July/August 2000 | Contents

IN THE KINGDOM OF IMUS, THE COURTIERS ARE QUIET

BY PHILIP NOBILE

There is a Gentleman's Agreement among elite journalists in the Boston-Washington corridor regarding morning radio man Don Imus. Mike Wallace exposed Imus's casual use of the word "nigger" in a tough profile on 60 Minutes back in 1997 (Wallace confronted Imus with an ex-producer who quoted Imus as saying he had hired a particular staff member "to do nigger jokes." Imus said the conversation had been "off-the-record.") Lars-Erik Nelson disclosed Imus's smear against Gwen Ifill in his column in the New York Daily News in 1998 ("Isn't the Times wonderful," Nelson quotes Imus as saying, circa 1995, "It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House.")

Yet despite a history of anti-black and anti-gay comments (recent samples are documented on the "Imus Watch" on TomPaine.com), Imus retains the loyalty of a number of renowned journalists. Regular guests include Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Jeff Greenfield, Jim Lehrer, Frank Rich, Cokie Roberts, Anna Quindlen, and Tim Russert. Most of these people talk news and politics when they go on Imus in the Morning, cleanly separated from banter that falls below the line of decency.

Russert is a special case. His deal with Imus goes beyond strategic silence to occasional collaboration. On April 4, for example, the moderator of Meet the Press and Washington bureau chief of NBC News engaged in a dialogue that began with a homage to Russert's spouse, Maureen Orth, a writer with Vanity Fair:

Imus: Maureen Orth is a journalist -- we met her a long, long time ago -- I think she was writing for Newsweek, an enormously talented woman and she wrote this book on Andrew Cunanan. What was that book called? . . . What was it called, Tim?

Russert: Vulgar Favors.

Imus: Which troubled us in that she had to immerse herself . . .

Russert: In a culture you know well. (laughter)

Hardcore heteros might not immediately grasp the conceptual lisp in this exchange, but it's there: Imus said that he was "troubled" by research on homosexuality and Russert suggested that Imus is a closet case himself. What's so awful about that? Consider the context: gay people do not fare well on Imus's air, where they can be called "queers," "faggots," "lesbos," "carpetmunchers," and so forth. In one nine-day stretch in February, Imus and his presumably straight crew made snide gay-smacking remarks about Rex Reed, Kevin Spacey, George Michael, Ricky Martin, Carl Lewis, Pedro Martinez, Abner Louima, Tiger Woods, a local weatherman, a member of the BackStreet Boys, and a commentator at the Westminster Dog Show. In the atmosphere of Imus in the Morning, Russert's kidding was the equivalent of sharing a watermelon joke with David Duke.

You do not have to be Andrew Sullivan to perceive the odor of what happened next. Minutes after Russert's appearance, the show played a depraved promo constructed out of two spliced-together snippets of the show from the summer of 1998, when Andrew Cunanan was still on the loose following a string of murders of homosexuals. One sound bite involved Imus's brother Fred, who regularly phones in. The second highlighted Orth, another kidder of the Wilde side:

Charles McCord [reading the news]: Authorities say that tips on Andrew Cunanan's whereabouts lead them to believe he is still in the South Florida area. Cunanan is suspected in killing of designer Gianni Versace on Tuesday.

Fred Imus: Why are they bothering to catch this guy? He's just whacking off freaks.

Don Imus: Shut up. Be quiet. God Almighty.

F. Imus: I think the FBI should back off.

D. Imus: Just shut up.

Voice imitating General George Patton: If your radio sounds funny in the morning, you're listening to Imus in the Morning.

Imus: Maureen Orth. Good morning, Miss Orth.

Orth: Not good, Don.

Imus: Why?

Orth: Because I'm down here in Miami with Andrew Cunanan and I'm afraid you may be next. [laughter] Just think of it. He goes after old, rich, closeted queens. [laughter]

Bad enough that Imus broadcast his brother's death joke once (and spare us the fake recoil), but to reprise it and call it "funny" in a commercial is an indecency akin to the Greaseman's career-ending wisecrack apropos the truck-dragging death of James Byrd Jr.

The show's comments about black athletes come close. Obviously, Imus's white press entourage prefers the blessing of Imus to solidarity with Ifill and other black journalists -- Ed Bradley (60 Minutes), Les Payne (Newsday), Jack E. White (Time), Derrick Z. Jackson (Boston Globe), Stanley Crouch (New York Daily News), and Ishmael Reed (Salon) -- whose distaste is on the record.

To paraphrase Jefferson, when I think of the Gentleman's Agreement regarding Imus, I tremble for my profession.

Philip Nobile, a former media critic for New York magazine, is the author of the "Imus Watch" on TomPaine.com.