Opinion: When will we heed Howard’s wisdom?
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
Earlier this week, as the editorial board was bruiting whether and how to weigh in on the brouhaha over Don Imus and the Scarlet Knights (whom I thought of as the ‘Scarlet Ladies’ back when Mr. Magoo and I were waving the RU pennant by the banks of the old Raritan), I made the case that A) yawn, who cares, everybody knows that Imus sucks; B) if we were going to weigh in, our only comment should be that Imus’ suspension should be turned into an expulsion because Imus sucks; C) that this issue has no larger implications for American society, and only demonstrates that Imus sucks; and D) Imus sucks.
How am I, generally a circumspect character, so confident in my assertion that Imus sucks? Because I’ve been listening to Howard Stern for more than 20 years. This is not an attempt to convince you of the value of Stern’s show or to dissuade you from whatever objections you may have with him. It’s merely to note that anybody with even a passing familiarity with Howard’s work has long been aware that Imus doesn’t just suck, he morally, ethically, spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely, undeniably and reliably sucks. For the evidence, check out any of the Stern back catalogue, wherein the First-Amendment hero and satellite radio pioneer never misses an opportunity to critique Imus’ lameness at exhaustive length; or take a look at Betty Thomas’ surprisingly good Private Parts (critics agree! 80% on the tomatometer), which contains a bristling takedown of the mummified radio personality; or just dig the Imus references at the essential Marksfriggin.com, of which this week’s offering is particularly apt:
Howard said that last week it came out that Imus is racist again. He said he used to work with Imus at NBC and he saw him go up to this black woman who worked there and called her the N-word. He said that this woman, Brenda, was a lovely woman and very nice. She wasn’t even allowed to talk to Imus. Howard said Imus is 100 years old and has no ratings on his show but they call it ‘’the wildly popular Imus show’’ in the paper. He said it’s not wildly popular, it doesn’t get any ratings. He went on to say that Imus called the Rutgers woman’s basketball team a bunch of ‘’nappy headed hos’’ or something like that. He said that’s actually nothing compared to what he said behind the scenes at WNBC when they were there. They should have fired him at NBC when he called Brenda the N-word but that never happened.
Good riddance, Imus. If we’d just been paying attention to Howard all along, we could have spared ourselves all this heartache.