Is Don Imus a racist? 

While not a conventional racist, he does have his problems... and not because he made a mistake in his remarks about Pac-man Jones, but because he continues to make the same mistake over and over, and does so while living under a considerable microscope controlled by a media with an almost lubricious desire to destroy lives. 

His particular form of racism is not rooted in malice.  His problem is that he is one of many who thinks that because he doesn't dislike black people that he can't, therefore, be a racist.  This is either caused by a flawed thought process or more likely, the absence of any thought whatsoever.  His is a form of sycophantic and pandering racism which has become prevalent these days.  Aside from the obvious and deeply offensive nature of any racism, this pandering form also happens to be exceedingly annoying and tediously sickening in a trivial sense as well.

If you've listened to Imus over the last ten years or so, you've heard countless attempts of what I guess I'll call "jive talk" (for lack of a better word) by Imus and Bernard.  In other words, at times they talk the way they think black people talk - not to make fun, but to show that they're "one of them" and, correspondingly, to be cool.  It is brutal due mainly to the fact that it's so lame. 

With respect to what was actually said recently, many people will likely distinguish the comments he made about the Rutgers University Basketball team from his latest controversial comments regarding Pac-man Jones. The fact is that the subtlety distinguishing aspects of these comments are irrelevant, because they spring from the same well of stupidity.  Let's analyze the source rather than its excrescence.  

To revisit; Imus called the Rutgers woman's basketball team "nappy headed ho's."  Regarding Pac-man Jones, while inquiring about Adam's proclivity for getting arrested, Imus asked Warner Wolf what color Jones was.  When Warner said Pac-man was African-American, Imus responded "There you go.  Now we know."  (I'll ignore the fact that African-American is not, to my knowledge, a color - but perhaps I should more closely inspect a box of Crayolas.)

Clearly, the comments about Rutgers were more overtly offensive than his Pac-man comments because his Rutgers comments were direct and degrading to innocent college students.  However, the girls on the basketball team shouldn't waste too much time being offended by his comments because they were inaccurate, untruthful, and, as counter-intuitive as this may sound, those girls were not the point of his remarks.  The topic of the basketball team was simply hijacked as a vehicle for Imus to use ghetto-speak in an embarrassing attempt to show that he is hip. 

On countless occasions I've had to turn the channel out of embarrassment as Imus desperately tried to ingratiate himself to the black community by trying to establish/prove his "street-cred" in talking up his support of Suge Knight (Isn't Suge Knight a criminal who shoots guns and instigates general mayhem? - it would seem that supporting a guy like this is blatantly anti-social) or his affection for Snoop Dog (another affront to civilized people).  When speaking about Shaquille O'Neil, he can't say Shaq or Shaq-Fu without changing his voice and inflection - it's a train wreck.

The Rutgers girls aside, his comments are offensive because Imus was speaking the way he thinks black people speak. In a perverse way, Imus seems to believe that his use of what he considers to be black jargon (misogynistic and stylistically incoherent statements) is evidence that he isn't racist.  I suppose that in his mind it proves how comfortable he is with the back culture.   

This uncomfortable and recurring display eventually culminated with his crude Rutgers remarks, and he was fired.  Now he is back on the radio, but he's off balance in that it appears that he has resolved to prove that he's not a hate-filled racist - which he seemingly never was to begin with. However, his particular mindset manifests itself in his preposterous attempts to appease and pander.

The result last week was an absurd discussion which attempted to give credence to the ludicrous postulate that Adam "Pac-man" Jones is not responsible for his current circumstances.  According to Don Imus, Pac-man Jones's six arrests in three years since entering the NFL stem not from his own actions, but from wide-spread racial profiling.  Give me a break. Jones is a criminal and a thug, so Imus's suggestion that these recurring arrests are due to Jones's skin color rather than his behavior is nothing but a pathetic attempt to parade racial empathy.  Adam Jones is not being pulled over for driving a Rolls Royce in Beverly Hills.  He gets arrested because guns get fired and people get battered when he and his friends visit strip clubs.  To make excuses for him based on race is materially destructive and I suspect that black people need Imus's brand of empathy about as much as they need Pac-man Jones to act as their ambassador.

Unfortunately for Imus, the "Pac-man is a victim proposition" is so stupid and implausible that his technically ambiguous statement was mistaken for conventional, hate-filled racism. 

While there was no malice and there is no hate, Imus's excuse of Pac-man's horrific arrest record on racial grounds is offensive, because of the slack he evidently believes that black people need- this is evidence of his racial elitism.  It's not hatred, but it's still racist and it is harmful.  

So, to Don Imus, I say: SHUT UP!  And don't let me hear you say "sista", "white boy" or try to imitate jive talk.  Leave it to the guys who can actually do it, like these two fantastic characters.