Imus’s Accomplice

When Ann Coulter referred to Muslim expatriates as “poor little Pakis,” the salivating watchdogs at Media Matters bit, but most people didn’t blink. When the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib was likened to “a weekend in Las Vegas” by radio personality Jay Severin, the nation’s courthouses and airwaves were silent; there were no fiery calls for contrition.

So when Don Imus, host of CBS Radio’s “Imus In The Morning” program, referred to the “nappy-headed hos” of Rutgers women’s basketball, his equally egregious remarks were met with an unusual amount of public disdain and, in the end, dismissal. It remains impossible to predict which instances of insult will stop being benign to American audiences and begin to offend. Amid the furor over Imus’s own misstep, we must acknowledge that the onus of accountability extends well beyond the shoulders of one desiccated fake cowboy, brought up in a world where grime is money.

Imus was, somehow, the highbrow incarnation of what has come to be known as the “shock jock,” the radio host whose flimsy moral fiber and gleeful coprolalia earn him the respect and adulation of the common folk. It took a handful of references to Hillary Clinton as “Satan” and “that buck-toothed witch” (epithets people across the country invoke daily for no reward at all) to win him 1.6 million listeners a week and the sponsorship from Bigelow Tea.

And there is no bottom to the barrel of radio’s lurid modern history; purveyors of still more odious dross regularly garner more success than Mr. Imus. Take the example of his longtime rival and colleague Howard Stern, who inked a 500 million dollar contract with Sirius Radio for five years of gallivanting with porn stars and teasing a handicapped man he calls “Gary the Retard.” Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh made his name when he referred to the NFL as “the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons,” among a litany of other pigheaded observations.

Thus we must pity the chastened shock jock, for he knows not what he does. Perhaps he’s that rapscallion whose ribald humor, so popular on the jungle gym, is arbitrarily condemned by the grown-ups, while the other rascals escape unscathed. The justification for his punishment eludes him, yet he must desperately try to seem sorry.

Despite the risks, it remains relatively easy to be a shock jock, as there exists on the airwaves such a fertile market for peddling prejudice—the more bilious, the better. Every day, millions of Americans gather with guilty grins around the speaker, waiting for the next slur to slide out. The audience doesn’t ever have to echo these views in civil society, only to smirk in silent complicity when they are voiced in the comfort of their sedan.

So, while we may be tempted to join the moralizers, we should realize that Don Imus and his ilk are little more than the trained apes of the public, locked in a screeching contest for our attention. It’s an ignoble pursuit, but they know that better than anyone. Ultimately, the potency of their voices is buttressed only by the existence of a satisfied audience.

We have only ourselves to blame for these sterling examples of modern minstrelsy—and we know it: What other reason for the self-righteous tone of our “outrage” over the Rutgers incident, and our silence on so many others? With each progressive volley against Imus’s comes an equally adamant “not I!” So either we let our outrage translate into a genuine turn towards higher-minded discourse, or we should stop all the preaching.


James M. Larkin ’10, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Matthews Hall.