Don Imus was amused by “rough looking” basketball players. David Letterman found humor in a “slutty looking” public official.
Two mean spirited, ill-timed comments by on-air personalities. But look closer. Different targets. Different results.
Radio host Don Imus in 2007 was vilified as a racist/sexist and was fired after he stepped over the line while joking about the appearance of female collegiate athletes. Earlier this week, TV talk show icon David Letterman unleashed brutally pointed, scripted jokes directed at Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her daughter after both visited New York City.
Making unscripted, unrehearsed remarks on his New York-based, televised radio show (which aired on cable’s MSNBC) two years ago, Imus was chatting off-air with a sports commentator and the show’s lead producer about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. Imus had watched parts of the Rutgers-Tennessee game the previous night.
The comments were made when the radio show was in a commercial break on CBS Radio. However, MSNBC audio and video was rolling at the time. That detail is often lost, or ignored.
“Those are some rough girls,” Imus said of the Rutgers players. “They’ve got tatoos. Those are some nappy headed whoahs, man.”
Initially, Imus was suspended two weeks after a public apology. Ultimately, he was fired by CBS Radio in response to advertiser backlash. It took Imus more than eight months to return to the airwaves. His show was picked up by ABC Radio in December 2007.
Letterman, reading a scripted monologue, stood before millions of viewers and said: “One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee (baseball) game, during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.”
Letterman claims he did not know the Gov. had visited New York with her daughter, Willow, 14. He assumed the trailing daughter had been the more well-known Bristol, an 18-year-old unwed mother. In either case, his punch line was rooted in the absurd notion that the teen-aged daughter of Alaska’s governor is carrying A-Rod’s love child.
“Am I guilty of poor taste? Yes,” he said on CBS last night. “Did I suggest that it was okay for her 14-year-old daughter to be having promiscuous sex? No.” He did not suggest it. He said it.
During his famed Top 10 segment, Letterman outlined 10 things Palin did or said while in the Big Apple. No. 2 in the Top 10: Palin bought cosmetics at Bloomingdale’s to update her “slutty flight attendant look.”
Essentially, Letterman’s woeful attempt at humor at Palin’s expense stepped every bit as far over the line between humor and sexist tastelessness as Imus. Letterman inferred that the 14 year old (or, as he insists, the 18 year old) engaged in sexual intercourse with a Major League Baseball player. He more pointedly said the Gov. of Alaska chooses the appearance of a prostitute.
The contrite apology should not be acceptable and Letterman should be banished. Would the joke have been less brutal had he specified that Rodriquez impregnated the 18-year-old Bristol? Ask a father of an 18-year-old how graphic humor about a daughter’s sexual frolicking would go over around the office water cooler.
As I am writing this, I have found only a handful of editorials suggesting Letterman should be suspended or fired. In fact, the Huffington Post reported two days ago that CBS is close to rewarding Letterman with a two-year contract extension. His current annual pay is north of $30 million.
There is no doubt whatsoever that Letterman gets a free pass from the media because he is an established left wing, Bush hating liberal, who is infuriated by Palin’s conservative stance on social issues. And it is obvious there is another, unspoken difference. Letterman’s joke targets were white women from Alaska. Imus was chuckling about black women from New Jersey.
What would the reaction be if a different white male, say, Don Imus, took the “slutty flight attendant” line and went off on a few well know liberal Democrat females? I can only imagine there would be not only calls for his permanent exile from radio but death threats as well if the names Ginsburg, Pelosi, Obama or Sotomayor were uttered in the same sentence with “slutty”.
Racist? Sexist? Disrespectful? Hateful?
As we are reminded once again this week, that depends entirely on who says it and about whom it is said.