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Imus v. Gibson

I wonder if Don Imus, the recently fired radio- and TV-talk show host is standing in his local watering hole, throwing darts at a picture of Mel Gibson. Many, many news cycles ago, Mel Gibson followed-up his hardcore Christian film-making success, and his father’s holocaust-denying comments, with an evening of racist and anti-Semitic ranting after being pulled over for drunk driving. At the time, much “debate” ensued, about whether this bigotry was revelatory of the “real” Gibson, of whether an apology would be forthcoming – and suffice – and to whom specifically Gibson might direct his apologia or otherwise show his contrition. Gibson has in the past employed Jewish PR counsel, and he has worked for Jewish executives in Hollywood, and so whatever one wants to say about Jewish control of the media, the whole episode did eventually fade away.

(Oddly, there seemed to have been little discussion over one specific element of Gibson’s tirade: Jewish “control” of “the media” is well know among anti-Semites around the world [along with international banking and other important desk jobs], but we’ve never been known for our domination of the nation’s police forces. So it seems a stretch that there really was a conspiracy to pull Gibson over: that would have required a lot of high-level coordination between Los Angeles’ media-controlling Jews and whichever minority group it is that secretly runs their police.)

For one brief moment, I felt vaguely sorry for Don Imus. He never even had a chance to get out ahead of this “story,” one that The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart aptly noted was the only media buzz even remotely competitive with the announcement about poor, dead Anna Nicole Smith’s baby’s real father. What Imus said was undeniably stupid, certainly offensive, and very probably racist. Unless it wasn’t racist and was, in fact, just stupid and offensive. He apologized, whatever that really means; if he’s a bigot, as some claim, it means very little; if he’s not, we’ll never really know, and the apology will just linger as more words in a broad, continuing war of media-driven clichés. We Americans (Jewish and not) have a very complicated relationship with repentance and forgiveness: we say we believe in it, but we often act as if we do not ... until time passes and we all just move on.

At this point, it doesn’t much matter. Having lost both his CBS radio and MSNBC cable shows, Imus will surely take a brief public break before re-emerging on satellite radio or elsewhere, a rebirth keyed – as most American ones are – to his continuing potential for revenue generation. Maybe he’ll write a book about how this experience proves whatever it is he’s been saying about America for years, and hope it does better than Gibson’s Apocalypto. Whatever happens, Imus is still richer than most of us will ever be. In the meantime, he’ll likely just keep throwing darts at that picture of Mel.

posted by The Editor @ 10:13 PM