Imus fired for… being Imus
Even a phony stint in a drug rehab facility won’t be enough to save Don Imus’ radio career. Imus, whose CBS Radio show Imus in the Morning, was one of the first “shock jocks.” However, because he was a politically liberal shock jock, he was able to get away with saying just about anything that leaped into his mind … until this week, when he was canned for disparaging remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team made last week in the wake of the NCAA Women’s NCAA championship game, which Rutgers lost to Tennessee.
Imus began his career as a disc jockey in 1966. After bouncing around a bit as DJs tend to do, he started his Imus in the Morning show 29 years ago, in 1979 and although the show moved with him after that, it stayed on the air until racially-tinged comments spelled his doom.
The illustrative point of the Imus episode is not that Imus suddenly went over the line one day, but that someone finally called him on it. Imus had been a foul-mouthed, rude and crude, insulting personality all of his career, making a living off of saying things people aren’t “supposed” to say. The Rutgers comments were not unique; they were typical of his show. The main reason he was never called on it was that his liberal politics kept him insulated from criticism.
The notable element is not Imus’ character, which has always been crude, but the hypocrisy of MSNBC and CBS Radio execs, who acted like Imus had never said anything offensive prior to last week’s show.
The other hypocritical element is that suddenly Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who have many well-known incidents of putting their feet in their mouths themselves, are suddenly the self-appointed arbiters of what’s OK and what’s not OK to say. They’re calling for a “national dialog” on broadcast standards. Follow the politics there.
You see, Imus is simply a victim of a larger agenda; the real goal here is not to cost Imus his job, even though he deserves to lose it. No, there’s a bigger agenda at play here. The Imus incident is merely the catalyst.
You can bet that, if anyone grants Jackson or Sharpton their agenda as a result of Imus’ comment, the targets will soon be turned toward all of talk radio and their real agenda - to eliminate conservative talk radio from the airwaves - will be revealed.
Imus may be the first casualty, but the long-term targets are Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and other conservative notables. Sure, none of them sit around using the racially-charged slurs Imus used. Doesn’t matter. Eliminating conservative media is what this is all about, and if a liberal icon like Imus has to be sacrificed along the way, so be it.
Tags: Don Imus, drug rehab, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity
