The Imus affair

From The New York Times:

Don Imus was suspended. But it looked as though NBC had suspended the suspension. This scandal-harried radio host and MSNBC star was free to appear on “Today” yesterday and explain himself again and again: His interview with Matt Lauer and his debate with the Rev. Al Sharpton, their second, were shown simultaneously on the MSNBC show “Imus in the Morning.”

The Rutgers University basketball players, fresh from a Rocky-like rise to the N.C.A.A. women’s championship game, held a news conference to explain that the slur-heard-round-the-world robbed them of their “moment.”

Mr. Imus’s moment keeps going into overtime.

NBC said Mr. Imus’s two-week timeout would begin next Monday to allow Mr. Imus to hold a call-in pledge drive for several of his charities for sick children. The radiothon begins on Thursday, leaving Mr. Imus more time to lobby to keep his job — and receive testimonials from longtime guests like the Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman and comrades in political incorrectitude like the comedian Bill Maher.

The network had time to showcase its disgraced star and wring every last drop of attention from the latest ado about verbal insensitivity.

If that last sentence doesn't sum it all up. . .

I haven't said anything about this before now because I haven't found anything about the situation to be very interesting. However the reactions of the media and the basketball players is worthy of comment.

First of all the media, as the NYT story notes, is playing the affair for all it's worth. They are using what Imus said in order to generate ratings and by doing so are making themselves participants in his actions.

Second, the Rutgers basketball players are demonstrating that they have been well trained by the modern American grievance industry. For them to actually have their "moment" stolen by the remarks of a butt-ugly, talentless old liberal has-been like Imus would bespeak a fragility of spirit which does not go with the type of personality needed to become a championship athlete.

Athletic contests like basketball games are almost the last bastion of pure merit in our culture. To be as successful as they are the Rutgers players simply cannot be so delicate as to have their quality of life impacted by the statements of a fool like Imus. Do they not know that black women are described in terms far more graphic and far more degrading by black, male Rap singers every day of the week?

Of course they know this and it bothers them either not at all or at least not so much as to be worthy of a press conference. What made the Imus business so special was the fact that the media was willing to give them a forum from which they could decry white America and make the case that American society is rotten with institutional racism.

What I find interesting about this is the way in which it exposes the hypocrisy of the left in that they are using Imus' racist comments to generate ratings while pretending to deplore racism and the way which it exposes the bottomless sense of both victimization and entitlement in the black community.