(HOST) Commentator Madeleine Kunin has been following the controversy over remarks made by popular radio host Don Imus about the Rutgers Women’s Basketball Team, and she has a few thoughts of her own on the matter.
(KUNIN) We try not to be shocked at anything anymore – pornography in the movies, sexual references and images on TV, the sound of bleeped out words – and blogs that are so rude and crude that someone has recently come out with a code of ethics for bloggers.
First an admission: I have never listened to Don Imus, not so much out of prudery, but because I’m glued to VPR and couldn’t find his station if I wanted to.
But this week, he got my attention, as he did the rest of the nation, when he called the Rutgers Women’s Basketball Team “nappy headed hos” on his show. I hate to repeat it for fear it might become commonplace.
Finally, we were shocked. Even though we’ve become so accustomed to obscenities spoken in the public square, there is a line, after all, which most people will not cross.
In this case, an apology was not enough. Imus was fired. He was forced off the air by public outrage and the Rutgers women’s basketball team.
I was so proud of them at their press conference. Black and white, team captain and coach, they got up to the microphone and portrayed exactly who they were: proud, smart, talented women who could stand up for themselves, who could express their pain, and – who could fight back.
With a photo on the front page of the New York Times and the Washington Post, covered by many TV stations, we saw individual young women, not a group to be degraded by the impersonal slurs of racism or sexism.
Don Imus didn’t “misspeak.” He spoke those words deliberately. These words were intended to mock and degrade those young women, who had reached a high point in their lives – making it to the NCAA championship.
He trashed that dazzling moment and made it dirty.
The sad part about Imus is that he has made a living out of trashing people and ideas. I can’t believe he’s sorry. That’s his gig.
The good part is that these young basketball players wouldn’t let his insults stick.
Essence Carson, the team captain, said, “At first we thought to let it slide, but when we read the transcript, we decided it was unacceptable.”
“What hurts most about this situation is that Mr. Imus doesn’t know any of us personally – that Matee is the funniest person you will ever meet, and Kia is the best big sister you never had but always wanted.”
Bigoted slurs are nameless, but the people at the receiving end have names and faces. And that is the lesson for Mr. Imus, and for us.
Madeleine May Kunin is a former governor of Vermont.