Why Imus Should Have Been Fired
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Media
So, the “thought police” meme is in full swing, but Don Imus most certainly should have been fired. By my argument isn’t about the words that he said, which were vile and dumb, but more about the economics that brought it about.
Let’s be frank. If the advertisers hadn’t pulled out en masse, I believe Don Imus would still have his show on CBS. But they did, and that says quite a bit about where we are as a nation. See, we now live in a world where racism and sexism are becoming increasingly shunned, and the free market demanded Don be ousted. And so he was.
Is it right? Well, I respect Alan’s comments about this being brought about by the media mobsters because they did latch onto it, but I also respectfully disagree. This wasn’t some poor schumuck who made an offhand comment in some public forum in Des Moines. Imus is part of the media apparatus, he put his foot in his mouth in front of millions, and whether he apologized or not isn’t the point.
And even without the media glare, if I would have said something like this in my workplace, odds are I would have been fired in short order. Why? Because it’s extremely likely the marketplace of my employeer has no room for it. And so we’ve seen that the marketplace of the public media doesn’t either. Tough luck for Imus, but thems the brakes.
One last thing. All this talk about this being an example of liberals having a problem with free speech is bogus. Imus isn’t going to jail. He got fired from a high paying gig because his sponsors told him they didn’t support his comments. Those are two VERY different things, and the fact that Imus was allowed to hang himself over the public airwaves means that free speech is alive and most certainly well.
In any event, those are my two cents. What are yours?
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April 13th, 2007 at 1:30 am
People should take a breather, ignore the rhetoric and take a look at the facts. Once you do that, you’ll see that we have a case of Economically Driven Racism. That’s how rappers can get away with it, and that’s how Imus got fired:
Great post. Just wanted to drop this note to let you know that I totally agree and that I just finished posting my own little rant about it here:
http://9rules.com/politics/notes/3159/
April 13th, 2007 at 2:28 am
“Free speech” has always been subject to reasonable time, place, or manner restrictions—even genuinely political speech.
There is nothing inherently “liberal” about wanting an end to Imus’s sort of commentary; I don’t understand why conservatives feel that they need to jump in on behalf of the “right”—which does not exist—- to be offensive over the radio. And it’s absurd to pretend that Imus’s continued presence on the airwaves was—at some level—an endorsement of his ideas. Evidently it took market forces to put an end to that, though I wish NBC had given him a chance to “redeem” itself (partly because that would have been way more amusing than this is).
It’s not liberals who caused the downfall of Imus but—as you point out—Imus himself. This is NOT his first controversy. Since he evidently couldn’t or wouldn’t learn, he’s lost his position of power (for now). At some level, he can’t possibly be too surprised.
April 13th, 2007 at 8:56 am
I really haven’t heard any conservatives claim that Imus’ right to free speech was violated by CBS’s decision, more that the race-baiting hypocrits like Sharpton have their priorities screwed up. Read Jason Whitlock’s column for a cogent analysis if you haven’t already. Its making quite a buzz around the internets.
April 13th, 2007 at 9:56 am
That’s not accurate. The free market was not given an opportunity to make a judgement. If Imus’ ratings had plummeted, THAT would be the free market demanding Imus’ ouster. As it stands, a group of advertisers got scared off by all the mock outrage stirred up by the media and certain figures on the left.
And, Justin, it very much IS a matter of free speech. Sure, no one said he should be jailed, but do you think the reaction was appropriate? Do you think free speech is helped when we create a condition where people are scared to speak openly for fear of losing their livelihood?
I haven’t heard anyone support what Imus said, just his right to say it without being burned at the stake. Whether or not CBS and MSNBC had a right to fire him is not the point. The point is: it should have never come to that. We as a society need a little more maturity about these kinds of things.
April 13th, 2007 at 10:05 am
All Imus’ comments did was allow people like Whitlock to bring this up again. And hey, that’s fine. It’s a problem in need of fixing.
But what Imus did was wrong and the market determined he shouldn’t be employed anymore. They can both be priorities, no?
And Sharpton has gone after the hip hop acts, but how much airtime does that get? Remember, it’s all about what the media chooses to highlight, and when one of their own says something like this…game on.
April 13th, 2007 at 10:25 am
When did Al Sharpton stage a vigil outside the offices of BET demanding that the network fire its producers? or demand every media company fire their record executives who promote misogynist hip-hop? If this guy can get old, tenured white dudes fired from the largest news-media company in the world, surely he could do the same at BET or Source magazine or something.
April 13th, 2007 at 10:36 am
I should add: it’s a bit easy to support the firing of Imus simply because you loathe what he says. But you have to ask yourself, is this the standard our society should adopt? Should every talk show host or pundit be fired if they utter something bigoted?
And who gets to decide what is and is not bigoted? Should there be a list of words or should we just leave it up to guys like Al Sharpton to make the call? And should we draw up a sliding scale of punishments as related to the offense? “Nappy haired ho’s” gets you fired. Calling a presidential candidate “gay” loses you a few syndication gigs but otherwise allows you to continue earning money?
I’m not saying Imus wasn’t bigoted. He was. I’m just very concerned by how many people can’t separate their disgust at what Imus said from his right to say it without overly severe punishment. I prefer a more robust practice of free speech. But I’ve always been way to the traditional left on these kinds of matters.
April 13th, 2007 at 11:03 am
The free market did, indeed, demand that Imus be ousted. But the free market in question is not the audience. The free market, the folks who are paying money for him, are the advertisers. THEY pay his salary (and pay the broadcasters who distribute his show). And they are as free as anybody else to decide that they don’t wish to buy any longer.
Now whether that decision on how to spend advertising money was a good business decision, that’s a different question. But one of the joys of a free market is that you are free to make bad purchasing decisions on the basis of insufficient (or even no) data. Making those decisions without adequate information is one of the things that Marketing guys get paid big bucks for. (Deservedly? yet another question.)
Is Imus’ firing a standard our society should adopt? Absolutely. Not because we loathe or love what he said and did. But because it was the people who buy his product making a free decision not to buy. If any of us, especially his audience, object, OUR free decision is to figure out who those advertisers were and do exactly what they did: take our business elsewhere. But don’t pretend that they shouldn’t have done what they did on philosophical/moral/ethical grounds.
April 13th, 2007 at 11:42 am
wj,
So you define the free market as just the corporate decision makers? That’s a very narrow definition of the free market, one that supports a consolidated power structure and denies a choice to the actual consumers. Sure, an Imus fan could stop buying Ben Gay (or whatever was sold on his show), but that denies the company almost nothing. The sponsor, on the otherhand, is denying the listener everything.
That’s not a free market. That’s a controlled market.
And, besides, I’m blaming this on the media mobsters, not the sponsors. The sponsors got backed into a corner by the pitchfork mob. I don’t blame them.
April 13th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
If the people actually spending the money aren’t the customer, who is? The listeners? Fine, let them pony up Imus’s salary and sent it on to the broadcasters to show their commitment to his show. It’s be like when PBS has a fund drive.
April 13th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
The freemarket is now offering “nappy headed ho” teddy bears. The freemarket is a whore, no comment on the hair of the freemarket.
April 13th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
You’re right. It’s not about liberals not wanting free speech. They just want their own speech heard (like the Dixie Twits) and then shut down everyone else.
April 13th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Whoa, whoa, whoa. The advertisers pay for the media to exist. Remember the Rosanne kiss? Remember the advertisers threatening boycotts because people complained? It’s nearly always about the advertisers. There are numerous examples to show that this is trend. And while these decisions can work the other way sometimes, it’s usually stupid stuff like they focus on the “Runaway Bride” or Anna Nicole.
No, the Imus thing filtered up to the media instead of down from the media. CBS suspended him because of the pressure that outside groups placed on the advertisers…who then pulled out of Imus’ show.
Sometimes it can work the other way where management just nips it in the bud immediately. I think that’s how it went down with Michael Savage, after he made some bigoted comments about gays. But it’s usually pressure from the people who put pressure on the advertisers who put pressure on the media.
And yes, the media is a controlled market. They have advertisers who pay them lots of money to produce programming. There have to be standards…and so we have the FCC and ethics. But free market principles still govern what stays on the air. And by the way, there really is no such thing as a free market in this country in my opinion. Everything is governed by a set of rules or limitations of some sort.
As to what’s bigoted and what’s not…that’s going to be a continuous debate. I was called a misogynist by somebody in college because I drew a cartoon that had a character referring to women as “chicks.” Was that enough for the paper to fire me? Nope, the market supported that speech. But I did have a cartoon pulled from publication because I portrayed Richard Pryor as a pimp. They said it perpetuated a negative stereotype. I disagreed with that then, as I disagree with it now. I was merely paying homage to his role in The Mack and how that would have translated to Star Wars if his character had replaced Yoda…something which they didn’t understand until after they decided to pull it without telling me. Oh well.
In any event, all cases are different, but if somebody says something transparently bigoted on the air…yes, he or she should be fired. This isn’t public access.
April 13th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Yeah…you totally nailed it…great argument…
April 13th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Alan,
No, I don’t define a free market as just corporate decision-makers. I define it as anyone who wants to spend money getting to decide what they want to spend money on. Consider: a “free press” only means that anyone with a printing set-up can publish, not that anyone who wants to publish an opinion gets someone to do the publishing for free, or that anyone who wants to hear an opinion gets a guarantee that someone else will print it so he can read it. Unless there are only a handful of presses, and no way to get another one, that’s not a controlled market.
As for the media mob: sure, they looked rather like one. But so what? Last I looked, those media folks just provide a service for the advertisers, not the other way around. If the advertisers think Imus will sell their products, they could care less what pundits (in or out of the media) think of him. Some of us may forget who the customer is here — but the people running the media sure know (no matter what they like to posture about in public).
If Imus has enough fans, that are willing to pony up money to hear him, he can always go with subscriptions. If he has people with money who are willing to buy him air-time, there will be stations willing to take the money and broadcast. I don’t know how to set something like that up . . . but then, I wouldn’t have known how to set up a PayPal deal like Michael Totten uses to pay for his reporting trips. If there’s a demand, someone will figure it out.
April 13th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
With all this talk about advertising revenue influencing the network’s bottom line, how can you be sure that that Al shrarpton isn’t Jewing the numbers up and down?
April 13th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Economics or not people are to damn sensitive these days. I’ve never been particularly fond of Imus but as far as I’m concerned he can say whatever the hell he wants. Did millions of people suddenly forget that the man is a shock-jock, he is in the business of making controversial statements. The sponsors would have never pulled out if there wasn’t such a fuss made about this. People like to cry racism and this case is very much about racism – on both sides. If Imus were a black man would he have been fired? Certainly not, nor would there have been any coverage whatsoever. How this was even news in the first place amazes me. I suppose though this is the world we live in nowadays.
April 13th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
I probably would have just given you a wedgy for being a huge nerd.;)
April 13th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Hey Jimmy, it wasn’t okay for Imus to talk trash about African Americans and it’s not okay for you to do the same with Jews here.
Don’t ever use that bigoted term again in any comments section or you’re gone.
April 13th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
click the link
April 14th, 2007 at 7:20 am
It is economic driven racism. 2008 will go down in history as a year where IMUS is fired and Issah Washington wins an NAACP award. If it is not economicallly driven, then what is it?
April 14th, 2007 at 7:48 am
You can get my full comments here, but the punch line is: “I’m no fan of Don Imus, but what we have just witnessed is a someone getting the death sentence for a jay-walking ticket.
P.S. A bombing IN the Green Zone kills eight, including parliament members, but that’s not really important.”
April 14th, 2007 at 7:53 am
You can get my full comments here, but the punchline is: “I’m no fan of Don Imus, but what we have just witnessed is a someone getting the death sentence for a jay-walking ticket.
P.S. A bombing IN the Green Zone kills eight, including parliament members, but that’s not really important.”
April 14th, 2007 at 8:46 am
This is absolutely utterly ridiculous! Doesn’t anyone know what the words “nappy headed ho” mean? Nappy headed means bad hair! Ho is slang for female. Neither of those things are complimentary but never have those words been racist in the entire history of this nation!
Just because some fool journalist puts “racially charged” in his column’s description doesn’t mean it’s racist! You’re going to tell me that whenever I say nappy it’s the same as saying nigger? What’s next? How far can NAACP go? Will they keep me from saying orange, or chair, or ragged? The only racists in this issue are the NAACP. They are hypocrits and malicious jerks. Al Sharpton is supposed to be a reverend, but forgiveness is the last thing on his mind. Jesse Jackson is a freakin’ adulterer. These are the people who are being allowed to represent black america?
Don Imus made a living out of shocking insulting entertainment. If you didn’t agree you didn’t have to listen. Much worse is on the screens of 90% of Hollywood movies but no one’s attacking them! This wasn’t racial, and even if it was, so freaking what!! Does that mean you have the right to destroy his life, strip him of all dignity, take his job away, end his ability to support his family,label him a racist for non racist words, and make him the fall guy for any black bigot NAACP jerk that wants to hurt him?!
Don Imus has the right to free speech without being destroyed for it.
Al Sharpton and everybody else DO NOT have the Constitutional right “to not be offended”. Utterly ridiculous. The only real solution is to send Imus’ attackers to jail for verbal assault, slander, libel, and wanton disregard for Imus’ rights.
April 14th, 2007 at 9:16 am
Hey Jimmy, to call Al Sharpton a race-baiting, hypocritical, two-bit huckster is soooooooooooo racist. Criticism of your moral superiors, such as Al Sharpton, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson will not be tolerated. You will bow like the bigot mut that you are to the altar of this progressive gods — and by the way, my Jewish grandmother took great offense and would like to subject you to a 4 hour coffee session next Sunday. Justin – just kick this clan member off already – Imus’em.
April 14th, 2007 at 9:27 am
“Doesn’t anyone know what the words “nappy headed hoâ€Â? mean? Nappy headed means bad hair! Ho is slang for female.”
“Ho” is an alternative pronunciation and spelling of “whore.” Perhaps your female relatives don’t mind being called that, but most women dislike it.
April 14th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
While wer’e discussing his comment…
The term NAPPY HEADED HO is not racist… AT ALL.
Nappy means “kinky”. I know people of several different races with nappy hair.
Ho’s isn’t racist, it’s simply degrading and offensive.
So at the MOST, due to the context with which Imus used the phrase, “nappy headed ho’s” was “offensive” and that’s IT.
April 14th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Jimmy, mea culpa.
Looks like it’s time for Sharpton to go too?
April 15th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Speaking of the free market why do advertisers still support radio or TV programs that have appearances by Snoop or 50 cent? After reading some of the things said about black women in Rap lyrics the comments by Imus are lame by comparison. If there is to be an honest discussion of this issue then ANY denigration of black women, regardless of the source, must be part of the agenda. I work with some black women that are administrators and critical care nurses, I don’t care about you race, referring to these women as “Hos� is just plain wrong. Period.
April 16th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Back to free markets. The sponsors pulling out their money may be a market decision but it is NOT a free market decisions. Using the word “free” makes it sound like it was just. A free market, as it is generally understood, relies on the most number of people as possible affecting a product or decision. That did not happen here. Nobody other than those who got hysterical got an opportunity to voice their opinions in the Imus matter.
Besides, I’m always far more comfortable with the viewing audience making decisions on what should or should not be broadcast. I don’t like the idea that corporations are deciding what is and is not appropriate for America. They weild power with their money, but it’s the viewers that are the true market. Let’s not pretend that it’s a GOOD thing that corporations are making moral judgments for us. That’s not a pretty road to follow.
And yes, I realize I’m being idealistic. But as a strong supporter of free markets, I hate to see the term abused to make a suspect decision seem to be an appropriate, well-considered one.