| Back when I was Communications Director it was my task one day to help convince Governor Florio he should go on the Don Imus Show. He did it, and he did fine. There would be more appearances and the bottom line was Imus seemed to like him, so on the whole it was an okay experience.
It did leave me marveling somewhat about the modern state of discourse. I couldn't image, for example, Gov. Woodrow Wilson ever doing whatever might have been the equivalent of Imus in 1910. It is what it is, but Imus's recent insult to the Rutgers women's basketball team got me to thinking about why it is what it is, and whether it should be.
Why is what Imus does appealing to his audience? One thing that occurs to me is that Imus comes across like the cool kids in high school. You know the ones who if they said something it was funny but if you said it, no one laughed. The ones who were pretty much the arbiters of style and taste. Being cool, they determined what else was cool. I'm not sure whether Imus's current followers are the cool kids attempting to extend their reign into middle age, or the uncool kids enjoying what it's like to be on the other side for a change. Maybe some of both.
The other part of the appeal, I think, is the nature of Imus's usual targets. He generally unloads on politicians and show biz people. Now, those two groups have something in common. They both seek public approval, and they seek it hard. One group wants votes and power; the other money and fame. We can all probably agree that the attempts of both groups to win us over can get a little pathetic sometimes. So we kind of like to see them put down.
Especially when it comes to politicians, there is something in the American psyche that wants our leaders to be no better than we are. Why that is and what to do about are topics for another time. But we enjoy it when they get ribbed and we want to see how well they can take it. Their willingness to sit still for this earns them points with the public. And if they turn out to be good-humored and quick with a comeback, it helps that much more in their quest to be seen as a regular guy-or woman.
Bottom line: it's not a great system, but these people-in the world we live in-are fair game. You could go so far as to say they're asking for it. That brings us to what was so downright tacky about Imus's attack on the Rutgers women hoopsters. They didn't appear on national TV last week in search of our votes or our money. They were there because they won the requisite basketball games to play for the NCAA championship. That was a pretty impressive moment in the spotlight, but it by no means made them fair game.
What made it even worse was that Imus picked on the way they looked. I think they looked just fine, but that's not the point. Had anyone on the team done anything in the title game that was the least bit questionable (I don't know, a hard foul or an obscene gesture), well then maybe you could go off on them. But to make fun of their appearance?
That's juvenile. That's bullying. That's the sort of thing the cool kids could always get away with. Imus is being accused of being racist and/or sexist. Either could certainly be applicable. But I think what has so many of us so annoyed by his latest insult is that is was just so damned mean, so damned nasty, so incredibly uncalled for even under the standards of the political/media culture we live in today. The RU basketball team wasn't asking for it. |
