks (designed to keep fans from swarming Al Roker and Hillary Duff, not to prevent the demonstration), and they told me that several other members of their team were in the scrum.

I spoke with Keith Adler, who put up www.supportimus.org in the wake of the controversy. He is a 33-year-old graphic designer, with a mustache and the sensitive demeanor of a high school guidance counselor. At his side was P.T. Bartman, a 43-year-old “web activist” in a soiled Cubs jersey who chain smoked hand-rolled cigarettes throughout our conversation.

They repeated Lee’s claims, and expanded: Adler seemed genuinely upset that people who weren’t fans hadn’t been asked to weigh in on the issue. According to him, only outsiders—who heard the comment out of context, failing to catch the subtle humor—had called for Imus’ release. When asked about his long record of slurs—such as telling “60 Minutes” he hired his controversial producer, Bernard McGuirk, to tell “nigger jokes” —the two produced again the parody defense, noting that he is an “equal opportunity offender.” It would be interesting to see, say, a car thief argue that he has shown no malice toward the owners of the automobiles he’s pilfered, if he’s also robbed houses or banks. He’s an equal-opportunity offender, so don’t take it personally.

Bartman also noted that Imus got plenty of his own medicine, with McGuirk regularly referring to Imus as “scrotum-face.” Apparently the difference between insulting someone for being an ugly individual and insulting someone for being a member of a racial or ethnic group is lost on Imus’ supporters.

But why, I wondered, do you think Imus was fired? Lee had blamed Media Matters for monitoring Imus’ show, never mind the fact that Media Matters monitors everybody’s show. Other names came up: Hillary Clinton, since Imus makes fun of her. (As if no one else ever had). And Dick Cheney, for the same reason.

The Imus fans seemed honestly lost without their leader (except for Bartman, who just seemed lost). “We’ve lost nearly three months of the show,” Adler complained. He would have preferred just a suspension for the DJ. But they did have a few good points to make: Namely, that CBS radio and the MSNBC cable network were complicit in Imus’ bad behavior. If anybody should have known that Imus was a bigot, it was the two networks that aired him. Hypocrites, cry the I-fans, who chose NBC as the site of their protest because of weather-celebrity Al Roker, who made a crass joke about epileptics while discussing the (literally) seizure-inducing 2012 Olympics logo. Roker had publicly condemned Imus’ Rutgers comments.

The I-fans present themselves as free speech advocates, even including the following disclaimer on their website: “Prefacing everything here is a deep understanding of and sympathy with the message behind the effort to get Imus fired. Accepting that fully, the purpose of this site is to correct the unfairness that has come to DJ Don Imus in the course of making that point.” Bartman tells me he is a progressive who came out of the labor movement, and points to Imus’ championing of Harold Ford in the last election. Adler, more or less a libertarian, notes that he wouldn’t have known about progressives like John Hightower without “Imus in the Morning.” But in the end, progressives don’t support racial slurs in the public arena. And like it or not, with his cocktail of serious interviews and, well, minstrel show humor, Imus was in the public arena.

The debate over Imus’ comments has come from different angles. It’s not really a free speech issue, since he wasn’t really censored: He was just sent home. It’s not being “political correctness,” either, that conservative bogeyman that died circa the late ’90s: it’s about saying that racist language is unacceptable. But for the Imus fans, who for the most part seem uncomfortable with the DJ’s language—at least now that he’s been publicly chastised—it’s more about missing their long-time morning companion.

“He was a shock jock. I was entertained,” Lee said.

Tim Fernholz is the editor in chief of the Georgetown Voice and a contributing writer at Campus Progress.org. He can be reached at tfernholz@gmail.com.

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