Once More into the Breach

I thought I was finished with this topic (actually, I wondered if I'd given it too much attention already), but it looks like we've got to go to the well one more time. Ever since The New York Times put its columnists behind a firewall, I've provided a link to a nonsubscription source for Frank Rich every Sunday (or early Monday). Now that it's Sunday (or early Monday) again, here's a link via Wealthy Frenchman (lately truthout has been running the column, but at least as of this writing, it's not there this week). It's called "Everybody Hates Don Imus."

Rich had been a recurring guest on Imus in the Morning, and I have to say that whenever I saw a guest list among the various news reports, I'd most wince at reading his name. He owns up to this, but then talks around the point to such a degree that he's not entirely sure what his point is. What Imus said? "Bad, bad, bad." And in defense? "Well, you know, a lot of people say bad, bad, bad things." But I'll let you read it in Rich's own words:

Familiar as I am with the warp speed of media, I was still taken aback by the velocity of Don Imus's fall after he uttered an indefensible racist and sexist slur about the Rutgers women's basketball team. Even in that short span, there's been an astounding display of hypocrisy, sanctimony and self-congratulation from nearly every side of the debate, starting with Al Sharpton, who has yet to apologize for his leading role in the Tawana Brawley case, the 1980s racial melee prompted by unproven charges much like those that soiled the Duke lacrosse players.

It's possible that the only people in this whole sorry story who are not hypocrites are the Rutgers teammates and their coach, C. Vivian Stringer. And perhaps even Don Imus himself, who, while talking way too much about black people he has known and ill children he has helped, took full responsibility for his own catastrophic remarks and didn't try to blame the ensuing media lynching on the press, bloggers or YouTube. Unlike Mel Gibson, Michael Richards and Isaiah Washington, to take just three entertainers who have recently delivered loud religious, racial or sexual slurs, Imus didn't hire a P.R. crisis manager and ostentatiously enter rehab or undergo psychiatric counseling. "I dished it out for a long time," he said on his show last week, "and now it's my time to take it."

Among the hypocrites surrounding Imus, I'll include myself. I've been a guest on his show many times since he first invited me in the early 1990s, when I was a theater critic. I've almost always considered him among the smarter and more authentic conversationalists I've encountered as an interviewee. As a book author, I could always use the publicity.

Of course I was aware of many of his obnoxious comments about minority groups, including my own, Jews. Sometimes he aimed invective at me personally. I wasn't seriously bothered by much of it, even when it was unfunny or made me wince, because I saw him as equally offensive to everyone. The show's crudest interludes struck me as burlesque.

That last paragraph is particularly slick. In addressing Imus's routine offensive language, Rich very quickly personalizes it. He acknowledges that Imus's insults are equal opportunity, but he says that he wasn't bothered by personal insults directed at him. Well, it's good that he's got a healthy enough self-image that he's not upset by being a target in front of millions of listeners, but that's no excuse for Imus's offensiveness.

Rich spends a lot of his column offering unclear comparisons. He doesn't know Imus out of the studio, so he can't say whether he's a nice guy, or not. But the same could be said for Jerry Lewis. (No, I'm not sure where that comes from.) He does have a point about the "national conversation" that we're supposedly going to be having. We don't want to talk about the ragged edges of our culture. My line that shouldn't be crossed isn't the same as your line that shouldn't be crossed, and neither is the same as that guy over there's line that shouldn't be crossed. These are hard things to talk about, and we could probably talk and talk and talk and talk without arriving at consensus. It might also get more than a bit uncomfortable, as Rich also points out:

So if we really want to have this national "conversation" about race and culture and all the rest of it that everyone keeps telling us that this incident has prompted, let's get it on, no holds barred. And the fewer moralizing pundits and politicians, the better. Hillary Clinton, an Imus denouncer who has also called for federal regulation of violent television and video games, counts among her Hollywood fat cats Haim Saban, who made his fortune from "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers."

And no, I'm not sure what that means, either.

Let's cross our fingers and hope this is the last time we need to talk about the Imus situation. At least until he shows up on satellite.