After the 2007 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament Championship Game between the Rutgers’ Lady Knights of Rutgers University and the Lady Vols of the University of Tennessee, Don Imus, the host of the MSNBC radio show Imus in the Morning at the time, made various racially-driven comments about the players from the Rutgers team. Imus and his executive producer Bernard McGuirk talked about the appearance of the “rough,” “tattoo[ed]” girls from Rutgers compared to the “cute” girls from Tennessee. The pair went on to refer to the Lady Knights as “nappy headed hoes” and “Jigaboos,” referencing the Spike Lee film School Daze.
There was an immediate backlash from fellow members of the media, political figures, and the nation as a whole. Imus issued a series of apologies, some on the air and others in more personal settings, however he was still fired from his position by the CEO of CBS Radio Leslie Moonves.
Living in New Jersey at the time, this issue was extremely prevalent across the NY/NJ media. I was a direct witness to both sides of the story as well as much of the aftermath the insensitive comments created. Indirectly, the Imus debacle also threatened the life of the NJ governor Jon Corzine, who got into a serious car accident on his way to Imus’ formal apology to the Rutgers team and the governor’s mansion.
Not everyone was against Imus , though. Fellow “shock-jocks” Gregg “Opie” Hughes and Anthony Cumia, better known as Opie and Anthony, were outraged that “a radio pioneer and philanthropist” was fired from his job over something that they did not even consider that edgy. This led to the creation of People Against Censorship, a group devoted to defending freedom of speech.
I definitely think that the Rutgers Lady Knights deserved an apology, but Imus’s various apologies were not too convincing, especially after he has continued to make racial remarks on the airwaves.
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