In Defense of Imus

The Opinionator

The New York Times editorial page has condemned Don Imus for his “disgraceful behavior,” and Gwen Ifill wrote on the op-ed page that the sincerity of Imus’s apology “seems forced and suspect because he’s done some version of this several times before.” But there are some Imus defenders out there.

“There ought to be no sympathy in any quarter for any shock jock’s racial prejudice, but there has to be room for apologies that are offered in earnest,” writes Michael Meyers, executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition and a former assistant national director of the N.A.A.C.P., on the op-ed page of The Washington Post. Meyers adds:

Moreover, there ought to be space on radio for dialogue and for racial impoliteness, too. When a radio shock jock makes a quip that offends, that’s no surprise. There is no captive, fragile audience or hostile environment such as the workplace or schoolhouse to worry about – just the robust radio world, full of gabbers, some of whom want to be taken seriously, some of whom try frantically to use words simply to entertain – and who screw up – and others who use satire and devil’s-advocacy to push us to think.

Kansas City Star sports columnist Jason Whitlock calls Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton “gold-diggas” for opportunistically seizing on the “distraction” created by remarks from “a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim.” Whitlock writes: “We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.”

Constance L. Rice, a Los Angeles civil rights attorney, says Imus is not “a malevolent racist.” Rice writes on the op-ed page of The Los Angeles Times:

He is a good-natured racist. And the streak of decency running down his self-centered, mean persona is sometimes pretty wide.

Imus and company are jocular misanthropes who say what a lot of folk only dare to think. That’s why many tune in: to eavesdrop on a seventh-grade white boys’ locker room — and to hear some of the best political interviews on the air. More often than not, the humor works, but it is universally offensive and sometimes goes too far, as it did in this case.

It is what it is. If his show has to go, there are hard-hitting black and Latino acts on cable that will be put in the cross hairs next. In the end, it’s healthier to have what people of all races really think out in the open rather than hounded into the shadows.

“What, really, is the goal of these monthly performances over something someone says in passing and usually in jest?” writes John McWhorter in The New York Daily News. “If the goal is to stop people from ever uttering anything that can be construed as belittling to people of color, it doesn’t appear to be working.”