Don Imus: A creature of the bosses

As of April 11, MSNBC has fired Don Imus, which is a victory for the progressive movement. The sentiment demanding he be removed from the air waves continues to grow. The nauseating racist and sexist remarks that media talk show host Imus made on April 4 against the women’s basketball team at Rutgers University do not bear repeating in this newspaper. They have been reprinted and repeated in all the printed and electronic media, mainstream and alternative.

Due to the firestorm of protest against these remarks, Imus was suspended from his “Imus in the Morning” show for two weeks beginning on Monday, April 16, conveniently ending in time for the sweeps. The “May sweeps” measure ratings; the higher these ratings of people tuning in to certain TV and radio programs, the more revenue the stations get from advertisers.

The Rutgers women’s basketball team held a press conference on April 10 where their coach, C. Vivian Stringer, who is African American, characterized Imus’s comments as “racist ... sexist ... deplorable, despicable and unconscionable.”

The team, which is comprised of eight Black and two white women, announced plans to hold a private meeting with Imus in the near future. Understandably, the women expressed both their anger and sadness at being made the direct target of this rabid bigot. Of course, these racist slurs were not personal because of anything particular to the Rutgers team. They could have been issued against almost any women’s basketball team, since the players in women’s basketball are predominantly African American.

The National Association of Black Journalists immediately called for the firing of Imus, as did Rev. Al Sharpton and other Black community and religious leaders. To his credit, recently selected Baseball Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr. stated that he refused to be interviewed by Imus due to the April 4 outburst.

This is not the first time that Imus has exposed his outright racist, sexist and anti-gay views. Besides Black people, he is known to have spewed his KKK-like views over the years against Indigenous people, Jewish people, the disabled as well as muscular women athletes such as tennis player Amelie Mauresmo and now the Scarlet Knights at Rutgers.

Furthermore, Imus is the leader of a nest of racists whom he has gathered on his show, all of whom should be banned from the airwaves forever. His sidekick Sid Rosenberg was temporarily fired in 2001 for an outrageous, Klan-like insult against the African American tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams. Rosenberg was reinstated and recently issued a racist attack on Palestinians. Imus’s producer, Bernard McGuirk, who also joined in with his own racist characterization of the Rutgers team, was hired by Imus to do “n-word” jokes, as he admitted on the “60 Minutes” show of Aug. 19, 1998, according to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

Why does a monster like Imus feel he can get away with saying such offensive statements? Because the bosses who have hired him have given him free rein. He has been protected for years because this is what they pay him for. In the generally racist, sexist, homophobic political environment fostered by the right wing in this country, political reaction makes for ratings and money. MSNBC was forced to express its “displeasure” with Imus in May 2005 when a woman news reader on the show, Contessa Brewer, quit after enduring disgusting sexist slurs from Imus and company day after day. MSNBC also added at the time, however, that his “humor” was “often brilliant and provocative.” (New York Post, May 1, 2005)

Not only is Imus’s show aired on WFAN, which is owned by CBS, but his show is syndicated nationally by Westwood One, also owned by CBS. His show is simulcast daily on MSNBC, a cable news channel in which the General Electric subsidiary, NBC Universal, holds a controlling interest.

GE is not only one of the top Fortune 500 corporations but is also an integral part of the military-industrial complex. GE designed, manufactured or supplied parts or maintenance for nearly every major weapon system used by the U.S. during the first Gulf War—including the Patriot and “Tomahawk” Cruise missiles, the Stealth bomber, the B-52 bomber, the AWACS plane, and the NAVSTAR spy satellite system. In 2004, GE ranked eighth with $2.8 billion in Pentagon contracts among the top military contractors. (Defense Daily International, Feb. 13, 2004) Racism, sexism and militarism all blend together at “Imus in the Morning.”

Imus has interviewed media personalities such as Tim Russert, Howard Fineman, Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd and a host of presidential hopefuls and capitalist politicians over the years. Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut recently announced his presidential candidacy on the Imus show. They all joined the Imus parade in full knowledge of his sordid, racist history, which goes back over 15 years.

If the files were opened up at MSNBC and CBS and all the e-mails, letters and phone records of protest against Imus that have come from individuals and organizations were revealed, it would show the corporate cover-up that has been going on. It is only because Imus is so obtuse in his racism that he stepped over the line and brought down a massive response upon his head from the Black community, the women’s movement and numerous progressive forces. And now his corporate sponsors and other politicians who have basked in his spotlight, fearing boycotts and other protests, are running for cover and hoping to ride it out as they express official “outrage” at Klan-like practices that they have either tolerated or supported in the past.

The fact that Imus was given only a two-week suspension is a slap on the wrist for his crime. He and others of his ilk, of which there are too many, should be fired and censured forever.

But Imus is just the tip of the iceberg and a diversion from the bigger issue of the reality that the ruling class strategically benefits from the white supremacist ideology they promote to keep them in power and to keep the working class divided and powerless.