Courtesy of Huffington Post's Rachel Sklar, the nicest picture of the Mirror Awards luncheon, as Rory O'Connor and I stood in our far corner of the Rainbow Room while the mucketeys dined behind us.
While this was going on, somewhere closer to New York's sewers than our 65th-floor view, Don Imus was stirring up a minor poopstorm with his racist remarks concerning NFL bad boy Pacman Jones. Here it is Friday, though, and the storm seems to have passed. What happened?
Here's my theory. Two years ago, most people didn't know the I-man was capable of saying stupid racist things because, well, they had no idea who the I-man was. Once they found out, they thought he should be fired for what he said. Once that happened, and he went away, and then came back, Imus became the classic American rehab story. (And if anyone knows about rehab, it's him.) Now America's take on him seems to be, "Hey, justice was served. Somebody hired him, so he must not be all bad."
I'm not saying I forgive Imus either for what he said, or that the utterly pragmatic view of him that has fed the current indifference is justified. But as Rory has argued so persuasively in his new book Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio, there aren't a lot of people who can do what Imus does every day — be stimulating on the radio for four hours a day — and as long as that's true, he will make millions. And his new employers, WABC Radio, will defend him the way they defended a true hater, Bob Grant, for years and years.
By the way, how perfect is it that Imus is now forever linked to Pacman Jones? After all, few people know their way around a football field like Jones does, which means that even after being disgraced and losing his job, he, too, stands to make millions. Even better, he's got a lot of people feeling sorry for him after being dissed by the I-man. What a country!
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