How come, my carpool companion, asked me, John Gibson and Bill O’Reilly weren’t driven off the air like Don Imus for their racist statements? After all, he mused, Imus was just joking around on his comedic radio show, while Gibson and O’Reilly made their statements while pretending to be serious journalists or pundits. Why weren’t these “Imus Moments” for the guys at Faux Noise?
Why, indeed, carpool companion? Could it be that Gibson and O’Reilly’s slurs weren’t as bad as Imus’? O’Reilly claimed to be complimenting black people when he remarked that he was surprised that black restaurant patrons didn’t say things like “More ice tea, MFer!” Basically, O’Reilly was saying that he expected black folks to be crude and offensive. Worse, he was implying that black folks are stupid. Anybody who calls his food server an MFer is going to have spit or worse in his tea. Everybody knows that.
Gibson was saying that black kids who shoot up their school are usually cold blooded killers who will go on to shoot others, unlike white kids who are mentally disturbed and end up killing themselves after their spree. He might have made the point he claimed he was making by noting that black kids are not known for their propensity to be school shooters, that the profile of the school shooter is a white kid. Surely that would have been somewhat less offensive than gratuitously trashing black people while discussing a shooting that had been committed by a white kid.
These statements were far worse than Imus’. The most significant reason that these did not become Imus Moments is that these men spew on Faux Noise, and their audience is as racist as they are. Their viewers approve of those kinds of statements, and the network isn’t concerned with being characterized as racist. Faux Noise doesn’t care. In fact, being a racist “news” outlet is important to its success with the demographic it is going for.
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