Speaker 1: Hey everyone, Just a note that we discuss offensive, racist,
Speaker 1: and sexist language in this episode. In two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: the Rutgers College women's basketball team had a Cinderella season.
Speaker 1: Despite a rocky start and relative inexperience, they fought their
Speaker 1: way to the final four.
Speaker 2: Have to be so impressed with what Rutgers has done.
Speaker 2: It was tournament they have just been sent.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, they would lose the championship game to a powerhouse
Speaker 1: Tennessee team, but the Rutgers women had still achieved the unthinkable.
Speaker 3: When we returned to New Jersey, it was almost as
Speaker 3: if we won. Our fans were so supportive, they were
Speaker 3: so welcoming.
Speaker 1: And then the morning after the game, a hugely popular
Speaker 1: shock jocks named Don Imuss got on the air.
Speaker 4: So I watched the basketball game last night between a
Speaker 4: little bit Rutgers in Tennessee the women's final.
Speaker 1: And with a string of racist and sexist comments about
Speaker 1: the predominantly black team, I mis diminished their remarkable achievement
Speaker 1: and threw them into a national firestorm. I'm Susie Bannacharum
Speaker 1: and I'm Jessica Bennett, and this is in retrospect, where
Speaker 1: each week we revisit a cultural moment from the past
Speaker 1: that shaped us.
Speaker 5: And 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. This is part one. Jess, do
Speaker 1: you remember this story? Do you remember when this all happened?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I actually have quite a vivid memory of it
Speaker 5: because I was in Newsweek at the time as a
Speaker 5: young reporter, and Newsweek, who would do the story of
Speaker 5: the week every week on the cover of their magazine,
Speaker 5: put this on the cover. I remember the headline was
Speaker 5: race power in the Media, and it had an image
Speaker 5: of the basketball team against I Miss, looking sort of
Speaker 5: stern and forlorn, and it was a huge deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was at ABC when this happened, and it was
Speaker 1: kind of an unavoidable story for a few weeks, right.
Speaker 1: It just completely dominated national headlines, so much so that
Speaker 1: I think there was a poll at the time where
Speaker 1: people said they felt like it was getting too much coverage,
Speaker 1: which is something we experienced a lot in media. I
Speaker 1: think stories become red hot, and then they're sort of
Speaker 1: obsessed over and then people kind of move on.
Speaker 5: And it's interesting too because I guess don I Miss
Speaker 5: was huge, That's what I learned when this story came out.
Speaker 5: But I had never heard of him, Like, I don't
Speaker 5: know if that was kind of an elite East Coast
Speaker 5: thing to know about him, or maybe I wasn't running
Speaker 5: in those circles. I remember he didn't. He famously wear cowwabs.
Speaker 5: He had this essence to him. He was hugely popular,
Speaker 5: but I at the time was like, who the hell is?
Speaker 1: Yeah, weren't his demographic And I think also just we
Speaker 1: didn't commute to work in a car, so we weren't
Speaker 1: as likely to be into talk radio, right.
Speaker 5: Well, okay, and so I remember him being a shock dooc.
Speaker 5: I remember this story was a huge deal, but I
Speaker 5: don't really understand sports.
Speaker 2: I'm not a big sports person either, as you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I understand them enough, but I'm not a huge
Speaker 5: sports person either. And so what exactly does he say?
Speaker 5: And why?
Speaker 1: So we didn't play the don Imus comments in the
Speaker 1: introduction because I have to say they're quite jarring. I
Speaker 1: remember hearing them all the time when it happened, but
Speaker 1: for some reason, going back and listening to them again
Speaker 1: feels really strange. They're so offensive. And I'm going to
Speaker 1: play them for you now because I do think it's
Speaker 1: important to hear them for yourself. But let me give
Speaker 1: you a little context. The Rutgers women's basketball team has
Speaker 1: made it to the Final Four. They've had this crazy
Speaker 1: season where they were not expected to be a powerhouse team.
Speaker 1: They are having this amazing moment. And the next morning,
Speaker 1: don Imus gets on his radio show that he does
Speaker 1: every morning.
Speaker 5: Wait and quickly, how many people are tuning in too,
Speaker 5: iMOS at this point?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Millions.
Speaker 1: He has millions of daily listeners across the country. He's
Speaker 1: available on more than seventy stations, and in addition to that,
Speaker 1: his show is actually simulcast on cable on MSNBC. So
Speaker 1: he wasn't just a radio show. He was also a
Speaker 1: morning show on television where they literally just filmed him
Speaker 1: and his crew at the MIC's in the studio.
Speaker 5: Oh okay, just talking. It's like very early podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very early podcast. And roughly an additional three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people are watching on TV right. It's a sizeable audience,
Speaker 1: and he has a lot of influence.
Speaker 5: Okay, so back to the comments.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the comments come on April fourth, two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, the same day the team has returned home
Speaker 1: from the championship game and at the end of this
Speaker 1: historic season, and don Imus has this exchange with his
Speaker 1: executive producer on the show.
Speaker 4: So, I watched the basketball game last night between a
Speaker 4: little bit of Rutgers in Tennessee, that women's final. Awesome
Speaker 4: rough girls, some Rutgers man, they got tattoos, and some
Speaker 4: hardcore hos.
Speaker 2: That's a nappy.
Speaker 4: Headed dolls there.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna tell you that, Jesus. It's like, you know
Speaker 5: how they talk about bystander intervention. It's like, these are
Speaker 5: these guys who are just like egging each other on,
Speaker 5: and there's no sand person in the room to be
Speaker 5: like whoa hey, Like it's not funny, and what you're
Speaker 5: saying is deeply offensive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just disgusting.
Speaker 1: And there's something so stark about how casually he's talking
Speaker 1: about this group of college girls. And also something that
Speaker 1: really bothers me about it is the way they're giggling,
Speaker 1: like they just love how funny they're being.
Speaker 2: Right. The other thing I think is interesting is that
Speaker 2: he often would say, don I miss that it was
Speaker 2: like a locker room.
Speaker 5: He would say that his show was like a locker room.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like this is a locker room.
Speaker 5: Oh wow, that is much more meaningful now and the
Speaker 5: Trump era, Yes.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of that whole thing when Donald
Speaker 1: Trump was like, oh, I said I grabbed women by
Speaker 1: the pussy, and it was just locker room top.
Speaker 5: Locker room talk. So this is don Iamss's personal locker room.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what's hard to listen to here,
Speaker 1: the idea that this is just what a group of
Speaker 1: white men say to each other when they think no
Speaker 1: one's listening.
Speaker 2: Or except.
Speaker 1: Right, like, they felt comfortable saying this. They did not
Speaker 1: feel like this was wrong in any way. They don't
Speaker 1: seem even a little hesitant about it.
Speaker 5: And you actually cut some of this. This isn't even
Speaker 5: the full clip.
Speaker 2: Correct. Yes, there's a longer version of this.
Speaker 1: We did not include all of it because everything they
Speaker 1: say is really offensive. And the part that really got
Speaker 1: the most attention at the time was when and I
Speaker 1: just want to say, even repeating this makes me uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: but when he called them nappy headed.
Speaker 5: Hose right, I remember that as being the headline.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's a really complicated insult. We'll get into
Speaker 1: why that has cultural and racial underpinnings that make it
Speaker 1: even more offensive than you might initially realize. But again,
Speaker 1: these are kids, these are girls, and he's calling them horse.
Speaker 5: This is the kind of trash that don iMOS was
Speaker 5: known for. Correct. But who was iMOS? Can you tell
Speaker 5: me more about him?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So he was kind of an odd character.
Speaker 1: He was this really tall, lanky man who always wore
Speaker 1: a cowboy hat and he carried a gun for protection.
Speaker 1: He had this very famous ranch in New Mexico he
Speaker 1: would go to a lot of the time when he
Speaker 1: wasn't recording, and in the eighties he actually had a
Speaker 1: pretty serious alcohol and cocaine problem and admitted later that
Speaker 1: he was often drunk or hot during the show. So
Speaker 1: even though he was really popular, he was very erratic,
Speaker 1: Like he missed one hundred days of work in one year.
Speaker 1: He would sleep on park benches, he would show up barefoot.
Speaker 1: But he was the number one DJ in the country,
Speaker 1: so he got away with a lot of that, and
Speaker 1: then eventually they had to cut him loose and he
Speaker 1: cleaned up his act and he went and did a
Speaker 1: radio show somewhere else in the country and eventually made
Speaker 1: his way back to New York. So he wasn't under
Speaker 1: the influence when he made these comments, and he had
Speaker 1: at this stage established himself as a very mainstream figure
Speaker 1: in politics and journalism despite this crazy past.
Speaker 5: I'm assuming he was a conservative.
Speaker 1: No, actually he wasn't conservative. In fact, he had endorsed
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton in his first run. So what's interesting is
Speaker 1: he was kind of equal opportunity. He to stand all
Speaker 1: politicians and railed against them and said they were all phonies.
Speaker 1: But he did occasionally endorse some and Bill Clinton was
Speaker 1: one of those. But what's interesting is that the audience
Speaker 1: was most likely Republican and conservative, because Republicans and conservatives
Speaker 1: were about twice as likely to listen to talk radio
Speaker 1: at that time. And I think the thing about Don
Speaker 1: Imus is his audience was very varied, meaning a lot
Speaker 1: of Washington elites listened to him, and also just random
Speaker 1: Joe blow in the country.
Speaker 2: But his famis was very attached to him.
Speaker 1: I think partially because he was on the air for
Speaker 1: so many hours it felt like you were kind of
Speaker 1: part of this party.
Speaker 2: I guess for lack of locker room, this locker room,
Speaker 2: lock this locker room. Okay.
Speaker 5: And so Imus was considered a shock jock, which sounds
Speaker 5: very like eighties when we say it. Now, what does
Speaker 5: that mean exactly, other than like doing wild antics?
Speaker 4: I think's original old timer crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this was a term that was first used in
Speaker 1: the eighties. It's essentially a radio personality who is deliberately
Speaker 1: provocative and inflammatory and says really offensive things. So that
Speaker 1: was kind of Imish's shtick anyway, But it was a
Speaker 1: term most associated with Howard Stern. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know Howard Stern. He's a radio personality. He's still
Speaker 1: on the air now, and he's the person who gave
Speaker 1: rise to the concept.
Speaker 5: Oh, he's the original shockjock.
Speaker 1: He's not the original shockjock, but he's the one most
Speaker 1: people think of when you say the word.
Speaker 5: Okay, I'm looking at examples of what shockjocks are, like
Speaker 5: attempting to sneak toy weapons onto a plane at an airport,
Speaker 5: blocking off traffic lands in San Francisco during rush hour
Speaker 5: while his sidekit got a haircut. I don't know what
Speaker 5: the point of that would be. I do remember Howard
Speaker 5: Stern always doing like creepy, gross sex things like having
Speaker 5: women mud russel or other. But I guess I just
Speaker 5: didn't realize they were like just doing dumb shit.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was incredibly juvenile, right, It was just silly.
Speaker 1: But occasionally, because there was this undercurrent of sexism and
Speaker 1: racism in a lot of these environments, sometimes the jokes
Speaker 1: crossed the line into things that were pretty unpleasant. Most
Speaker 1: shock docs didn't have the kind of platform. I missed it, right,
Speaker 1: I miss went from being this kind of thing, right,
Speaker 1: this kind of jokester who was just calling a politician
Speaker 1: to ask if he wanted to join show biz, or
Speaker 1: calling a phone operator and asking her if she wanted
Speaker 1: to mess around. He went from that to being a
Speaker 1: more national figure because he actually was kind of intellectual.
Speaker 1: So he started to ask people whose books he read
Speaker 1: and whose ideas he was interested in to join the show,
Speaker 1: and over time that became a really big part of
Speaker 1: the show. So Bill Clinton, who I mentioned he endorsed,
Speaker 1: appeared on his show regularly during his presidential campaign. Senators
Speaker 1: regularly appeared on the show, and Joe Biden was one
Speaker 1: of those senators. John McCain, John Kerry, and really famous
Speaker 1: journalists at the time Tim Russert, who was the host
Speaker 1: of Meet the Press for a long time at com Brokaw,
Speaker 1: who was very famous Blake. It was a commonplace to
Speaker 1: go for journalists who wanted to mix it up and
Speaker 1: show that they weren't as stiff or stayed as they
Speaker 1: appeared on the air. And interestingly, Barack Obama had once
Speaker 1: been on the show.
Speaker 2: And I think that just was because he had a
Speaker 2: lot of power. Right.
Speaker 1: He was on the air for many hours a day,
Speaker 1: five days a week, and as I said, millions and
Speaker 1: millions of people were watching, and his influence was very broad.
Speaker 1: He was reportedly making almost ten million dollars a year
Speaker 1: when this happened, which sounds like a lot, but his
Speaker 1: employers at CBS were actually making fifty million dollars a
Speaker 1: year office show, So he had the kind of power
Speaker 1: you have for making that kind of money also.
Speaker 5: Right, I imagine even someone like Charlotte Mane mcgod or
Speaker 5: Joe Rogan would probably be the modern equivalent of that.
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, probably the closest thing we have. But to
Speaker 1: be honest, it's just not the same, right because you
Speaker 1: still make the choice to listen to those guys in
Speaker 1: a way that if they were on your radio for
Speaker 1: four hours a day, or on national times and four
Speaker 1: hours a day.
Speaker 5: And you didn't have another option, and you.
Speaker 1: Didn't have as many options as we do now, you
Speaker 1: would just happen upon them a lot. And because there's
Speaker 1: no obvious modern equivalent, I actually called Jamel Hill, who
Speaker 1: you and I both know. She's an Emmy Award winning
Speaker 1: sports journalist who in two thousand and seven was actually
Speaker 1: an ESPN columnist, and she covered this story as it unfolded.
Speaker 6: Don Imus at the time was considered to be probably
Speaker 6: the most powerful radio personality in America. He had an enormous,
Speaker 6: massive platform. So if he says something on that show,
Speaker 6: it's not hitting with a whisper, it's hitting like a thunderclap.
Speaker 5: Oh, that's like the perfect quote. It's just making me
Speaker 5: think back to this team. They're basically kids, they're out
Speaker 5: of school like Ruckers. That's not necessarily a national brand.
Speaker 5: They're not in the spolt in that way. And then
Speaker 5: suddenly like bam, this guy is weighing in on them
Speaker 5: and it's reaching a million listeners.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Jamal talked about that too.
Speaker 6: These women had just played on the biggest stage in
Speaker 6: their sport. They had a phenomenal season, they were led
Speaker 6: by an incredible coach, and so in that moment, even
Speaker 6: with the disappointment of losing in the final four, it
Speaker 6: was still very much a celebratory achievement for him. And
Speaker 6: just upon hearing those comments and to see how it
Speaker 6: went from people celebrating them to them just being degraded
Speaker 6: in the next moment, it was disheartening, to say the least.
Speaker 6: I just really felt for those young people because they
Speaker 6: had achieved something really, really spectacular, and it just felt
Speaker 6: like the moment was stolen from them.
Speaker 1: You know, in a lot of ways, what Javelle is
Speaker 1: saying is I wanted to look back at this, this
Speaker 1: idea of having the moment stolen from them, because obviously
Speaker 1: we were both working in news when this happened. But
Speaker 1: I remember, even at the time, it really struck me
Speaker 1: how young the team was. You know, it was five freshmen,
Speaker 1: so we're talking about genuinely eighteen and nineteen year old girls,
Speaker 1: and as I said, they were a majority black team,
Speaker 1: and these comments just felt so cruel and ugly at
Speaker 1: the time, and the headlines were so intense, right it
Speaker 1: was as if they went from the end of their
Speaker 1: season where they should have just been able to enjoy
Speaker 1: that and chill and finally have a moment to reflect
Speaker 1: to being in the hottest spotlight you could possibly be
Speaker 1: put under.
Speaker 5: Right, and the hottest news story of that moment.
Speaker 1: And you and I know that when you get thrust
Speaker 1: into these really hot spotlights we've worked on these kinds
Speaker 1: of stories, right, it can feel like it obliterates everything
Speaker 1: else in your life and that you're just come completely
Speaker 1: taking it in from all sides, trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to navigate it. So I really wanted to understand
Speaker 1: that part of the story better, and I reached out
Speaker 1: to Essen's Carson, who is a WNBA superstar. She played
Speaker 1: for the New York Liberty among others, and is now
Speaker 1: a creative executive. But most relevant for this, she was
Speaker 1: the captain of the two thousand and seven Rutgers women's
Speaker 1: basketball team.
Speaker 5: I just want to know that Essence Carson is like
Speaker 5: a really big deal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, she's obviously had this amazing career and been
Speaker 1: able to put this in her rearview mirror. She doesn't
Speaker 1: actually talk about this very often for obvious reasons. So
Speaker 1: I was really grateful that she agreed to talk to me,
Speaker 1: and she said, to really understand how deeply these comments
Speaker 1: cut at the time, you have to go back and
Speaker 1: understand what the team had gone through just to get
Speaker 1: to the championships.
Speaker 3: Just that group that was at Rutgers in two thousand
Speaker 3: and seven, it was a very unique group. We all
Speaker 3: come from all walks of life, but we all bought
Speaker 3: into the idea of that championship and how we weren't
Speaker 3: going to allow the lack of experience be the one
Speaker 3: sole thing that keeps us away from that.
Speaker 5: You've mentioned this a couple of times too, that they
Speaker 5: were inexperienced.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Rutgers team went into the season as underdogs
Speaker 1: because they were a very young team. There were no seniors.
Speaker 1: They had lost a lot of their really strong players
Speaker 1: that year before, so it was mostly made up of
Speaker 1: recent high school graduates now starting at the college level.
Speaker 1: So the beginning of the season was rough. They were
Speaker 1: losing games. There was a game early on that they
Speaker 1: lost by forty points at home. That was pretty much
Speaker 1: unheard of at Rutgers.
Speaker 3: It was a tough toll to swallow. It's embarrassing. No
Speaker 3: true competitor, everyone wants to lose in that but it
Speaker 3: happened all right, and you know that was that was
Speaker 3: the beginning of you know, the wake up call.
Speaker 5: Okay, wow, so things were going really poorly, but then
Speaker 5: they turn it around. What does that?
Speaker 2: Honestly, it seems like it was just sheer grit.
Speaker 1: They had an amazing coach, this Hall of fame coach,
Speaker 1: Vivian Stringer, who is very famous in women's college basketball,
Speaker 1: and essence told me that she very aggressively pushed them
Speaker 1: to get their act together, and they did really coming
Speaker 1: together as a team.
Speaker 3: The world in the beginning was a bit bumpy, but
Speaker 3: what truly makes a great team is how you overcome adversity.
Speaker 3: And after overcoming a slow start, we were able to
Speaker 3: regroup and figure things out, leading us to a Biggia's
Speaker 3: championship and onto our historic run in the NCAA tournament.
Speaker 2: Will you tell me what it felt like going back
Speaker 2: when you won that last game that meant you were
Speaker 2: going to the final four, and just did that feel amazing?
Speaker 2: I just I can't imagine what that felt like.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if there are any words to describe
Speaker 3: that feeling. It's imagine losing everything and getting it back
Speaker 3: and at that time winning it all. You know, when
Speaker 3: you're looking at the Big East Tournament, you know that
Speaker 3: was just one step, and then it's like, oh, we
Speaker 3: can keep going, we can keep this thing going. There
Speaker 3: were just truly no words that can explain that. It
Speaker 3: was an unreal ride.
Speaker 2: For sure.
Speaker 5: Oh that's interesting. I really hadn't realized how up and
Speaker 5: down the season had been for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really had been a wild season. But sadly,
Speaker 1: like all good things, it does come to an end. So,
Speaker 1: as I said in the introduction, they go up against
Speaker 1: this powerful, top seeded team in Tennessee for the championship
Speaker 1: and they lose, but there's still a lot to celebrate.
Speaker 3: It was definitely bittersweet. Of course, there were tears shed
Speaker 3: in the locker room after that loss, because it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: you were so close. You almost completed the Cinderella story.
Speaker 3: You were so close. Of course, those feelings set in,
Speaker 3: but in the same we were reminded that what we
Speaker 3: had done was amazing. When we returned to New Jersey,
Speaker 3: it was almost as if we won. Our fans were
Speaker 3: so supportive, they were so welcoming. The fanfare was amazing.
Speaker 3: Even the people at the airport, the firefighters, everyone the
Speaker 3: entire state of New Jersey was so proud of us.
Speaker 3: It was like they went on that ride with us,
Speaker 3: you know, it was like they climbed from the bottom
Speaker 3: with us. They wanted to remind us that, hey, good job.
Speaker 5: I love hearing her describe how they arrived home to
Speaker 5: this kind of heroes welcome. But at what point then
Speaker 5: did they actually hear about these comments?
Speaker 2: So Essen said she first heard about the comments right
Speaker 2: after they had a.
Speaker 3: PEP rally, immediately after it concluded. It was almost like
Speaker 3: it was still going on a bit, and I don't
Speaker 3: remember what we had to do next, because this moment
Speaker 3: actually kind of just took over everything. I remember coming
Speaker 3: down and we were on the court and our sid
Speaker 3: at that time, Stacy Brand, she would handle like the
Speaker 3: publicity to media requests for the team. She came to
Speaker 3: me and asked me, did I hear what was said
Speaker 3: or what happened? And I had no clue what she
Speaker 3: was talking about. And then she gave me, you know
Speaker 3: what happened, blow by blow and even had the transcript,
Speaker 3: and I was blown away by what was said, mainly
Speaker 3: because I couldn't fathom anyone being able to say things
Speaker 3: of that sort live on air. Although I was no
Speaker 3: stranger to racism and the nuances of it, I didn't
Speaker 3: necessarily think it would be possible, and especially you know,
Speaker 3: towards a group of young women and like ourselves.
Speaker 1: Had you heard of Don Aimas when this happened. Did
Speaker 1: you know who he was?
Speaker 3: No? No, But I also don't think I was just demographic.
Speaker 2: Do you remember when you actually heard it for the
Speaker 2: first time.
Speaker 3: I think I heard snippets at first. It was being
Speaker 3: played everywhere, so you would hear snippets even if you
Speaker 3: didn't want to encounter, and you kind of just did.
Speaker 5: It's maybe hard to remember now because we don't have
Speaker 5: radios and televisions on all the time and we're always
Speaker 5: on our phones, but to describe just how saturated the
Speaker 5: news was with what she is talking about, like truly,
Speaker 5: I remember it was on every cable news channel, It
Speaker 5: was playing on the radio at all times. It was
Speaker 5: on the cover of the weekly magazines, It was in
Speaker 5: the paper, and every single article was repeating the comments
Speaker 5: over and over and over again. So you can just
Speaker 5: imagine they get home and suddenly they are just hid
Speaker 5: in the face with this statement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that really struck me too, because it's just this
Speaker 1: idea that even if they had wanted to get away
Speaker 1: from it, they didn't have that choice. Initially, they tried
Speaker 1: to ignore his comments. They chose to go home early.
Speaker 1: It was Easter, so they went home to spend Easter
Speaker 1: with their families. But they were being bombarded with requests
Speaker 1: for comment, and also just every time they turned on
Speaker 1: a TV or walked into a store where the radio
Speaker 1: was on, it was just being played everywhere.
Speaker 5: I imagine too, the reporters are like camping out at
Speaker 5: the school trying to get statements like it probably was
Speaker 5: a very tabloid esque situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she said they were being accosted even when they
Speaker 1: were just like trying to go to class or go
Speaker 1: to the cafeteria. Okay, but they were trying to see
Speaker 1: how the story played out before they decided what to do,
Speaker 1: and the story just kept growing. What's interesting about this
Speaker 1: is that it was an early example of something going viral, right,
Speaker 1: Like you can imagine if this happened today, it would
Speaker 1: be all over TikTok and Twitter immediately, But back then
Speaker 1: that's not really how a story grew.
Speaker 5: Do we know how it initially took off? Who noticed
Speaker 5: that this had occurred, and how did it spiral from there?
Speaker 1: It was actually a guy at Media Matters, which is
Speaker 1: a left leaning media group, who flagged the clip. He
Speaker 1: had gotten a tip and he dug it up and
Speaker 1: he sent it around to their newsletter and then it
Speaker 1: was stood on YouTube. And YouTube had launched in two
Speaker 1: thousand and five, so it had just pretty recently become
Speaker 1: really huge. And for context, in one of the articles
Speaker 1: I read, they mentioned that it was such a huge
Speaker 1: story that this YouTube video had gotten a million hits,
Speaker 1: which is a lot of hits, but today it would
Speaker 1: get like ten million hits, right, right, so this might
Speaker 1: have been like missed or ignored.
Speaker 5: That's so interesting because had this happened even a few
Speaker 5: years before, Yes, he's got this huge following on radio,
Speaker 5: but like a thing happens on radio and then it's over,
Speaker 5: you're not recording the clip and sending it around, right
Speaker 5: like you're not with the call set tape r exactly,
Speaker 5: So like maybe some people would have been offended, but
Speaker 5: it would have just disappeared.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's the world. Don I miss really knew? Right,
Speaker 1: He'd been a radio host for a long time pre internet,
Speaker 1: so when the Internet changed the landscape. I think it
Speaker 1: was a real shift for him, and this was the
Speaker 1: first time he really came to understand that. And CBS
Speaker 1: and MSNBC, who were his employers, CBS ran his radio
Speaker 1: show and MSNBC simulcasted on the air. I think they
Speaker 1: were both waiting to see if this would blow over
Speaker 1: like the other things he had said, because he did
Speaker 1: have a history of saying really awful things.
Speaker 5: I guess I'm asking you to repeat all the awful things,
Speaker 5: but what are what are some of the awful things?
Speaker 5: Can you say the ones that aren't that of what
Speaker 5: are the ones you say?
Speaker 1: I mean, I can say them carefully, And yes, he
Speaker 1: and his merry band of idiots just had this horrible
Speaker 1: history of saying controversial or offensive things. And I literally
Speaker 1: cannot go over all of them because there's so many
Speaker 1: racists and sexist and anti Semitic and homophobic things. I mean,
Speaker 1: islahob Yeah, they checked all the boxes every day as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell. But the one that really
Speaker 1: stood out to me is that after the Rutger slurs, Gweneiffel,
Speaker 1: who was this groundbreaking and widely admired journalist and relevant
Speaker 1: for this conversation. A black woman wrote an op ed
Speaker 1: for The New York Times about how I Miss had
Speaker 1: once said about her when she was a reporter for
Speaker 1: the Time. Isn't the Times wonderful? It lets the cleaning
Speaker 1: lady cover the White House? Oh wow, right, it's just disgusting.
Speaker 5: He said that to her face.
Speaker 2: No, he just said it on the air about her.
Speaker 5: He said it on the air. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he said it on the air about her. And
Speaker 1: she said she suspected it was because he had once
Speaker 1: or twice asked her to be on the air and
Speaker 1: she just hadn't had time to go on, so he
Speaker 1: had held this grudge against her. But it's just a
Speaker 1: really terrible way to talk about someone. And you know,
Speaker 1: I mentioned Howard Stern. Interestingly, Howard Stern and Don Imus
Speaker 1: did work together briefly in the eighties and then became
Speaker 1: bitter rivals. They hated each other for the rest of
Speaker 1: their careers, and despite his own history of controversy, Howard
Speaker 1: Stern came forward during this time and said that when
Speaker 1: they had worked together in the eighties, he had heard
Speaker 1: I Miss call a black female coworker the N word,
Speaker 1: and Robin Quivers, who was one of Stern's co hosts
Speaker 1: said that he had also called her the N word
Speaker 1: to her face when they were working with him. Oh wow, okay,
Speaker 1: and just to put a cap on that, I miss
Speaker 1: had also called Howard Stern a jew bastard on the
Speaker 1: air in nineteen eighty four and suggested he should be
Speaker 1: put in an oven.
Speaker 5: Wow. What is mind boggling to me is that this
Speaker 5: is a man saying these things who then turns around
Speaker 5: and has all of these really prestigious people on his show.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I mean, Howard Stern was also controversial, but he didn't
Speaker 1: have Senator Biden and mckayn on his show, so I
Speaker 1: think he just didn't reach this level of scrutiny. Another
Speaker 1: example that comes out after all this is that in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight, when Don Imss was doing an interview
Speaker 1: for sixty minutes, he told one of the producers off
Speaker 1: camera that his executive producer was hired to perform nward jokes.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, he didn't say the N word.
Speaker 1: He said the word.
Speaker 5: None of these cases he's saying.
Speaker 2: And worright right, he's saying the word.
Speaker 5: What does that even mean?
Speaker 1: What it means is that he want someone making those jokes,
Speaker 1: and so he hired this man to be the racist
Speaker 1: on the show so he could be a little less racist.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 5: Honestly, it's shocking that he was still in the air.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, two thousand and seven doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: that long ago. So it is shocking that he had
Speaker 1: gotten away with this blatant bigotree for so long. But
Speaker 1: the Internet wasn't the same, you know, as it is now,
Speaker 1: and don Imus wasn't used to being held accountable. So,
Speaker 1: you know, initially, in the day after he makes the comments,
Speaker 1: he goes on the air and he says he's heard
Speaker 1: a few people are upset, but basically everyone needs to
Speaker 1: calm down because it's just an idiot comment that was
Speaker 1: meant to be amusing. But pretty quickly it becomes clear
Speaker 1: that this time is going to be very different for
Speaker 1: don Imus.
Speaker 5: Susie. Before the break, you were giving us a rundown
Speaker 5: of some of the terrible things that has said about
Speaker 5: various people, But the comments he made about the Rutgers
Speaker 5: women's basketball team really weren't blowing over. So what happened next.
Speaker 1: Actually, Jamel Hill, who as I mentioned, was a columnist
Speaker 1: at ESPN at this time played a role in making
Speaker 1: sure the comments were heard pretty broadly.
Speaker 6: It struck me because of his having that kind of
Speaker 6: platform and for a lot of his listeners who maybe
Speaker 6: have never heard about this team or didn't know anything
Speaker 6: about them, and the very first thing that they hear
Speaker 6: about is them being called nappyheaded.
Speaker 3: Ohs.
Speaker 6: He ridiculed them, he demeaned them, he denigrated him. And
Speaker 6: as a black woman in sports myself during that time,
Speaker 6: all of those things resonated deeply inside of me, and
Speaker 6: so I felt like I had to speak out about
Speaker 6: it and make it known that this crossed so many
Speaker 6: lines for so many different reasons, from a gender perspective,
Speaker 6: a racial perspective, and I thought it would be a
Speaker 6: disservice for somebody not to stand up for those women.
Speaker 5: That's so interesting what she's saying in terms of all
Speaker 5: the different ways that across these lines. How does Jamel
Speaker 5: make sure that the story gets national attention.
Speaker 1: Well, what happens is the day after the comments, Jammel
Speaker 1: hears them and sends them to the email list for
Speaker 1: the National Association of Black Journalists, and then they become
Speaker 1: really widely circulated among black journalists in general, and by
Speaker 1: the next day, the NABJ issues a statement saying that
Speaker 1: they are outraged and disgusted and they demand an apology,
Speaker 1: but also they call for him to be immediately fired.
Speaker 5: That's so interesting too, because with so many of these
Speaker 5: stories like this, it takes someone in some position of
Speaker 5: power to really raise the alarm on it. And so
Speaker 5: having someone like Jammel in a position of power who
Speaker 5: can then reach out to this whole association of black
Speaker 5: journalists like her, who can put out this statement goes
Speaker 5: to show why it matters so much to have media representatives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she actually explains why she thinks there was
Speaker 1: more of a reaction this time.
Speaker 6: It was different because we're talking about college kids and
Speaker 6: we're talking about young women, and I think it resonated
Speaker 6: a little bit differently. Sometimes when you have people like
Speaker 6: that who constantly say the same things or the same
Speaker 6: type of destructive things about people, it starts to become
Speaker 6: a little bit of white noise. Not that it was
Speaker 6: ever right with the other things that he said, but
Speaker 6: it was who he picked. He had done it before,
Speaker 6: and there was a track record of him particularly saying
Speaker 6: and espousing some pretty dangerous tropes about black women. And finally,
Speaker 6: I think a lot of people said enough is enough.
Speaker 5: I think what Jamal is saying about the tropes is
Speaker 5: such an important point, and I know that she's going
Speaker 5: to talk to us about this a bit more later,
Speaker 5: but I think it's worth noting that part of what
Speaker 5: she's referring to, I presume, is the incessant conversation about
Speaker 5: black women's hair texture on how it has been used
Speaker 5: against them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think this idea that black women men's
Speaker 1: natural hair is somehow unkempt or untidy or unclean, that
Speaker 1: is really a racist trope that black women have had
Speaker 1: to fight against for a really long time. So he
Speaker 1: is tapping into something with real historical context.
Speaker 5: I want to take us back to the timeline. So, Okay,
Speaker 5: the team has returned, they've gone home for Easter. They
Speaker 5: are being bombarded by the press. As we just heard
Speaker 5: Jamal say, the National Association for Black Journalists has now
Speaker 5: called for his firing. But Susie does don Imus ever
Speaker 5: finally apologize.
Speaker 1: He does finally apologize, so a few days later, when
Speaker 1: it is obvious that it is not just going to
Speaker 1: blow over, he issues a formal apology on his show.
Speaker 2: Here's what he said.
Speaker 4: I want to take a moment to apologize for and
Speaker 4: in sensitive and ill can sive remark we made the
Speaker 4: other morning referring to the Rutgers women's basketball team. It
Speaker 4: was completely inappropriate and madn understand why people were offended.
Speaker 4: Our characterization was thoughtless and stupid, and we're sorry.
Speaker 1: Clearly a scripted apology, not his usual off the cuff remarks.
Speaker 5: Right right, not how you expected on I was an
Speaker 5: issue in apology exactly.
Speaker 2: It obviously wasn't like from the heart.
Speaker 1: It was clear that he was starting to feel some
Speaker 1: heat here, but it was too little, too late, and
Speaker 1: it did not stop the backlash. More and more mainstream
Speaker 1: press started to pick up the story, and significantly. Al Sharpton,
Speaker 1: who as you know, is a longtime civil rights activist
Speaker 1: and who has a big media profile, especially at that time,
Speaker 1: enters the fray and also demands that I must be fired.
Speaker 1: He says that he's happy to accept his apology, but
Speaker 1: he wants his bosses to accept his resignation as well,
Speaker 1: so it's not dying down, and Imus agrees to go
Speaker 1: on Al Sharpton's show, who also has a radio show
Speaker 1: at this time, as sort of a mia culpa and
Speaker 1: to deny that he's a racist, and he says that
Speaker 1: he and his sidekicks were just trying to be funny
Speaker 1: and that you know, he understands now why it wasn't funny,
Speaker 1: but that he was never intending to be racist.
Speaker 2: I mean, okay, sure, yeah.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, though, it starts to get contentious and he makes
Speaker 1: things much worse because he says at some point to
Speaker 1: Al Sharpton and his black co host, I can't get
Speaker 1: anywhere with you people.
Speaker 2: It's like, if you're.
Speaker 1: Trying to apologize, perhaps you don't use another widely understood
Speaker 1: racial trope, which is to call black people you people,
Speaker 1: you people.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: Okay, So I guess my next question then, is what
Speaker 5: are his bosses doing while all of this is going
Speaker 5: on and he seems to be just digging himself deeper.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a great question. They are panicking.
Speaker 1: By all accounts, they are doing meetings with their internal staffs.
Speaker 1: Black employees are going to and BC bosses to be
Speaker 1: like what the hell. CBS is trying to decide what
Speaker 1: to do. But remember they're making fifty million dollars, so
Speaker 1: they are very reticent to fire him. So instead they
Speaker 1: try to just suspend him for two weeks and hopes
Speaker 1: that that stops the damage, and that is again not
Speaker 1: well received. No, and now we really see a cascade
Speaker 1: of media, people's words, people, politicians, even Obama.
Speaker 5: Okay, I was wondering. I had wanted to ask, but
Speaker 5: I didn't want to mess up our flow.
Speaker 1: Great cresident. So, as I said, Obama had been on
Speaker 1: the show. He was a senator from Illinois. At this time,
Speaker 1: he has already announced he's running for president, and so
Speaker 1: people are asking about it, and he does also demand
Speaker 1: that I must be fired. He says he didn't just
Speaker 1: cross the line. He fed into some of the worst
Speaker 1: stereotypes that my two daughters are having to deal with
Speaker 1: today in America, which does again really remind you that
Speaker 1: these are just kids.
Speaker 5: So is this all happening over days or weeks? What
Speaker 5: is the timeframe here?
Speaker 1: It's really over the course of a week that we
Speaker 1: get to the apology and then the Sharpton Show and
Speaker 1: all this backlash, and then finally the team decides that
Speaker 1: they have to respond. They can't wait any longer because
Speaker 1: at this point it's really becoming untenable for them to
Speaker 1: just you know, go to class.
Speaker 5: Students. Yeah, so you need to play basket.
Speaker 1: So they decide to do a press conference. And here's
Speaker 1: Essence again on why they decide to do that.
Speaker 3: The press conference. Well, the press conference was seen as
Speaker 3: the best way to move forward. Why because you have
Speaker 3: a group of young women somewhere in between the ages
Speaker 3: of eighteen and twenty that aren't only athletes, but they're students.
Speaker 3: So when you're trying to go to class, or you're
Speaker 3: trying to, I don't know, go get some lunch at
Speaker 3: the calf, just basic things, you're being chased by media outlets.
Speaker 3: You lose your privacy and at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: we like to get our education. So I, coacher and
Speaker 3: the rest of the staff came with the idea of
Speaker 3: a press conference because then that way you can address
Speaker 3: everyone at one time. So make sure that we were
Speaker 3: able to get together collectively and take a stand together
Speaker 3: and control our narrative because it was already spinning out
Speaker 3: of control.
Speaker 1: Jess, I think, actually this is a pretty good place
Speaker 1: to end it, with Essence having this last word, because
Speaker 1: things are spinning out of control, but the team is
Speaker 1: about to take control of the situation and there will
Speaker 1: be a turning point with this press conference, so please
Speaker 1: join us next week for part two and we will
Speaker 1: tell you all about it. This is in Retrospect. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. Is there a pop culture moment you can't
Speaker 1: stop thinking about and want us to explore in a
Speaker 1: future episode. Email us at Inretropod at gmail dot com
Speaker 1: or find us on Instagram at in retropod.
Speaker 5: If you love this podcast, please and review us on
Speaker 5: Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you hate it,
Speaker 5: you can post nasty comments on our Instagram, which we
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Speaker 1: You can also find this 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 eighteen.
Speaker 5: In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The Media.
Speaker 5: Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
Speaker 5: engineer and sound designer. Emily Meronoff is our producer. Sharon
Speaker 5: 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 Stemp 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 Bannaccarum.
Speaker 5: And Jessica Bennett. We are also executive producers. For even more,
Speaker 5: check out inretropod dot com. See you next week.