On Monday January 21st the nationally syndicated “Imus in the Morning Show” will begin airing locally on two Portland radio stations. It had aired here for years prior to its host making some ill-advised comments about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team last April 4th. That led to his being suspended and subsequently fired by CBS Radio, his employer at the time. It was ironic that Imus lost his job for making racially insensitive statements, since he had been making such comments about members of every conceivable minority group since he began gaining notoriety as a “shock jock” in the early 1970’s. Much of his success is attributable to his outrageousness. He has profited immensely from having the nerve (and later the ratings) to cross lines others would not.
Although Imus is just now returning to Maine radio, he’s been back on the air for over a month. He and his former employers reached a settlement regarding his contract, and on December 3rd he returned to the airwaves in his customary 6-10 AM slot with a syndicated show originating from WABC radio in New York. There are two reasons why John Donald Imus is back on the air so soon after uttering words that would have made nearly any other entertainer permanently disappear from the public eye. The obvious one is that Imus’s show draws immense audiences wherever it is aired, which translates into big bucks for its sponsors. However, there is a more subtle reason that Imus was nominally unemployed for less than a year. He promptly admitted that he had made a mistake, and while his initial apology was made somewhat grudgingly, he didn’t duck responsibility. Imus publicly acknowledged that he had done something wrong, and that it was no one’s fault but his.
This story is relevant to everyone capable of reading this column. Who among us has never said or done something that we knew at the time was wrong, yet for whatever reason were unable or unwilling to apologize for? There are any number of reasons for refusing to admit one’s mistake(s). Pride, greed, and ambition, three failings that all humans submit to from time to time, are just three of the many rationales.
Back in 1995 popular English actor Hugh Grant not only cheated on his stunning girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley, but did so with a prostitute who sold her story to the British tabloid press. Faced with an embarrassing scandal caused entirely by his own actions, Grant did something even more outrageous: he promptly told the truth about the situation. He admitted his mistake, hit the talk show circuit and apologized to the world in front of Larry King, Jay Leno, and Regis and Kathy Lee. Then an even stranger thing happened. He was forgiven. Today Grant’s film career continues unabated, despite his lapse in judgment thirteen years ago.
Marv Albert was arguably America’s most accomplished basketball play-by-play announcer in 1997 when he was faced with a messy scandal that like Grant’s was entirely of his own making. Faced with charges that he forced a paramour into performing unwanted acts, Albert pleaded guilty to lesser charges of misdemeanor assault. By doing so took responsibility for his admittedly reprehensible actions, and was summarily fired by NBC, his primary employer. Ten months later he was introduced at a press conference as the “new” voice of the MSG network. Had everyone forgiven him? Probably not, but it was perceived by the powers that be that enough people had for him to resume his lucrative career as a sportscaster.
By resigning the presidency in disgrace in 1974 Richard Nixon tacitly admitted he had done some things he shouldn’t have, but it wasn’t until he verbally admitted some of his missteps years later in televised interviews with David Frost that his status changed from pariah to wise elder statesman, at least in the minds of some Republicans. Democrats who can’t understand the vitriolic dislike some people still have for their party’s most recent ex-president (and by extension his wife) need only remember that America historically forgives mistakes far more readily than they do falsehoods. The number of people offended by Bill Clinton’s dalliance with an intern is probably far smaller than the number of folks who are still irate about the fact that he looked into a TV camera and lied to them about it.
America forgives a multitude of sins more readily than they condone lies, but that information has been lost on a significant number of professional athletes. As heinous as Atlanta Falcons player Michael Vick’s involvement in a dogfighting ring was, what offended team owner Arthur Blank and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell even more was that the erstwhile quarterback lied to their faces about it. While Pete Rose’s gambling on baseball games was undoubtedly a high crime against the national pastime, his repeated denials of those activities (before finally coming clean to coincide with the release of a book he had written) have done far more to establish him as a lowlife than the gambling itself did.
It’s looking more and more like major league baseball icons Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds didn’t learn from the mistakes of others. Each continues to categorically deny all allegations he used performance-enhancing substances, despite mounting evidence that they did.
They should have followed the example of a 67 year old radio personality who is back behind a microphone just eight months after making (and owning up to) a mistake of his own.
Andy YoungReturn to main page
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