Don Imus and the
New N-Word

When I was in my mid-twenties in the mid-1980s I had my one true muscle car. For the tidy sum of $700 I purchased a 1974 Pontiac LeMans 2-door Coupe with a powerful 400 cubic inch V-8 engine. The body was a little rough but on the open highway one touch of the gas pedal would create enough G-force to push your bucket back into the bucket seat in quite an impressive manner.

MSNBC and CBS Radio personality Don Imus

1974 Pontiac LeMans 2-door Coupe

It is no coincidence that I got the one speeding ticket of my driving career with this particular vehicle, but that is another story.

I used the LeMans on several enjoyable road trips, many of which were to the Washington, D.C. area, where some of my college friends lived. On one of these trips I found a hip little shop in Georgetown (the hip little shop center of the universe) where I purchased a bumper sticker for the LeMans. It had those big military-style stencil letters (like on M*A*S*H) and read “Urban Assault Vehicle.”

In case you’ve never seen the movie Stripes, “Urban Assault Vehicle” was the term that Bill Murray and Harold Ramis used for their preposterous EM-50 military truck disguised as a family motor home.

I kept that bumper sticker on the LeMans as long as I owned it. I wouldn’t mind reliving my youth a bit by buying another ’74 LeMans, especially if I could steal one for $700. But if that happens you can rest assured I will not put an “Urban Assault Vehicle” bumper sticker on it.

That’s because our national sense of humor has changed so drastically after the events of Oklahoma City and 9/11 that I’m afraid that most politically correct people (and most state troopers) would fail to see the humor in such a bumper sticker.

The same holds true for my idea about a new Mattel action figure called Jihad Joe (with kung fu grip and explosive vest), but that’s another story.

I was thinking about that this week during the current dustup over radio shock jock Don Imus’ comments about the Scarlet Knights of Rutgers University, the women’s basketball team that lost in the NCAA Championship Final last Tuesday.

In case you missed it (I don’t know you managed that), Imus stated that the girls on Rutgers team were rougher looking than their opponents and he called them “some nappy-headed ho’s” on his syndicated radio program “Imus in the Morning,” broadcast on CBS Radio. Imus is also an employee of the television network MSNBC.

His statements about the team were clearly sexist, clearly racist, and, unfortunately for Imus, not the least bit funny. In his subsequent apologies, he has come across as an out-of-touch fossil (he is 66) who has run afoul of the politically correct crowd one too many times.

In case you are wondering, this is not a first or worst for Imus. He once spoke on his show of Gwen Ifill, an African-American journalist of incredible talent and integrity, when she was still working in newspapers, saying: “Isn’t the (New York) Times wonderful, it lets the cleaning lady cover the White House.”

In the week that has transpired since his latest comments, Imus has had an audience with the Rev. Al Sharpton and has been suspended by CBS Radio and MSNBC for two whole weeks. (They could’ve fired him, but I suppose they want to see how high the ratings climb for “Imus in the Morning” when he returns).

Last night, the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams spent ten minutes of its half-hour broadcast on the Imus scandal (Nappy-gate, if you will) relegating news on the War in Iraq and a possible cure for Type 1 diabetes to the back burners.

Yesterday (Tuesday, April 10) Rutgers University held a press conference where more reporters turned out than at any time during the Scarlet Knights’ run at a NCAA championship. Reporters asked the players all kinds of insipid questions about how they felt about Don Imus and the state of talk radio.

Heather Zurich, a sophomore forward and one of the only two white players on the team, stated during the press conference, “Our moment here was taken away, our moment to celebrate our success.”

Not to get too technical, but I believe it was the Lady Vols of Tennessee who stole your moment, not Don Imus.

The point is that I think that parading these fine young women in front of the cameras and forcing them to respond to some loud-mouth jerk’s comments might be doing more harm than good. At some point you have to take the high road and let knuckle draggers like Imus practice their First Amendment rights in the shallow end of the gene pool. If you’ve listened to some of the morning radio shows in the Carolinas such as “John Boy and Billy” or “Two Guys Named Chris” you know that racial stereotyping is part and parcel of their “anything goes” style of humor.

And that’s okay with me. It’s like those Confederate flag stickers I see on cars. I don’t like them, put I will defend anyone’s right to slap them on their automobile. They may not be as cool as my “Urban Assault Vehicle” bumper sticker, but they let me know something important about the people inside the car.