Using stereotypes—about blacks, Jews, women, and gays and lesbians—has been a part of Imus’s act for decades. I first listened to his show when I moved to New York in 1989 as a 22-year-old writer for NEWSWEEK. His comedy skits were often the subject of water-cooler discussion, so I felt Imus was must-hear radio. But I soon discovered his blatantly racist skits made my skin crawl. His “jokes” in the 1980s and ’90s included skits in which the radio host and his sidekicks mimicked African-American public figures with deeply offensive stereotyped voices or called them racial names—like “bugaloo” for Johnnie Cochran, or “cleaning lady” for reporter Gwen Ifill.
Former Newsday columnist and editor Les Payne began writing about Imus’s racist invective as far back as the 1970s. And the liberal Web site TomPaine.com’s archive is full of “Imus Watch” items detailing his racist, sexist and homophobic remarks over the years.
In a May 23, 1993, column, when Imus was “on the verge of national syndication,” Payne wrote: “No advice on good taste breaks through the studio din, where, like David Koresh in his tower, Imus works surrounded by a choir of white male sycophants doing backup singing … Black female celebrities, such as Oprah Winfrey and Aretha Franklin, are invariably put down as ‘black hos.’ Funny? I don’t think so. Rumors of a relationship between Whoopie Goldberg and Ted Danson struck [producer Bernard McGuirk], to the roar of the white male locker room, as ‘jungle retardation.’ Upon hearing his boss cite a black woman defending Imus against my criticism, McGuirk, in his best Amos ’n’ Andy voice, mocked, ‘You ain’t no racist, Mister Imus, nah suh. No, thank you, I don’t want no watermelon!’”
The greatest hypocrisy of the Imus controversy is that Imus’s description of the Rutgers teams was just a mistake. No. This is who Don Imus is—at least as a radio personality. For more than 30 years, he has been part of comedy skits on his radio show that are in bad taste and often racist. Imus himself said as much on the “Today” show on Monday: “This program has been, for 30 or 35 years, a program that makes fun of everybody.” The media establishment figures who appear on Imus know this.
Despite that fact, Imus has grown into a bona fide member of that establishment. As NEWSWEEK’s Evan Thomas wrote in a Jan. 18, 1999, profile, “The Ringmaster,” Imus was by then “as, if not more powerful than, a network anchor,” with “Washington groveling at his feet.” It was already clear why. “[Imus] can talk a book onto the best-seller list,” Thomas wrote. He also made journalists feel like celebrities, said Thomas, drawing them into a snug complicity in which they felt like they were dishing with the cool bad boy in junior high school.
Indeed, NEWSWEEK is among the most frequently represented publications on Imus’s show (NEWSWEEK’s Web site is published as part of a technology partnership with MSNBC.com). But the list of Imus’s guests and regulars include some of the most respected names in journalism: Tom Brokaw, Tim Russert and Thomas himself. That African-African Congressman Harold Ford, former U.S. senator Bill Bradley and female journalists like The New York Times’s Maureen Dowd and NBC’s Andrea Mitchell appear on Imus shows, in part, shows that his racist behavior has been tolerable, if distasteful, to politicians and our industry.
For that reason, I am skeptical that all the current gnashing of teeth will have a lasting impact on Imus or the mainstream media. This story is about the assault on the dignity of the young women of Rutgers. But it also about the difference in perspective between white and black America, and what’s acceptable to those who run mainstream media, who, with few exceptions, are white. It is even a story about how those of us who are of color in this business react or fail to react to perceived injustices and outright bigotry.
The Imus imbroglio is also about the power of those who oppose the status quo. The role of the National Association of Black Journalists was crucial. NABJ’s quick call for Imus’s resignation this time fed the brushfire of outrage. But in these crises of contrition and expiation, the aggrieved have a rare, but fleeting, opportunity. For that reason they have rushed to extract as many concessions as they can. Jesse Jackson noted that Imus had never had Jackson on his show. “This is a political show … and we are, by and large, locked out.” In ceding some of his power and at the same time acknowledging it, Imus said that he thought he should have a black guest every day once he comes back from his two-week suspension in order to have a balanced perspective. “And me and the rest of white America ought to understand what’s going on in the black community and I’ll make an effort to do that,” said Imus on his show. “I will do that.”
It sounded like an epiphany. But why did it take more than 30 years for the radio powerhouse to have it? And why did it take a sustained public outcry? Because we in the MSM, as bloggers call the mainstream media, tolerated—indeed, encouraged—his “pushing the envelope.”
For most African-Americans, Don Imus’s racial stereotyping has never been funny. Now race has become yet again one of those predictors of how people respond to Imus, like the O.J. verdict, often trumping politics. On CNN’s “Situation Room,” for example, the liberal pundit Paul Begala argued Imus should keep his job, while “conservative commentator” Amy Holmes, Sen. Bill Frist’s former speechwriter and an African-American Republican, insisted that a two-week suspension was not punishment enough.
Many of Imus’s supporters point out that Jews, Catholics and other minorities come in for insensitive ribbing, too. Others say it was just Imus being Imus. But as Jeff Greenfield of CBS (and until recently CNN) said on Imus’s show this week, there’s a notable one-note “19th-century mushmouth minstrel thing” about Imus’s mocking of African-Americans. Greenfield admitted on the CBS “Early Show” on Wednesday that the white journalists who regularly appear on Imus have been insensitive to the racist nature of his humor.
Nonetheless, the inevitable backlash against the backlash has begun. (Take a look at the responses on MSNBC.com to Al Roker’s calling for Imus’s removal or resignation.) Imus’s supporters and those who merely believe this controversy—and whining, they say—has gone on for too long have started to argue that Imus is being crucified. They say too much is being made of this by blacks who exploit victimization. They charge Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson for hypocrisy over their own insensitive remarks in the past. Indeed, Imus himself said on his radio show on Tuesday that he would stop apologizing at some point and start attacking those who attack him. Clearly, contrition has its limits.
The mainstream media is making much of the fact that hip-hop and rap also use demeaning terms to describe women. (“That phrase didn’t originate in the white community, it originated in the black community,” said Imus lamely of his most recent slur.) But most of the press had no idea that Essence magazine, the leading magazine among black women readers, as well as all-female Spelman College, a historically black school, have led a campaign directed at empowering women and listeners of rap music to address offensive images of women in music for years. Most journalists don’t know about the campaign because, typically, the mainstream media hasn’t covered it.
I do not mean to say there is no genuine defense of Imus. Republican Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor now running for president, and Democratic strategist James Carville have both said that they will not abandon a friend merely because he “said something stupid.” And even the Rutgers team captain, Essence Carson, an impressively mature college junior, was pragmatic enough to say that politicians have to get their message out and Imus has millions of listeners the pols want to reach. “You cannot blame them for that,” said Carson.
But it was revealing on “Today” on Tuesday when Imus told Matt Lauer that he “never said anything about Gwen Ifill.” Calling her a “cleaning lady” was part of “a comedy routine, where we make up the news, which we’ve been doing since 1968 on the radio … It was comedy,” said Imus.
Lauer had the good sense to ask Imus whether, in spite of his apology, he could be trusted to “clean up his act” since he initially didn’t think there was anything wrong with his racist insult and failed to apologize for two days. “Perhaps I can’t [be trusted], then,” said Imus before claiming he had a 35-year history of “keeping his word.” But Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page had extracted a promise from Imus that he would desist from making racist remarks seven years ago, and Imus broke it.
Frankly, I don’t care if Imus is a racist. Racists and racism are a part of life. What is significant is that Imus’s brand of offensive racist, sexist and homophobic humor has been accepted by the mainstream for years. Imus did not trot out his harshest caricatures when establishment journalists were on, engaging them instead in playful—sometimes playfully abusive—banter and substantive discussion about foreign policy, politics or social issues. What the denouement of the Imus controversy will show is whether the standard of acceptable speech has changed.
The Imus controversy—like the O.J. verdict—shows that we are still different today, blacks and whites in America. We often have opposite perspectives and we have different levels of tolerance for racist “humor.” That is true here at NEWSWEEK like everywhere else. I have, to my recollection, never spoken to any of my many NEWSWEEK colleagues who appear regularly on Imus’s show, about how repugnant I find his “comical” act, though, as Gwen Ifill noted in an op-ed in The New York Times on Monday, I do feel a particular responsibility as the only black editor at NEWSWEEK.
But like African-Americans and other members of minority groups, and women, I pick my battles. When the nation’s standards or the media’s had changed, Imus would be reined in, I believed. Until then there was no point in my complaining about it. For the same reason, I never voiced opposition to any of my NEWSWEEK colleagues’ appearing on Imus. That was their decision to make, and it still is.
Similarly, most African-American journalists, with the notable exception of Les Payne, have long ignored Imus or seethed in quiet anger. Like me, most of them didn’t see the point of doing otherwise. The Rutgers incident has changed that for many black journalists—like Roker, who said on his “Today” blog on Tuesday that “enough is enough.”
Imus has a right to make offensive speech. What the limits of speech are, when those remarks are made on the federally regulated airwaves, is a continually evolving debate, however. There are commentators on talk radio more offensive than Imus, who offend more often. The difference is that he has power that few of them do and his humor is more baldly derogatory and has been for more than 30 years.
Already some advertisers, including Procter & Gamble and Staples, have pulled their ads from Imus’s simulcast on MSNBC. But Imus’s ultimate fate will tell us whether such racial “humor” is no longer acceptable in American mainstream media. Or if the old bargains of power and prejudice still hold.
title: “Starr Don Imus Is Us” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-28” author: “Russell Burkett”
“He’ll make the ultimate decision. But I’m confident he will deal with it in an appropriate manner,” Redstone, the chairman of CBS parent company Viacom Inc., said in a phone interview with NEWSWEEK from his Beverly Hills home . His comments come as MSNBC announced it is dropping its daily simulcast of the “Imus in the Morning” radio show, amid furor over Imus’ racial slur against the Rutgers women basketball team and the news that major advertisers are withdrawing support for the show.
Redstone’s remarks could pressure Moonves into firing Imus (“do the right thing” is an oblique comment—and the title of a Spike Lee film). Redstone says he discussed the Imus matter with Moonves in a phone conversation Wednesday morning, and that Moonves “may discuss it with me again before he takes any action.” Redstone declined to specify a time frame for the decision. Moonves couldn’t immediately be reached by NEWSWEEK for comment, but CBS’ chief spokesman, Gil Schwartz, described Redstone’s comments as “appropriate.” CBS, whose WFAN radio station in New York is home to the shock jock’s nationally syndicated show, had previously announced a decision to suspend Imus for two weeks without pay, beginning Monday, April 16. “During that time we’ll continue to speak with all concerned parties and monitor the situation closely,” CBS Radio said in the statement.
“I have absolute confidence that Les will do the right thing,” Redstone said in the interview on Wednesday evening. “My point is that to the best of my knowledge, Les has done everything right” as CEO of the broadcasting giant. “He has been terrific in the way he runs the company.” Redstone took pains to underscore that the decision on whether to fire Imus will be up to Moonves.
By handing Imus’ fate to Moonves, Redstone appears intent on avoiding yet another controversy about his own management style. Last year, the mogul kicked Tom Cruise to the curb, publicly blasting the star’s erratic behavior and severing his lucrative production agreement with Paramount Pictures. (The studio is also owned by Viacom.) Cruise, a member of Scientology, had made controversial statements about his religious beliefs. Yet many Hollywood veterans were stunned by the Viacom founder’s public disassociation from a star who had generated billions of dollars at the worldwide box office. Redstone’s unilateral action on the Cruise matter also left Hollywood and Wall Street confused about who, exactly, was in charge of day-to-day management at Viacom, effectively undermining then-CEO Tom Freston. The Viacom board, led by Redstone, later fired Freston, who helped launch MTV and had been one of the industry’s most popular executives.
While getting rid of Imus might quiet the public controversy, it will certainly hit CBS where it hurts: in the pocketbook. Imus’ show is syndicated by Westwood One, which CBS partly owns, and draws an estimated audience of 2.25 million, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing the trade publication Talkers. According to the Journal, the “Imus in the Morning” show accounts for 25 percent of the revenues of WFAN in New York—or roughly $20 million, The New York Times reported. That figure swells to more than $50 million when ad revenue for affiliates and cable outlet MSNBC are added, according to the Times.
title: “Starr Don Imus Is Us” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-17” author: “Michael Sanders”
What pretty much anyone watching could see in that women’s final was that Rutgers was overmatched in almost every facet of the game, except possibly grit. And it quickly became clear that the team’s frantic effort—it seemed to be trying too hard—wouldn’t be enough even to keep it close.
But Don Imus apparently saw something else. On his nationally syndicated radio show, “Imus in the Morning” (simulcast on MSNBC TV), the reigning king of the radio talk show empire revealed that instead of game upstarts, he saw in the Rutgers team a bunch of “nappy-headed hos.” Imus, much like the Rutgers team he defamed, was probably just overreaching, trying a little too hard to score with the irreverent and edgy humor that is his trademark. He may even have known, as he continued his tasteless riff, that he had crossed the line; that what he said was inexcusable, shameless, racist claptrap.
But just because it’s inexcusable doesn’t mean it’s inexplicable. And while Imus should not be spared any blame, we are undoubtedly complicit. It is our dubious taste that has spawned America’s prevailing entertainment culture. We have countenanced the insult industry into which talk radio has devolved. We have allowed humiliation to become a centerpiece of network TV programming. And we encourage cutting-edge humor, without much concern that women and minorities endure most of those cuts. These dubious entertainments all share one currency: unabashed delight in cruelty and debasement. And we the audience laugh and laugh and laugh until somebody hits us over the head and we realize—or somebody tell us that we should realize—that this time it was way out of line and actually not all that funny.
Then, of course, we get all huffy playing “gotcha”. We encourage these “entertainers” to walk a tightrope along the limits of good taste and then, with unrestrained glee, pounce when they, inevitably, fall off. Gotcha Imus, gonna make you squirm. Of course, not all are “gotchas” are quite as righteous as that one. Indeed “gotcha” can be a rather cynical game. Earlier this week CBS basketball announcer’s Billy Packer was targeted, much like Imus, for comments he made in a TV interview with Charlie Rose. After Rose joked about wanting to carry Packer’s bags at the Final Four, Packer retorted that he had heard it before from Rose, adding “You always fag out on that one for me.”
Critics—many of whom don’t like his skills as a basketball analyst—excoriated Packer for his use of a slur against homosexuals. I am not quite as old as Packer, but old enough to be familiar with a verb that he used correctly—a British-rooted expression that means “to tire” and that has nothing at all to do with sexual preference. Though my research on its origins yielded nothing conclusive—Bill Safire, can you help?—my guess is the expression was derived as slang shorthand for fatigue or possibly from the verb “to flag”.
The flap was reminiscent of one that forced the resignation of a white aide to the black, former mayor of Washington D.C. after he used—correctly also—the word “niggardly”, which means stingy. Like Packer’s verb, the word is a sound-alike to one that is offensive, though it has nothing at all to do with racial pejoratives. The problem with such indiscriminate sanctimony on our part is that it diminishes the power and legitimacy of our outrage when a Mel Gibson or a Michael Richards crosses the line from funny and outrageous to genuinely hateful.
Since that is the sketchy territory where Imus has always operated with great success, he will almost certainly survive this blunder. On Friday morning he got around to the business of a carefully, crafted apology. “It was completely inappropriate, and we can understand why people were offended,” Imus said on his morning show. “Our characterization was thoughtless and stupid, and we are sorry.” Imus is savvy enough to offer no excuses where none would wash. But what’s our excuse? Please someone explain to me our insatiable appetite for the tasteless and the mean-spirited that assaults us every day in the guise of entertainment.
title: “Starr Don Imus Is Us” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-23” author: “Nancy Sykes”
Don Imus, of course, is the latest example of an über-alpha male stuffing his foot in his mouth. It’s unclear why he thought it funny to call female basketball players “nappy-headed hos.” What is clear is that they were not amused. Their emotion-filled press conference fueled a bonfire of indignation that ultimately engulfed all the efforts to preserve Imus’s reputation and career.
Foremost among those trying to save him were the well-placed journalists and politicians who loved to go on Imus’s show. Among his outspoken defenders—all of whom seemed to be other white males—was presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani, who may be something of an expert when it comes to racially loaded slurs. In 1992, the future mayor of New York egged on and bonded with a mob of cops demonstrating against then Mayor David Dinkins. Many shouted racial epithets and held signs proclaiming Dinkins, a black man, to be a bathroom attendant. Giuliani apparently did not see racism in such behavior then, just as he seems not to see racism in Imus now.
For what it’s worth, I’m inclined to agree that Imus is not a “racist.” For that designation, in popular usage, seems pretty much limited to that class of kooks who reminisce fondly about the grand old days of the Ku Klux Klan and rant about racial purity. But one does not have to be a raving racist to have racially restricted vision—as Imus clearly does. In too many cases, it seems, Imus sees blacks that he does not know personally as something other than complete human beings—as things that can be dissed and dismissed without his having to know anything more about them than the color of their skin.
In his defense, some Imus admirers pointed out that he denigrates lots of groups; that, in the pursuit of a laugh, he is something of an equal-opportunity jerk. There is clearly some truth to that. But Imus is not in the practice of singling out whites, purely on the basis of skin color, and ridiculing them for being white. It’s difficult to imagine him, or anyone else for that matter, making comparable, racially tinged comments about a group of, say, white, male tennis players. What exactly would he call them? Straight-haired hooligans? Pasty-faced gigolos? Our society simply does not have a comparable way of ridiculing white males collectively. And that says something telling about our history—and what is still being overcome.
Imus has pointed out that the slurs he used did not originate with him—that black women “are demeaned and disparaged and disrespected by their own black men.” Many blacks do indeed engage in rhetoric that is misogynistic, racist and a reflection of the many negative things they have come to associate with being black—particularly with being black and female. There is no excuse for that. But the fact that certain blacks are blind to their own—and their sisters’—humanity does not mean that Imus should be as well. He, after all, is a man who carved out a reputation for himself as a literate, sophisticated political commentator—as something other than just another stupid shock jock.
I get no pleasure out of Imus’s fall. Nor do I think that the fact that so many prominent journalists shamelessly leapt into his bed means those journalists will deeply reflect on why they were his eager enablers. For though journalists are notoriously self-righteous, we also are famously incapable of turning the same critical eye on ourselves that we so easily turn on others.
This is not to say that nothing will change as a result of Imus’s public humiliation. The episode, like the sorry similar episodes before it, will become part of our collective consciousness. It may make some of us more likely to reject unthinking bigotry—and make others capable of better seeing the full dimensions of women who, at first glance, seem so different from their own daughters and sisters.
As for Imus, at some point he likely will rehabilitate himself and re-emerge. Americans, after all, love resurrection stories. I hope that, before that happens, he will do whatever is required to allow him to see the victims of his contempt as fellow human beings.
I would very much like to believe he is capable of that. I would like to believe we all are.
title: “Starr Don Imus Is Us” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-05” author: “Ana Zimmerman”
Winning by division has long been the reigning theory of radio—not to mention politics and, in the age of George W. Bush, international relations. Democrats and Republicans compete to see who can be more convincingly apocalyptic about the other side. No sense addressing the entire country, let alone the world. You stick with your crowd. You target and narrowcast. To combat terrorism, you identify an Axis of Evil, and threaten its destruction. In the doctrine of Us vs. Them, “Them” are not just wrong. Often they are filthy, corrupt, evil or not fully human. They are the “war criminals,” “evildoers”—or “nappy-headed hos.”
But the weather is changing. Poll numbers show weariness with shock-jock politics. Neither the Republican president nor the Democratic Congress wins points for petulant posturing over whether to hold a meeting on Iraq spending. Voters deeply doubt the efficacy of Bush’s Us-vs.-Them thinking on terrorism. Four years into the invasion of Iraq, we are despised by much of the planet; voters reject Bush’s claim that the war has made us safer. The accusatory double helix of Bushes and Clintons, which has lasted for nearly 20 years, feels like a stranglehold to many voters. The rumor among network suits is that numbers are softening for the O’Reillys of the world.
Experts I talk to say that independent voters—the 10 percent who effectively decide the outcome of elections—have had it up to here with the fumes and the fury. “Independents were watching passively,” said Matthew Dowd, who used to advise Bush until he became dismayed at the very approach he once implemented. “Now they are disgusted. They want some sense of dignity in our public discussion. I would even say, for want of a better word, some gentleness.”
Now, let’s not kid ourselves. America was built on argument. Arguing is what we are. Even if Don Imus retreats to his ranch, the Rev. Al Sharpton will still be around to grab air time by working the race divide. Phone lines at Imus’s home base, WFAN radio in New York, are burning with the words of his passionate defenders. We are defined by diversity, which means disagreement, often candid and brutal. “Americans like a good fight, if it’s over important issues,” said Mark Penn, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s senior adviser.
And Bush has a point about Islamist terrorists: it’s dangerously naive to think they will listen to reason. They will stop at nothing, which is a working definition of evil.
Still, something new is in (and on) the American air. It is the only way—so far—I can explain the rise of Sen. Barack Obama. “The whole theory of our campaign is a desire to cobble the American community back together,” said David Axelrod, his top adviser. Obama’s challenge may be an impossible one: to master the Zen of staying positive as things get nasty. In typically cautious fashion, he didn’t call for Imus’s ouster until last Wednesday afternoon, a week after the offending radio broadcast. As a Democratic presidential candidate (and an African-American), he had come to a conclusion: Imus was a Them.
title: “Starr Don Imus Is Us” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-06” author: “Michael Davis”
Imus seemed genuinely apologetic, asking for forgiveness and telling the players and their relatives—about two dozen participants in all—that making fun of people was just what he did. He insisted that he didn’t mean to hurt anyone, according to someone who attended the meeting (but did not want to speak on the record because she was not authorized to disclose details). “We want to know the truth here, we want to know everything you are feeling,” Imus said to the team, as his wife, Deirdre, told NEWSWEEK. Then, for nearly two hours, the former radio host listened to the players’ comments—and questions.
The one that kept coming up, in various formulations and from numerous players, was “Why?” Why target them? How could he not know his remarks were hurtful? Was he proud of making his living by ridiculing others? The players were clearly less than impressed by Imus’s wan explanation that ridicule was his job. And yet on Friday they would announce, “We, the Rutgers University Scarlet Knights basketball team, accept—accept—Mr. Imus’s apology, and we are now in the process of forgiving … The healing process must begin.”
The magnanimity of 10 women athletes, most 19 or 20 years old, provided a stark contrast to the ire and invective on both sides of the Imus debate last week. While the shock jock turned media power broker vacillated between contrition and umbrage (“I’m a good man who said a bad thing”), and old-school civil-rights leaders Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson demanded Imus’s head, the women of Rutgers schooled their elders in civility and grace. The Knights never called for the radio host’s dismissal. They wanted both the world and Don Imus to know that they did not consider themselves helpless victims. “I know that this is not my problem,” one player told Imus, according to the Rev. DeForest Soaries, who mediated the Thursday-night session. “I don’t want you to think that I question myself because of what you said. I’m a classy woman at a great university. I will pray for you.”
In a sense, Imus lost his job not when he leveled his double-barreled slur at the Rutgers team, but when the team held its press conference Tuesday—just a week after their Cinderella season came to a close with a 59-46 loss to Tennessee in the NCAA championship game. The image of the self-possessed young women encouraged employees at NBC to rise up and call for Imus’s firing; their poise may also have persuaded advertisers to begin pulling their sponsorships of Imus’s show.
The first generation of athletes to live wholly in an era shaped by Title IX, the landmark legislation that made equality for women athletes the law of the land (if not always the reality on campus), the women of Rutgers showed a strength that until recently was all too rare in women their age. That confidence, women’s rights activists, coaches and players believe, is born and nurtured at least partly through athletics. “That’s what sports does,” says Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women’s Sports Foundation. “It breeds strong, confident women.”
Still, Imus’s comments stung. “When I heard the quote I was confused,” Kia Vaughn, a 6-foot-4 sophomore center from the Bronx, told NEWSWEEK. “I felt intimidated and scared, and it was the first time that I ever felt that way in my life … I couldn’t believe someone was talking about my womanhood and calling me a ho.” But the players didn’t let the hurt penetrate their pride. “Why would he say that if he doesn’t know us or what we accomplished?” asked forward Myia McCurdy.
For team captain Essence Carson, a 6-foot forward/guard from Paterson, N.J., who wowed the public with her poise, Imus’s remark was more sexist than racist. “It was an attack on women first,” Carson told NEWSWEEK. “He just made it race-specific.” Initially, the Knights wanted to ignore Imus and absorb their pain as a team, she said, but after a little discussion the women decided they “had to take a stand.” Stringer’s example was key, said Carson; “Coach has been through everything you can think of, [so] we know we have the strength to bear anything.”
The daughter of a Pennsylvania coal miner, Stringer is also the third-winningest coach in women’s basketball history and a longtime advocate of leveling the playing field for females. She first drew national attention in 1982, guiding small, historically black Cheyney State into the Final Four—and went on to make women’s basketball a campus craze at the University of Iowa in 1983. A decade later she led Iowa to the Final Four. For Stringer the success was bittersweet; her husband, William, had suffered a heart attack and died at 47 earlier that year. The couple had three children: two sons and a daughter who suffers from spinal meningitis. Two years later, with her three children in tow, Stringer headed to Rutgers. While she called its basketball program “the Jewel of the East,” she told friends the university’s efforts to help her cope with child care, providing round-the-clock assistance for her bedridden daughter, were instrumental in her choice.
This past year Stringer recruited her best class ever. Yet the highly regarded squad lost four of its games to top-seven teams, including a record 40-point rout at the hands of Duke, and fell from its customary place in the top-25 ranking. Stringer ripped her young players as all too impressed with their own reputations. She boosted her already grueling practices and demanded that they return the clothes with school colors and logos that they had received.
The women rebounded. By the time they hit the Final Four, the Knights had grown into a tightknit group with a deep bond of trust with their coach. They got hammered on the boards in their final game, but every one of the 10 women plans to return to play for Stringer next year—making Rutgers an early favorite to make it back to the Final Four in 2008.
After accepting Imus’s apology on Friday, the Scarlet Knights vowed to get back to thinking about basketball—and their studies. Coach Stringer knew it wouldn’t be easy to stay focused, given the magnitude of what had just transpired—young black women speaking truth to media power, and media power listening. In talking with the press, Stringer pointed out that Imus made his remarks on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s death—musing that that historical coincidence showed how little progress has been made in race relations. Her message to her players? They need to concentrate on their exams, the coach said. Then a little bit of wonderment crept in. “We need to come back next year and say that this was a great and joyous time,” Stringer said, a time “we helped to change the culture.”
