Don Imus: Did The Punishment Fit the Crime?

(This entry was adapted from a letter sent to the television show Countdown With Keith Olbermann while the controversy was still at the top of the news cycle. It has been altered so as to be more meaningful to a general audience.)

As I write this, it is the end of a week during which the Don Imus controversy has been the focal point of every television news and opinion show on the air, not to mention countless magazines, newspapers and blogs. Now that the man has been fired and the proverbial pound of flesh has been shaved off the corpse of his career, I wonder whether it isn’t beneath all of us to keep this story going. In fact, continuing to attack Imus is both petty and unfair. If Don Imus’s statements are now to be considered the pinnacle of racism, a huge segment of our population needs to start getting fitted for white sheets.

I am no fan of Don Imus- in fact, I can’t recall ever having listened to his radio show, as the whole concept of “shock” radio is unappealing to me. Like many others, I found the comments that led to his downfall abhorrent, and, after learning of some of the other things he has said throughout his career, I have no doubt that the man is a bigot. It is right and just that Mr. Imus should have to take responsibility for his statements, and it is right and just that there be consequences for those statements. That said, shouldn’t punishment at all times be appropriate to the crime at hand? Shouldn’t they be appropriately timed? While it is clear that Don Imus has engaged in a pattern of racially and sexually insensitive remarks, and that there has been outrage from the public on those occasions, it is not at all clear that Imus was ever officially warned by his employers, MSNBC and CBS Radio, that he would lose his job if he didn’t stop making such remarks. Without a warning, why on Earth wouldn’t Imus feel he could just go on as he had for years? It was apparent that few cared, and that the few who did didn’t represent a loss of income for the man or his employers. It is perfectly reasonably that Imus would not edit himself- nobody has ever attempted to edit him.

Adults are not much different from children- if they are not given effective and concrete warnings about their behavior, they have little incentive to stop that behavior. If little Tommy kicks little Peggy in the shins, he will keep kicking her until he’s told not to. In the same vein, punishment for adults works best when it’ threatened in the same manner punishment for children is. If a child talks back to his mother, it is not right that he be sent to his room for two weeks unless he has already been warned that such is the consequence of his behavior. When a broadcaster says offensive things, it is not right that he should be fired when he has never been warned that such are the consequence of those statements.

Suspending Don Imus was a perfectly reasonable response to his remarks, and Imus should additionally have been made to promise that he would never make such remarks again, lest he lose his job. If he refused to make that promise, or broke that promise in the future, firing would be perfectly reasonable- but not until then. One might feel that that is too lenient; that any proof that one is bigoted is enough to justify taking away his livelihood and publicly raking him across the coals. Reasonable people, on the other hand, who can follow that line of thought to its inevitable conclusion, feel that actions and words may be punishable in a free society, but thoughts are not. Perhaps the man is a bigot, but it is not his bigoted mind that should be punished: it is his bigoted words. And the punishment he received for those words was unjust. It is a convenient way for his employers to look like heroes without ever admitting that they could have put an end to his behavior years ago and did so only after they received uncomfortable attention.

I am well aware, as is anyone familiar with the way broadcast media works, that broadcasters have the ability to employ a time delay when material goes out live. If Imus has a history of making these inappropriate statements, why wasn’t he forced to work with a delay? And if there was, in fact, a delay, how can MSNBC and CBS Radio pretend to have been so offended by Imus’s words when that delay was never utilized? Imus had a certain degree of power as a celebrity, but his ex-employers had the power of the paycheck, and are thus far more powerful than Don Imus ever was. Where was the admission of guilt on the part of MSNBC and CBS Radio? “Liberal media” shows such as The Daily Show and Countdown With Keith Olbermann frequently (and correctly) lambaste President Bush for throwing his subordinates “under the bus” when his misdeeds and mistakes are discovered. How is this situation any different?
I have to question the smirking condescension and mock indignation that are invariably employed by commentators in response to Imus’s own defense: that this condemnation of him is an example of rank hypocrisy. Imus was wrong to speak as he did, but he is not wrong that something stinks about the way he has been treated. The fact that the Rev. Al Sharpton was the one person who was most stridently and vocally called for Imus’s firing, no matter what apologies or promises the latter offered, underscores this hypocrisy. Sharpton is a man who, to this day, refuses to offer any apology to the many people who were hurt by his manipulation of the Tawana Brawley case, his support of the anti-Semitic orchestrators of the Million Man March (and his own well-documented history of making anti-Semitic remarks), or his own history of divisive and inflammatory behavior. How can Sharpton possibly take the moral high-ground here? Even if Imus’s apologies were disingenuous, the fact that they were offered at all still beats Sharpton’s record by a mile.

Without a doubt, the media needs to continue to explore the issue of race- and not just when high-profile white men say obnoxious and hateful things. I would hope the media could do so without employing Imus as a convenient whipping boy. The man’s career is dead- throw some dirt over it and walk away. There is real racism to fight, racism that exists in governmental policy and human actions, not just in words. There is also other news out there- news that I daresay is more important than the incoherent “humor” of a man whose entire act was based on the fact that he was angry and misanthropic.

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Ben Stein and the holidays, or "Yes, Virginia, there is an Establishment Clause."

Lawyer/actor/game show host/political commentator (not necessarily in that order) Ben Stein delivered a commentary on CBS Sunday Morning, 12/18/05 . Since then, the essay has been copied and emailed by every right-winger, Christian-rights activist, and First Amendment-hater in the country, two Decembers in a row. The original text can be found on Ben's webpage (address above.) My original response, in a slightly different form, first appeared on the comments section of Lance Bass's Myspace blog. (Don't ask.) Here it is:

Yes, Mr. Stein, There Is An Establishment Clause by Christopher Stansfield

In his much spammed and blogged-about commentary on 12/18/05 (yes, this speech is now officially a year old), Lawyer/Character "Actor"/Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein admits, "I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are." This admission is an old speechwriter's trick to get the audience on his side- after all, how can one fail to respect someone who finds the obviously ludicrous...well, ludicrous? Arguing with Mr. Stein about the importance of the former Mr.-and-Mrs.-Lachey would be like wearing a "Don't Support Our Troops," shirt.

Of course, Stein's next confession involves a 180-degree turn: "I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees."

Okay, fair enough- I am not aware of any real textual link between the celebrity publicity machine and the religious significance of Coniferous trees, but the insistence that Christmas trees should be called Christmas trees seems like another unassailable position.
And then he goes on: "It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away. I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat."

Well. Now it seems ol' Ben's getting to his real point: God-loving Americans are abused! They are under continual attack! The atheists are on the march!

I admire and respect Ben Stein- despite our many political differences, he seems to have more common sense than much of his ideological crowd. That said, the concept that this country is somehow being hijacked by atheists or "bashes Christians" should inspire as much incredulous outrage as the concept that "The Jews started all wars" (Mel Gibson, 2006) or that Muhammad only brought the world "evil and inhuman things" (Pope Benedict XVI).

In battles between the atheist, agnostic, or simply irreligious versus the rights of those on "God's side," the winners are, more often than not, the religious. In this country, disputes both semantic and important between Christians versus those who are not often tend to favor Christian causes and beliefs. (If you can't research stem cells, evolution, or the morning-after pill, chances are it's not because of fundamentalist Hindus.)

I too, have no problem with people wishing me a "Merry Christmas" without inquiring whether I celebrate, nor do I find it offensive to receive a Christmas card or see someone's lovingly cared-for creche on his well-manicured lawn. (Though, inexplicably, religious rightists find it horribly offensive to use the religion-neutral phrase "Happy Holidays" when doing business.) I do, however, oppose the historical and continual erosion of the Establishment Clause and Equal-Protection Clause.

Manger scenes on private lawns or in private businesses are fine. Manger scenes on publicly-held land are not- it's as simple as that. To those who think the removal of Christmas trees from government- and common-held spaces is "anti-Christian," there is a simple compromise that can keep them there- celebrate other religions, as well. But this "religious (read: Christian) nation" (founded in a large part by agnostics and deists) simply cannot have that- look to the recent case of Sea-Tac airport, which decided to remove its fifteen Christmas trees because it couldn't stand the notion of putting up a menorah- and then proceeded to use the media to make the complainant (a rabbi) look "anti-Christian."

I'm glad Mr. Stein feels neither discriminated against nor threatened. Living in a metropolitan area with his level of fame and success can help insulate him from such fears. However, those non-Christians living in this country who genuinely are threatened and discriminated against have a right to stand up for themselves, and that does not make them anti-Christian. It simply makes them American.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...." - The Constitution of The United States of America

"Government should not prefer one religion to another, or religion to irreligion" (emphasis added)"- Justice David Souter, writing for the majority, in Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet, 512 U.S. 687.

This article © 2007, Christopher Stansfield. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed to the public under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License, and may only be distributed according to the terms of said license. To view a copy of this license, please click here.