Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, this is part two of our episode about
Speaker 1: the two thousand and seven Rutgers women's basketball team. If
Speaker 1: you haven't listened to part one yet, I recommend starting there.
Speaker 1: And just a note that we discussed racist and sexist
Speaker 1: language in this episode.
Speaker 2: In April two.
Speaker 1: Thousand and seven, Don Imss, a popular and prominent radio host,
Speaker 1: callously dragged a group of young female college athletes into
Speaker 1: a press storm.
Speaker 3: I was blown away, bab what was said. Although I
Speaker 3: was no stranger to racism and the nuances of it,
Speaker 3: I didn't necessarily think it would be possible, especially towards
Speaker 3: a group of young women like ourselves.
Speaker 1: But don iMOS was about to get caught in his
Speaker 1: own storm.
Speaker 4: He had done it before, and there was a track
Speaker 4: record of him, particularly saying and espousing some pretty dangerous
Speaker 4: tropes about black women. And finally, I think a lot
Speaker 4: of people said enough is enough.
Speaker 1: After a week of silence, the team was finally ready
Speaker 1: to respond to take control of the narrative.
Speaker 2: I'm Susie Banacaram and I'm Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 1: And this is in Retrospect, where each week we revisit
Speaker 1: a cultural moment from the past that shaped us and.
Speaker 2: That we just can't stop thinking about today.
Speaker 1: We're talking about a college basketball team that was thrown
Speaker 1: into the national spotlight against their will, but we are
Speaker 1: also talking about who is allowed to respond in anger
Speaker 1: when they are publicly targeted and who gets centered when
Speaker 1: these stories get told.
Speaker 2: This is part two, Okay to recap.
Speaker 5: So, the Rutgers women's basketball team has just been to
Speaker 5: the national championships and shock jock radio host Don Imus
Speaker 5: goes on his show and calls them an offensive slur
Speaker 5: on the.
Speaker 2: Air, that's a nappy head of ours.
Speaker 5: The backlash is growing quickly at this point, with people
Speaker 5: like Al Sharpton and Barack Obama calling for his resignation.
Speaker 2: This all happens inside of a week, is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 2: The Rutgers team initially stays quiet.
Speaker 1: They take time to think about how they want to
Speaker 1: respond and to let it play out a little bit,
Speaker 1: and then they decide the best way to do this
Speaker 1: is with a press conference.
Speaker 2: What happens at the press conference.
Speaker 1: So exactly a week after the comments, they have this
Speaker 1: really emotional news conference. Coach Vivian Springer, who I'll remind
Speaker 1: you was this very famous Hall of Fame coach, decided
Speaker 1: that the way to best approach this was to really
Speaker 1: emphasize the humanity of the girls beside her.
Speaker 2: Okay, so here's what she said.
Speaker 6: These young ladies that you just have seated before you,
Speaker 6: before you, are valedictorians of your class, future doctors, musical prodigies,
Speaker 6: and yes, even girl scouts. These young ladies are the
Speaker 6: best thistination has to offer, and we are so very
Speaker 6: fortunate to have them here at Rutgers University. They are
Speaker 6: young ladies of class distinction, are articulate, they are brilliant,
Speaker 6: They are gifted.
Speaker 1: She also didn't dry away from clearly calling out what
Speaker 1: don Imus had said as unacceptable slurs.
Speaker 7: We had to experience racist and sexist remarks that are deplorable,
Speaker 7: despicable and abominable and unconscionable, and it hurts me.
Speaker 1: And then a couple players spoke, and Essence was one
Speaker 1: of them. She was introduced as a straight a student
Speaker 1: who could walk out here and play Moonlight Sonata on
Speaker 1: the piano without looking at the notes, which I know
Speaker 1: is true because I watched a video of her playing piano,
Speaker 1: and she expressed the team's great hurt, anger and disgust.
Speaker 8: Not only has mister Imus stolen a moment of pure
Speaker 8: grace from us. But he has brought us to the
Speaker 8: harsh reality that behind the faces of the networks, they
Speaker 8: have worked so hard to convey a message of empowerment
Speaker 8: to young adults that so, somehow, some way, the door
Speaker 8: has been left open to attack your leaders of tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Well you can hear how young she is there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean a lot of the commentators who were
Speaker 1: watching that day noted how young and vulnerable the team appeared.
Speaker 1: And this press conference was terrible for don Imus. The
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal would call it devastating for him, but
Speaker 1: the Wreckers team did say at the end they had
Speaker 1: agreed to meet with him.
Speaker 5: So we just heard Vivian Stringers being very composed and
Speaker 5: super gracious in that press conference. But has she ever
Speaker 5: talked about how she reacted privately, because I imagined she
Speaker 5: was pretty pissed.
Speaker 1: Yes, her private reaction was very different. Years later, she
Speaker 1: recalled in twenty eighteen profile than in the days afterward,
Speaker 1: And I'll read this. I kept reading those words and
Speaker 1: I was so upset. I kept thinking, why would he
Speaker 1: say that he doesn't know us? I remember busting my
Speaker 1: hand on the wall, and I was crying because it
Speaker 1: was bleeding.
Speaker 5: Hearing all this like honestly makes me so sad because
Speaker 5: she's just like, he doesn't even know us. Like there's
Speaker 5: so much bias coursing underneath the surface to what they're saying.
Speaker 5: Even in the press conference when they're having to reiterate
Speaker 5: that these are brilliant, articulate young women, it's like trying
Speaker 5: to object or subvert the tropes while responding to the thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really is what's happening.
Speaker 1: I mean, she has to put on this professional face
Speaker 1: and she has to prepare her team for a meeting
Speaker 1: with this man who's caused them so much pain because
Speaker 1: she knows that's what's expected of her.
Speaker 2: I mean, she doesn't really have a choice.
Speaker 5: And then, of course she doesn't really have the luxury
Speaker 5: of getting publicly angry, right, Like, of course she has
Speaker 5: to slam a wall behind closed doors, because what would
Speaker 5: they possibly say if she showed anger in public?
Speaker 1: Right then she'd become an angry black woman. That's another
Speaker 1: trope that they have to make sure they're not feeding into.
Speaker 1: And I think intrinsically they understood that they had to
Speaker 1: appeal to people by laying bear their humanity which is
Speaker 1: just not right.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't have to lay ourselves bear to convince people
Speaker 1: we are worthy of not being treated terribly. And I
Speaker 1: was really struck by that too, so I asked Essence,
Speaker 1: if they were conscious of that.
Speaker 3: I think it's black women, you know, we have to
Speaker 3: somehow figure out how to navigate this place, how to
Speaker 3: navigate life in a way where you are able to
Speaker 3: show how strong and powerful you are, how intelligent you are,
Speaker 3: but at the same time, do it in a way
Speaker 3: where you don't ruffle any feathers, where you don't intimidate people.
Speaker 3: You know, we should just take what's given to us,
Speaker 3: or you know, the more we fight for ourselves and
Speaker 3: for others, as we often do, it's almost just like hey,
Speaker 3: you you right there, Yes, you.
Speaker 2: You specifically be quiet.
Speaker 3: What you grow to understand is that what happens and
Speaker 3: sports soch a Michael cosm of what society is.
Speaker 5: What she's talking about here is the double bind, right
Speaker 5: like that these women, these young women had to grapple
Speaker 5: with the isms of both race and gender, and so
Speaker 5: like God forbid, they would be labeled as angry. We
Speaker 5: saw how that played out when Serena william Is yelled
Speaker 5: at that ref even though research actually shows and I
Speaker 5: will just point this out to clarify the record, that
Speaker 5: black women are in fact less likely to show anger
Speaker 5: when criticized or disrespected.
Speaker 1: Because they know that this is a catch twenty two, right,
Speaker 1: especially ins in sports, you're supposed to be aggressive. How
Speaker 1: are you also going to be docile? Like it's this
Speaker 1: insane thing where Serena Williams gets, you know, weeks of
Speaker 1: headlines about how she was unsportsmanlike. But in tennis, I mean,
Speaker 1: think about John Beckenroe. Those guys were crazy and they
Speaker 1: never got dinged in the way she did.
Speaker 5: That's the thing too, right, Like when men express anger,
Speaker 5: they are viewed as passionate and their status actually increases,
Speaker 5: whereas when a woman expresses anger, she's just crazy and nuts.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So as women, you know, right, you know that you
Speaker 1: have to kind of make yourself softer in some way
Speaker 1: to be considered professional. You have to put a bunch
Speaker 1: of exclamation points in your emails, and you have.
Speaker 2: To be likable.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and in fact, they did come off as very likable.
Speaker 5: It seems like they effectively threaded that needle in this
Speaker 5: press conference.
Speaker 2: Is that what the response was.
Speaker 1: Yes, they definitely did, and it was an extremely successful
Speaker 1: press conference, and essence really credits Vivian's stringer for that.
Speaker 1: She really was a pro so she knew how to
Speaker 1: frame this in a way that would be effective. But
Speaker 1: one thing that's interesting about the response to it is
Speaker 1: that a lot of the coverage remarked about how graceful
Speaker 1: they were, their dignity, they're poise, and Hundits repeatedly marveled
Speaker 1: at how articulate and gracious they were.
Speaker 2: They actually used the word articulous in.
Speaker 1: The yes okay, And you know, the subjects of that
Speaker 1: is that it's surprising that they were rating right, which
Speaker 1: feels racist in a less obvious way.
Speaker 2: So I want to bring back Jaml Hill to talk
Speaker 2: about this.
Speaker 1: As you know, Jamal is an acclaimed sports journalist and
Speaker 1: she wrote about the story for ESPN at the time.
Speaker 4: Well, there's the indignity that you suffer of being dehumanized,
Speaker 4: and then you have the extra indignity of having to
Speaker 4: react to it politely because you're always aware of the
Speaker 4: fact that your reactions are scrutinized and judged a lot differently.
Speaker 4: For them to be angry in that moment, for them
Speaker 4: to express any rage. It says everything about race in
Speaker 4: America that that would have been considered to be a
Speaker 4: classless reaction, but not what he said. Their reaction would
Speaker 4: have been considered had they chosen to be angry and
Speaker 4: chosen to exhibit a more forceful emotion, would have been
Speaker 4: considered to be more egregious than the actual offense. I
Speaker 4: would have loved for them to be able to express
Speaker 4: however I feel, But it's unfortunately the burden and the
Speaker 4: responsibility that a lot of Black people have had to
Speaker 4: live with a long time, because not only are we
Speaker 4: often the victims of racism and institutional racism and white supremacy,
Speaker 4: were also not only tasked with being kind and polite
Speaker 4: to it, we're also tasked with fixing it to It's.
Speaker 5: So interesting because it's like what they had to do
Speaker 5: there was predict the racist undertones or tropes that were
Speaker 5: going to be used against them and then like preemptively
Speaker 5: come back.
Speaker 1: Yes, they definitely had to go into this with the
Speaker 1: understanding that it was their responsibility to somehow make this
Speaker 1: better while also making it clear how unacceptable it was
Speaker 1: to them.
Speaker 5: Right, And how do you do that if you can't
Speaker 5: be firm because firm might be interpreted as angry.
Speaker 2: I think that is actually the brilliance of Vivian Stringer.
Speaker 1: She is really but she's doing it in a way
Speaker 1: that really engenders empathy. And you can tell this isn't
Speaker 1: her first rodeo rights what she's doing.
Speaker 5: It's just like, there's so many layers to this that
Speaker 5: you have to peel back and constantly be aware of.
Speaker 1: Right, because you have to experience the racism, but then
Speaker 1: you also have to respond in a way that's not
Speaker 1: going to create more racism, that's not going to make
Speaker 1: you more of a target. It's really complex, and I
Speaker 1: think it's also worth noting here that there was this
Speaker 1: kind of deep historical and cultural significance to the way
Speaker 1: that don Imus chose to be offensive right by calling
Speaker 1: them names that were tied to their sexuality and to
Speaker 1: their hair. It was tapping into this long standing cultural
Speaker 1: baggage around black women's hair in this country. It's been
Speaker 1: stereotyped and stigmatized for so long, as we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: and Jabelle was really interesting on this topic. Hair is
Speaker 1: very central to the identity of black women. Backing the
Speaker 1: times of slavery, they used to make black women bind
Speaker 1: their hair in various cloths basically so it wouldn't publicly
Speaker 1: be seen. And the reason they didn't it was because
Speaker 1: it was this crazy sort of thesis that if because
Speaker 1: black women were elaborately styling their hair and that was
Speaker 1: part of their expression, there was this crazy idea that
Speaker 1: that would lure white men. And so when you call
Speaker 1: a group of black women that be hitdedt os, you're
Speaker 1: not only trying to dehumanize them, you're also trying to
Speaker 1: make sure that you are sending the message that their
Speaker 1: beauty is not respected, regarded, or even wanted.
Speaker 2: You're trying to make them feel undesirable.
Speaker 4: That is the whole point of this, right, And so
Speaker 4: that's something that black women have also faced throughout the
Speaker 4: history of our lives, is that we have been made
Speaker 4: to feel not only as if we don't matter, but
Speaker 4: that we're just not even beautiful or desirable enough to
Speaker 4: even be considered in the same way, regarded in the
Speaker 4: same scope of femininity that everybody else is. And so
Speaker 4: by planting the image that we are hoes, it makes
Speaker 4: it seem as if historically that the type of sexual
Speaker 4: abuse and sexual trauma that black women have suffered is
Speaker 4: really their fault because they're hoes and they're loose, and
Speaker 4: that is another stereotype in a narrative that we have
Speaker 4: had to fight throughout the course of our beings.
Speaker 2: Susie.
Speaker 5: Let's go back to the fallout for Imus. Did he
Speaker 5: end up facing any consequences.
Speaker 2: He did.
Speaker 1: After the press conference, general outrage grew because it had
Speaker 1: been really effective, right. It had really emphasized that the
Speaker 1: Rutgers players were just kids for the most part, and.
Speaker 2: They they wanted it to do. Yeah, And they weren't.
Speaker 1: Journalists or politicians who were choosing to go on Imus's
Speaker 1: platform and mix it up with him to sell books
Speaker 1: or whatever. These were just hard working girls who had
Speaker 1: done nothing but dare to play basketball while being black.
Speaker 1: So it really was a critical moment in this story.
Speaker 1: He did try to continue to spin things afterwards. He
Speaker 1: did talk a lot about how he'd done all this
Speaker 1: charitable work, which is true. He had done a lot
Speaker 1: of charitable work with children with cancer, and he felt
Speaker 1: the need to mention that some of them were black,
Speaker 1: which it's like, oh, but thank god you didn't weed
Speaker 1: out the black kids from your cancer and illness ranch Like,
Speaker 1: it just was kind of a crazy.
Speaker 2: So it's basically like that, but I have a black friend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a version of that, but almost worse
Speaker 1: because he was using these sick children as a way
Speaker 1: to defend himself, which it's hard not to see that
Speaker 1: as a cynical way to try and change the conversation.
Speaker 1: He launched a telethon to benefit three children's charities while
Speaker 1: all of this was happening, which just does feel a
Speaker 1: bit like a stunt. He also defended himself by saying
Speaker 1: that the black community had used the word and said
Speaker 1: horrible things about black women. And he argued that because
Speaker 1: rappers routinely and this is a quote from him the
Speaker 1: fame and demean black women and called them in quotes
Speaker 1: worse names than I ever did.
Speaker 2: Like, how was he supposed to know that this was offensive?
Speaker 1: And you know that conversation is also to me just ridiculous,
Speaker 1: Like what that has to do with his decision to
Speaker 1: go after these girls for no reason, I don't know,
Speaker 1: But it worked as a distraction.
Speaker 2: It did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of conversation at the time around hip
Speaker 1: hop and whether it was a double standard that black rappers.
Speaker 2: Interesting, So that actually became a story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, time did a story at the time, Oprah Winfrey
Speaker 1: did a town hall with black leaders about whether or
Speaker 1: not hip hop needed to be held accountable for calling
Speaker 1: women bitches and hoes. But okay, so it is this
Speaker 1: crazy side show that happens. In fairness to Oprah, she
Speaker 1: had also done an episode with the girls from Rutgers.
Speaker 1: But still, I Ell said when I spoke to her
Speaker 1: that this whole thing was just a way to continue
Speaker 1: to avoid accountability.
Speaker 4: It was a way to let don I Miss and
Speaker 4: other people who think like them off the hook, because
Speaker 4: I can tell you, I can't think of a single
Speaker 4: jay Z lyric where he said the Rutgers women's basketball
Speaker 4: team are nappy headed holes, not one. Often what we see, unfortunately,
Speaker 4: in conversations about race is that at some point in
Speaker 4: these conversations, the people who don't want to be accountable
Speaker 4: want to then blame the people that they have either insulted,
Speaker 4: demean or dehumanized for their own treatment. So it's not
Speaker 4: about don Iamas saying this about the Ruggers women's basketball team.
Speaker 4: It then becomes oh, no, black people deserve this, because
Speaker 4: that's ultimately what he was saying. They deserve to be
Speaker 4: called nappy headed holes because of something that Tupac said.
Speaker 2: That's basically what he says.
Speaker 1: It's just a diversionary tactic essentially, and it becomes such
Speaker 1: a big part of the story that Snoop dogg ends
Speaker 1: up responding to it.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, she didn't. Yeah, remember this, Okay.
Speaker 1: He said an interview with MTV News, which was still
Speaker 1: a thing then, that we're not, as he puts it,
Speaker 1: old ass white men sitting on MSNBC going hard on
Speaker 1: black girls.
Speaker 2: We're rappers.
Speaker 1: This comes from our own experience and it's relevant to
Speaker 1: what we feel, and we're not going to let people
Speaker 1: say we're in the same league as this man.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. Yeah, I mean that's true.
Speaker 5: Like, he's not a news person on major news programs
Speaker 5: who is supposed to have some sort of journalistic standards,
Speaker 5: even though we know that he didn't.
Speaker 2: Right, it's just a totally different thing.
Speaker 1: And also, as is well established now, but I guess
Speaker 1: wasn't as well established at the time, being part of
Speaker 1: a group does give you license to have different kinds
Speaker 1: of conversations about them. That is just a fact, and
Speaker 1: to pretend like that's not a fact and clutch your
Speaker 1: pearls and be like well, why do they get to
Speaker 1: say this?
Speaker 2: But it's like, we know why, we don't need to
Speaker 2: pretend we don't know why.
Speaker 1: So the pressure continues on CBS and MSNBC particularly to
Speaker 1: fire him, particularly from black leaders Al Sharpton, who I
Speaker 1: already mentioned, who's a well known civil rights leader, and
Speaker 1: also Jesse Jackson, who's also a well known civil rights leader,
Speaker 1: and women's groups continue.
Speaker 2: To also put a lot of pressure on.
Speaker 1: I think the thing that this really highlights is that
Speaker 1: while Imas's audience had gotten used to his antics, the
Speaker 1: larger republic wasn't so familiar with them. So this clip
Speaker 1: ends up being really shocking to a broad audience. And
Speaker 1: then all these previous clips that we mentioned come in
Speaker 1: and others that we didn't mention because there were so
Speaker 1: many of them. So advertisers begin to bail, and as
Speaker 1: you and I both know, when the money goes is
Speaker 1: when the pressure.
Speaker 2: Really comes on.
Speaker 1: Yes, And once advertisers start pulling out, CBS and MSNBC
Speaker 1: realized that the suspension isn't going to be enough, and
Speaker 1: MSNBC cancels his television simulcast right because they don't actually
Speaker 1: produce the show, they just air it and eight days
Speaker 1: after he made the comments, don Imis is finally fired
Speaker 1: by CBS. Okay, okay, and in an in retrospect cameo
Speaker 1: as twist. As per usual, the person who fires don
Speaker 1: Imis is Les Moonvez Because no matter what, a list
Speaker 1: of bad men always crops up in every story.
Speaker 5: Less moonves to remind people the former head of CBS
Speaker 5: who was then pushed out over egregious sexual harass.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, it's just a reminder that the bad men
Speaker 1: are everywhere. So one other thing I just want to
Speaker 1: mention here because I think it is wild, is that
Speaker 1: when I was researching this story, I found that it
Speaker 1: had become such a huge story at the time that
Speaker 1: it inspired not one, but two Harvard Business School cases.
Speaker 1: Oh really about how as a leader you should handle
Speaker 1: a crisis like this.
Speaker 2: So oh fascinating. This really did.
Speaker 1: Capture the national attention, far beyond the local New York
Speaker 1: story that it might have been in a different world.
Speaker 5: It's so interesting because this is the kind of stuff
Speaker 5: that now plays out all the time, yes, and is
Speaker 5: probably tackled much more quickly, So it's interesting to think
Speaker 5: about how that has shifted. It's just so much more common.
Speaker 5: I think now for big companies to be put under
Speaker 5: pressure by the public and then advertisers to make a
Speaker 5: decision about a thing that happened.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because on the one hand, I think that's true,
Speaker 1: but then I think about like a Joe Rogan on
Speaker 1: Spotify and how Spotify has basically just kind of let
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan do whatever he wants. And I think the
Speaker 1: other way in which the landscape has shifted is that
Speaker 1: there's an expectation that certain people are going to be
Speaker 1: who they are, and so we don't get as much
Speaker 1: backlash if a Joe Rogan says something, but obviously if
Speaker 1: a mainstream network TV person says something, that's going to
Speaker 1: have a different impact. But there are different rules for
Speaker 1: different people now in a way that I don't think
Speaker 1: existed then, because there's how many listeners are yours? How
Speaker 1: much money are you bringing him for the platform? I
Speaker 1: mean that was the whole thing with Joe Rogan, right right, Well,
Speaker 1: with Joe Rogan, Spotify doesn't rely on advertising, right, so
Speaker 1: they make their own decision about what happens on it's
Speaker 1: hard to prussure them. Yeah, So it's interesting and look,
Speaker 1: I think you can look at even Tucker Carlson. Advertisers
Speaker 1: left Tucker Carlson in droves when he was at Fox News.
Speaker 1: But that's not what finally got him fired, right, What
Speaker 1: finally got empired is that, by all accounts, Super Murdoch
Speaker 1: finally got sick of him pushing conspiracy theories.
Speaker 5: Okay, so you mentioned that the team did agree to
Speaker 5: meet with Don Ims. I imagine that must have been crazy.
Speaker 5: Did that happen? What exactly happened at that meeting? And
Speaker 5: what do we know about it? So the meeting did happen.
Speaker 1: Coincidentally, the meeting was scheduled for the evening of the
Speaker 1: day he ends up getting fired. So the meeting happens
Speaker 1: also eight days after he made the initial comments, and
Speaker 1: it's a pre arranged meeting with the coach, Vivian Springer,
Speaker 1: and the whole team at the New Jersey Governor's mansion.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, it's at the Governor's at.
Speaker 1: The governor's mansion. But strangely, the governor never makes it
Speaker 1: to the meeting. As a weird aside, he gets in
Speaker 1: a car accident on the way.
Speaker 2: Oh and it is like injured.
Speaker 1: So they have the meeting without him, So he's not involved,
Speaker 1: but it's at the governor's mansion.
Speaker 5: But that is interesting that this has made it to
Speaker 5: the highest level of state politics.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, definitely.
Speaker 1: And I think also New Jersey really rallied around this team,
Speaker 1: like they felt real pride in them as they were
Speaker 1: making their way up to the Final four, So I
Speaker 1: think they felt protective of them, right, So it became
Speaker 1: a New Jersey story in that way. So the meeting
Speaker 1: lasts about three to four hours.
Speaker 2: That's long.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a long meeting, and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people on the team talk and afterwards i Miss
Speaker 1: leaves without commenting, but Stringer does say that the meeting
Speaker 1: went well and that i Miss apologized and that they
Speaker 1: accepted his apology because he came to the meeting in
Speaker 1: spite of the fact that he'd lost his job, So
Speaker 1: they give him credit for that, or at least coach
Speaker 1: Stringer gives him credit for that. And she also makes
Speaker 1: the point that the basketball team had not called for
Speaker 1: i Miss to be fired.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty interesting, right.
Speaker 1: I think that is interesting and worth noting because you
Speaker 1: get this sense that even as all of this is
Speaker 1: playing out, she's conscious of not wanting the team to
Speaker 1: be blamed. She doesn't want to be responsible for whatever
Speaker 1: happened to him again, because I think they're conscious of
Speaker 1: this possibility that there will be backlash, that somehow this
Speaker 1: will kind of push back on them.
Speaker 5: Well, and also at the end of the day, probably
Speaker 5: she's just trying to stay in her lank like this.
Speaker 5: This is a team, this is an athletic team. These
Speaker 5: are girls. They'd never wanted to be weighing in on
Speaker 5: national racial politics in the first place.
Speaker 2: That's correct. I think that is definitely part of it.
Speaker 1: She's just like, I'm just protecting my team and I
Speaker 1: don't want to be blamed for whatever decisions other people
Speaker 1: need to make about this. The team has not talked
Speaker 1: about this meeting very much. They've never really spoken about
Speaker 1: what happened. But I did ask Essence what the meeting
Speaker 1: was like from her perspective, and this is what she
Speaker 1: told me.
Speaker 3: I felt like we got what we needed to say
Speaker 3: off of our chests, each and every one of us.
Speaker 3: We shared what we needed to share, what we wanted
Speaker 3: to share about how we were feeling about what it caused,
Speaker 3: and really allow him to put a faith to those characters,
Speaker 3: because essentially he diminished us and it made us characters, right,
Speaker 3: So I think that at that time we were able
Speaker 3: to kind of humanize ourselves as much as we could, right,
Speaker 3: as much as he cared.
Speaker 5: It's so interesting to think of them all there together
Speaker 5: and what Essence is saying is still pretty graceful and
Speaker 5: giving this guy a lot of grace in going to
Speaker 5: this meeting, and you know, wanting to show that they're
Speaker 5: real people, not going in and being like fuck you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, we don't really know what happened in the meeting.
Speaker 1: Imus did eventually talk a bit about this meeting, and
Speaker 1: he did say that one of the player's moms really
Speaker 1: was very mad at him and really expressed to him
Speaker 1: in ways that made it clear to him that what
Speaker 1: he had done wasn't okay and wasn't funny. And he said,
Speaker 1: it was good that I lost my job before this meeting,
Speaker 1: because it didn't feel like I was just there to
Speaker 1: try and save my job. I was really there to apologize,
Speaker 1: and I was grateful that they accepted it.
Speaker 2: And I guess, to his credit, he could have canceled
Speaker 2: the meeting.
Speaker 1: I think he genuinely did feel very shamed by this chapter,
Speaker 1: and he said afterwards he made a promise to them
Speaker 1: that he would not make them regret for giving him
Speaker 1: because they had accepted an apology, and I think for
Speaker 1: the most part, he did try and live up to that.
Speaker 1: But whatever his regrets, it did not stop him from
Speaker 1: suing CBS for forty million dollars claiming wrongful termination.
Speaker 2: So his regrets did not last very long. Did he
Speaker 2: get that money? He got a lot of it.
Speaker 1: CBS announced a settlement with him for an undisclosed amount
Speaker 1: in August, so this happened in April, so not that
Speaker 1: many months later, and the reporting at the time was
Speaker 1: that he got ten to twenty million dollars.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: That same day, one of the Rutgers basketball players, Kia Vaughn,
Speaker 1: who went on to play for the WNBA, filed a
Speaker 1: suit against I Miss, his executive producer, and all the
Speaker 1: media companies involved, citing slander and libel and defamation of character. Okay,
Speaker 1: and she was the only one to pursue legal damages.
Speaker 1: But you get the sense that they did really just
Speaker 1: want to move on. So a month later, she drops
Speaker 1: the lawsuit saying she just wants to concentrate on our
Speaker 1: studies and basketball training. And I think they do just
Speaker 1: move on from this and try not to talk about
Speaker 1: it much afterwards.
Speaker 2: And so where does don Imus go from here?
Speaker 1: Well, Jessica, you might be surprised to know that I
Speaker 1: Miss was back on the air at another network, WABC,
Speaker 1: by the end of that same year, in a deal
Speaker 1: that was reportedly worth five to eight billion dollars a year.
Speaker 1: It may also surprise you to know that his first
Speaker 1: guest included Pulitzer Prize winning historian Doris Kurns Goodwin and
Speaker 1: Senator John McCain. So it really didn't last long the backlash,
Speaker 1: and on his first show back, he described that meeting
Speaker 1: with the team and said the things that I just
Speaker 1: mentioned about how it made him realize that it wasn't funny.
Speaker 1: He diversified his show, he added some black comedians to
Speaker 1: his existing crew, and to give you an idea of
Speaker 1: how much he did or didn't change, he ended his
Speaker 1: opening monologue by saying this, but.
Speaker 2: Other than that, not much has change.
Speaker 9: Dick Cheney is still a war criminal, Hillary Clinton is
Speaker 9: still Satan, and I'm back on the radio.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 5: So he's clearly signaling to his audience that sure he
Speaker 5: may have changed in this one realm, but he's still
Speaker 5: the same guy. Who calls Hillary Clinton satan. Yes, I
Speaker 5: mean it is interesting because it's like, Okay, can people
Speaker 5: make in his case, racist mistakes, apologize, do the work
Speaker 5: as we like to say, and move forward, or can
Speaker 5: they not? Like it is an interesting question. Should he
Speaker 5: have been kept off there forever? This seems pretty quick.
Speaker 1: It's just indicative of the fact that while he did
Speaker 1: get his hands slapped, he didn't really lose that much.
Speaker 1: Right in the end, maybe he lost some amount of money,
Speaker 1: but in the numbers we're talking about here, tens of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars, whatever that money was, didn't make a
Speaker 1: dent in his overall wealth. And honestly, I think the
Speaker 1: thing that's more interesting is that it didn't take long
Speaker 1: for him to fully rehabilitate his image. Almost a year
Speaker 1: to the date of the original comments, Jesse Jackson, who
Speaker 1: had literally been one of the people leading protests and
Speaker 1: calling for as firing, appeared on his show Okay to
Speaker 1: discuss the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King Junior. Which you may know that Jesse Jackson was
Speaker 1: there when Mlking Jr. Was assassinated and that booking would
Speaker 1: have seemed impossible a year before. So it is an
Speaker 1: interesting question of how long does it take to rehabilitate,
Speaker 1: or what is considered rehabilitation. But frankly, this feels like
Speaker 1: it wasn't much. Within a year he was already sort
Speaker 1: of buddying up with the people who had been calling
Speaker 1: for accountability.
Speaker 5: Did Jesse Jackson ever talk about why he made the
Speaker 5: decision to go back on I.
Speaker 1: Think the honest answer is people wanted access to his platform.
Speaker 1: It's why people went on before knowing exactly who he was.
Speaker 1: You know, in the end, access to power is extremely seductive,
Speaker 1: and I think that's what the Imus story is. In
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, people really tolerated a lot from
Speaker 1: don Imus things they knew weren't okay even before these comments,
Speaker 1: because they wanted access to his platform. And I assume
Speaker 1: for Jesse Jackson, whatever he may have said at the time,
Speaker 1: that was essentially the same reason he decided it was
Speaker 1: okay to move forward.
Speaker 2: With this guy.
Speaker 5: Okay, So this is all interesting, But to what extent
Speaker 5: do you think he actually did mean it when he
Speaker 5: told the players, I am not going to make you
Speaker 5: regret having accepted my apology.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think to some degree he did.
Speaker 1: I actually asked Essence about this, and she was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I did not continue to follow
Speaker 1: this man's career when this was over. I hit this
Speaker 1: chapter away and like, I just didn't care to track him.
Speaker 1: And I think that's very fair on her part. I
Speaker 1: think he made an effort not to use really racially
Speaker 1: charged language. What was in his heart? I mean, I
Speaker 1: think we just don't know. There were a couple smaller
Speaker 1: incidents where he denied the kind of racial undertones that
Speaker 1: other people saw in them, So I do think he
Speaker 1: was under scrutiny.
Speaker 2: And did he ever talk about it again.
Speaker 1: He did address the comments again in twenty eighteen, so
Speaker 1: I miss passed in twenty nineteen. But he retired from
Speaker 1: his show in twenty eighteen, so that gives you a
Speaker 1: sense of how much longer he was on the air.
Speaker 1: He went back on the air in two thousand and
Speaker 1: seven and stayed on for eleven more years, And he
Speaker 1: gave an interview to CBS Sunday Morning when he retired,
Speaker 1: which also just gives you an idea of how much
Speaker 1: his image was rehabilitated. Right that CBS Sunday Morning ran
Speaker 1: this glowing profile of him upon his retirement, and when
Speaker 1: the correspondent asked him if he had any regrets, he
Speaker 1: said that the Rutgers thing, that's how he framed it,
Speaker 1: the Rutgers thing, I regret.
Speaker 2: The correspondent asked, what do you regret about it?
Speaker 1: And he just said, because I know better, And he
Speaker 1: also added that it was because it changes thinking about
Speaker 1: making fun of some people who didn't necessarily have a
Speaker 1: mechanism to defend themselves. I mean, I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's the kind of deep regret I might have expressed
Speaker 1: in this.
Speaker 5: Well, it's interesting, and he says because he knew better,
Speaker 5: which sort of hints at he knew it was bad
Speaker 5: at the time.
Speaker 1: Well, and I think also he just genuinely always resisted
Speaker 1: the idea that he was racist in any way, that
Speaker 1: the things he did had racist implications. Like so much
Speaker 1: of the way he defended himself at the time was
Speaker 1: to be like, I am not a racist. And you know,
Speaker 1: that doesn't really inspire the sense that he did a
Speaker 1: lot of self reflection, because obviously a man who feels
Speaker 1: comfortable saying the N word and also just like spewing
Speaker 1: out this kind of casual racism all the time does
Speaker 1: have some racism to contend with. I just think that
Speaker 1: this idea that when you're confronted with something about yourself,
Speaker 1: you get to just say, that's not true about me.
Speaker 1: I just said a bad thing, but it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: anything about what I actually believe or who I actually am.
Speaker 2: That kind of does feel like a cop out.
Speaker 1: So I don't know that he ever fully came to
Speaker 1: understand what this episode meant for him. I don't know
Speaker 1: if narcissists are capable of that.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm sick of Vimus. Yeah, fair, Let's go back
Speaker 2: to the players. I want to know what became of
Speaker 2: race players where well, Jess.
Speaker 1: Unlike a lot of stories we tell here, I'm happy
Speaker 1: to report that this story does have a happy ending.
Speaker 1: So Vivian Stringer would go on to become one of
Speaker 1: the most successful college basketball coaches of all time. She
Speaker 1: was the first coach in men's or women's basketball history
Speaker 1: to take three different schools to the Final Four. She
Speaker 1: was the fifth women's basketball coach to reach a thousand
Speaker 1: career wins, and she was the first black coach to
Speaker 1: achieve that goal. So she is an icon in college sports,
Speaker 1: and just an icon in women's sports. And I think
Speaker 1: is retired now from Rutgers, but is a beloved figure there.
Speaker 1: So she had a great career. Essence had an amazing career. Also,
Speaker 1: she was drafted by the New York Liberty when she
Speaker 1: graduated from Ruckers.
Speaker 2: She went on to have a long and successful basketball career.
Speaker 1: Has played for a number of other WNBA teams and
Speaker 1: the US national team, and she played overseas for some time.
Speaker 1: And now she's a music executive, so she's doing great.
Speaker 1: Kiya Vonn, who you may remember as the students who
Speaker 1: she did try and sue him briefly. She would go
Speaker 1: on to be drafted by the New York Liberty when
Speaker 1: she graduated.
Speaker 5: I didn't realize so many of these original Ruckers players
Speaker 5: were on the Liberty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well a lot of them just went on to
Speaker 1: the WNBA. Kia eventually would go on to other WNBA
Speaker 1: teams and play internationally, and she helped win championships for
Speaker 1: some of the teams she played on in Europe. She
Speaker 1: retired in twenty twenty two, so not that long ago,
Speaker 1: and she works for the Atlanta Dream Now. I love
Speaker 1: that there were other players who joined the WNBA. Epiphany Prince,
Speaker 1: who was one of the players won the WNBA Championship
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty with the Seattle Storm.
Speaker 2: Oh my hometown. That's so interesting. I didn't realize.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this was like team in New York. Yeah, and
Speaker 5: the Storm my hometown.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I think.
Speaker 1: That's the thing, right, is that this was a truly
Speaker 1: remarkable team.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: That is the story that sometimes got lost in the
Speaker 1: coverage of this at the time. And others went on
Speaker 1: to have other careers finance, healthcare, hospitality, whatever. But they
Speaker 1: had the lives they always were meant to have, and
Speaker 1: they didn't let this chapter derail them. And I think
Speaker 1: that is a really nice way to end it. And
Speaker 1: you know, I want to let Essence have the last
Speaker 1: word here about what she took away from this experience.
Speaker 3: It showed that you can have a voice, no matter
Speaker 3: how small you are, even if it's just you yourself.
Speaker 3: You can have a voice, and you don't have to
Speaker 3: be the subject of anyone's jokes. You don't have to
Speaker 3: be labeled that angry black woman. You can speak with eloquence,
Speaker 3: you can convey your thoughts in a way, in a
Speaker 3: manner in which hits home with people. You can focus
Speaker 3: on the similarities between individuals to bring people together rather
Speaker 3: than focus on the differences in order to drive them
Speaker 3: further apart. You can be great in your own right
Speaker 3: no matter what it is that you do, and if
Speaker 3: you are given talent that you're born with, right, please
Speaker 3: make sure that you use it for good. I think
Speaker 3: it just kind of changed with my outlook on life
Speaker 3: moving forward. Would be a part of the purpose. It
Speaker 3: changed all those things, and it happened at an early age.
Speaker 3: Would I rewrite the story? No, I wouldn't, because then
Speaker 3: I wouldn't be who I am today and I wouldn't
Speaker 3: have the effect on people the way that I do
Speaker 3: just from learned experiences. If I can use what I
Speaker 3: went through to help someone else, definitely would.
Speaker 2: That's just a part of who I am now. That
Speaker 2: feels like a really nice place to end it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does feel like a good place to end it.
Speaker 1: And I just want to thank Essence again for talking
Speaker 1: to me. I know that this is not a subject
Speaker 1: you love talking about, and I really feel like we
Speaker 1: learned so.
Speaker 2: Much from her.
Speaker 5: Susie, you have a pretty personal episode coming up next week.
Speaker 5: What are we talking about?
Speaker 1: So next week I'm going to talk to my friend
Speaker 1: and fellow portista Kakpor, who is a best selling author,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about the movie Not Without
Speaker 1: My Daughter, which was really one of the only representations
Speaker 1: of Iranians in popular culture when we were growing up,
Speaker 1: and so we have a lot of opinions about it.
Speaker 10: Okay, so people to ask me if have you seen it?
Speaker 10: I'd be like, yeah, yeah, of course, and then sometimes
Speaker 10: they would watch it and then they'd be like, Wow,
Speaker 10: this is such a terrible movie. Why doesn't everyone just
Speaker 10: ignore it? Except the era made it so that we
Speaker 10: couldn't forget it.
Speaker 2: This is in retrospect. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Is there a pop culture moment you can't stop thinking
Speaker 1: about and want us to explore in a future episode.
Speaker 1: Email us at in retropod at gmail dot com or
Speaker 1: find us on Instagram at in retropod.
Speaker 5: If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
Speaker 5: on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
Speaker 5: hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
Speaker 5: which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 1: You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
Speaker 1: and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books
Speaker 1: Feminist Fight Club and This is.
Speaker 5: Eighteen in Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
Speaker 5: The Media. Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements
Speaker 5: is our engineer and sound designer. Emily Meronoff is our producer.
Speaker 5: Sharan Atia is our researcher and associate producer.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stump and Katrina Norbel.
Speaker 1: Our artwork is from Pentagram. Our mixing engineer is Amanda
Speaker 1: Rose Smith. Additional editing help from Mary Do. We are
Speaker 1: your hosts Susie Bannacarum.
Speaker 2: And Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 5: We are also executive producers for even more check out
Speaker 5: inretropod dot com.
Speaker 2: See you next week.