Why Imus Won't Go

LOS ANGELES - The reaction was swift and justifiably angry to the latest racist crack from shock jock Don Imus that the Rutgers women’s basketball players were “nappy headed ‘hos’” (an even more curious characterization given Imus’s trademark floppy mop). Imus didn’t step over the line of racial incorrectness, he obliterated it.

He straddled the repentance line with his kind of, sort of, apology in which he did not say “I,” only “we.” The careful phrasing turned the “apology” into generic pabulum and was tantamount to personal absolution.

But even if Imus had made a sincere, bare-the-chest, heartfelt apology it wouldn’t amount to much. That’s the standard ploy that shock jocks, GOP big wigs, and assorted public personalities employ when they get caught with their racial pants down. On a few occasions, the offenders have been reprimanded, suspended, and even dumped. However, that’s rare. Imus has been syndicated on dozens of stations for more than a decade by MSNBC. Though the network gently distanced itself from Imus, it won’t likely show him the broadcast door.

There are two reasons why. And they tell much about why loudmouths such as Imus can prattle off foul remarks about gays, blacks, Latinos, Asians, Muslims, and women and skip away with a caressing hand slap. The first reason is that guys like Imus ramp up ratings and that makes the station’s cash registers jingle. Since January, his MSNBC show has drawn an average of more than 350,000 viewers. Nielsen Media Research says that’s a leap of nearly 40 percent over the same period in 2006.

The other reason it’s virtually impossible to permanently muzzle Imus and others who talk race trash is the sphinx-like silence of top politicians, broadcast industry leaders, and corporate sponsors. GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney and former Democratic presidential contender John Kerry bantered with Imus on his show in recent weeks. Yet, Romney hasn’t uttered a word condemning Imus. And Kerry issued a tepid statement through a spokeswoman in which he merely branded it “a stupid comment” and praised Imus for owning up to it.

While Kerry and Romney are two of the better known politicians to recently chuckle with Imus on the show, a steady parade of politicians and personalities have trooped to his microphones over the years. And not all of them, as Kerry and Romney showed, are hard-line GOP conservatives. Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain leaped over each other to get a spot with Imus. And we haven’t heard a peep from any of them about his remarks.

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