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Exposing a Bigot Worse than Dr. Laura |
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An Interview with Philip Nobile by Jack Nichols
By any count, Imus in the Morning is the most homophobic broadcast in
the history of American media. Every weekday morning between six and ten a.m.
the show is simulcast via MSNBC and syndicated CBS radio. When host Don Imus is not talking to celebrity journalists and politicians,
he poisons the airwaves with shocking remarks and routinely ridicules
minorities, smearing individuals with sexist, racist epithets.
Although Imus rides high on the media prairie, he has been slowed down lately by an unusual journalistic enterprise. Philip Nobile, a former investigative reporter for New York, Esquire and the Village Voice, has mounted a one-man, multi-venue campaign to overcome Imus's retro bigotry. Nobile has skewered Imus on radio, TV, print and internet. Thanks to his "Imus Watches," a collection of incriminating transcripts posted on tompaine.com, Imus has been forced to suspend a member of his on-air staff and to promise that he would drop his racist and homophobic shtick. Unfortunately, Imus did not keep his word, and so the struggle to shame him, his bosses and his straight, white entourage goes on. All of Nobile's Imus journalism can be handily retrieved at tompaine.com (search "Imus Index"). I met Nobile some thirty years ago when he was writing an article about SCREW for the National Catholic Reporter. A former Catholic seminarian with a pontifical degree, he has come a long way since then. Jack Nichols: Philip, what offended you at first about Imus? When did you originally discover that he's a born-again bigot in sheep's clothing? Philip Nobile: I used to do the Imus show myself, the early nineties, before he went national. Ironically, my first appearance involved Father Bruce Ritter, the founder of Covenant House, who could not keep his hands off troubled young men in his care. I had exclusive access to one of his favorites who told me his scandalous story in the Village Voice. I went on Imus to discuss the Voice piece and pedophilia in the Catholic priesthood.
Jack Nichols: On the scale of homophobic evil, why do you judge Imus worse than Dr. Laura? Philip Nobile: Because his anti-gay language is more constant and more insidious. Dr. Laura, loathe her or despise her, doesn't call gays "biological errors" day-in and day-out. But I have clocked Imus and his crew at one smear an hour for a whole week. Their favorite insults are "fag," faggot," "queer," "load swallower," "lesbo," and "carpetmuncher," a term applied to Hillary Clinton. Abraham Lincoln is "a four-score fruit." Female athletes are routinely slurred as lesbians as are men, any men, who fall into Imus disfavor. Basically, gays are to Imus what blacks and amputees are to him, easy objects of scorn. Imus's homophobia is so casual that it not only pops up in banter with the staff, but also in his daily parade of taped parodies in the voices of General George Patton, Andy Rooney, Walter Cronkite, Manuel Noriega, Rush Limbaugh et al. Knowing that homosexuals are Imus' most berated untermenschen, even guests like boxing manager Rock Newman and NBC newsman Tim Russert feel free to rag on gays. Jack Nichols: When did you and Imus split company? Philip Nobile: After I began spritzing him in the local press a few years ago. Before that he took my calls on and off the air, even promoted a book of mine via a Richard Nixon parody. Being a friend of Imus has its rewards. He will slobber your Johnson, as they say in Marseilles, if he likes you and you make him look less awful, that is, if your good name perfumes his effluence. People in this category include media stars like Tim Russert, Tom Brokaw, Jeff Greenfield, Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, Brian Lamb, Jim Lehrer, Cokie Roberts, Anna Quindlen, Judy Woodruff, and Frank Rich. As for politicians in Imus's pocket, look no further than the race for the White House. In exchange for free publicity, Gore, Lieberman, McCain, Bradley, Nader, Hatch, and Keyes have all appeared on the program blind and deaf to the host's well broadcast prejudices. Jack Nichols: Did you ask any of his regulars about their guilty association? Philip Nobile: Nobody close to Imus show is willing to talk about the 165-pound bigot in the studio. With the noble exception of Mike Wallace, Imus's entourage of A-list journalists, stonewalled me. As for the candidates, they avoided repeated press inquires. "You're not going to get anything out of us," said a Bradley rep after I informed him that the candidate was called a "load-swallower" on the program. When I spoke to McCain at an Imus remote during the New York primaries, he told me that he couldn't respond to my question about Imus's racism and homophobia because, he said, "I don't listen to the show." Jack Nichols: What did Mike Wallace say about Imus?
Caught in a lie, Imus backed down gracelessly, claiming the conversation was off the record. Amazingly, this national humiliation cost him nothing. The press failed to follow up. For lesser race offenses, Jimmy-the-Greek, Al Campanis and Fuzzy Zoeller were ruined. But Imus wasn't even touched. Jack Nichols: Any theories why not? Philip Nobile: A combination of fear, corporate greed, money, conflict of interest, cozy media relations, and the straight white-boy network that runs the media. Nobody wants to be on the receiving end of Imus. If you cross him, you risk an avalanche of invective. For example, when Lieberman did not instantly answer Imus's calls after getting the VP nod, he was relentlessly and meanly mocked. A Manuel Noriega parody referred to his "non-shellfish eating ass." Within seventy-two hours, Lieberman was back on the reservation. Jack Nichols: Where does corporate greed enter the picture? Philip Nobile: Imus is a huge money-maker for CBS Radio and MSNBC. Owing to a dream demographic of educated white men of higher income, Imus commands the highest commercial rates from blue-chip sponsors like the New York Stock Exchange, Jeep, Fuji, etc. Since he's simulcast a total of 40 hours a week, that's a lot of windfall. Naturally, there is reluctance at the top to tinker with Imus's success, which was built on frequent references to black athletes as simians, homosexuals as sissies and amputees as "pogo sticks," not to mention Indians as "dot heads," Arabs as "towel heads," and Jews as "jewboy" or "Heebie-Jeebies." Jack Nichols: And none of this stuff is covered in the press, not in the New York Times or the Washington Post? Philip Nobile: Covered up is a better description. That's what I meant by conflict of interest. The Times and the Post are bigtime Imus sponsors. In effect, they are paying for Imus 's anti-gay material. If either paper exposed his bigotry, they would indict themselves, and many of their colleagues. Imus's net has enveloped Maureen Dowd, Tom Friedman, Howell Raines, and Frank Rich of the Times, as well as Kay Graham, Howard Kurtz, Tony Kornheiser, and Lloyd Grove at the Post. Tompaine.com's anti-Imus ad in the May 10 op-ed page of the Times caused a stir in the media. TIME did a column on the controversy, I was on "The O'Reilly Factor," Imus raved for several days about my tompaine.com campaign, denying that he was racist or homophobic. And then, to top things off, he completely reversed himself and recited a pledge of my composition, promising to kill the KKK shtick. Nevertheless, the Times ignored the story altogether, though it found room for a friendly profile of Imus's producer, Bernard McGuirk, the guy Imus hired, as he confessed on 60 Minutes, "to do nigger jokes." The Post reported the controversy in a long dispatch, but radio writer Franks Ahrens whitewashed Imus by quoting his least offensive material and failing to challenge his bad faith defenses. Jack Nichols: Imus recited your pledge? How did that happen? I thought he hated you. Philip Nobile: It was a career highlight to have Imus read and swear to my no-bigotry pledge, which amounted to an admission that his maligned critics were right. The amazing but true turn of events occurred a week after the Times ad when Imus booked Clarence Payne for the show. Page was one of four black journalists boycotting Imus over his racist remarks (the others were Ed Bradley, Gwen Ifill, and Stanley Crouch) and was quoted critically in the tompaine.com ad. I figured that Imus would try to make a separate peace with Page, hype his latest book, and then argue that he wasn't a racist because he was nice to Page and visa versa. So I emailed Page the night before his appearance and told him that Imus would try to co-opt him and therefore he must come away from the show with something concrete--like a no bigotry-pledge--which I typed out on the screen. Much to my surprise, in the middle of his guestshot, Page asked Imus to raise his hand and repeat the pledge after him. Then word for word, I heard both men read my words: "I will cease all homosexual slurs …." What a squelch. But the thrill was fleeting. Before that day's show was done, Imus had broken his oath by playing a cut from Amos 'n' Andy, which he had specifically ruled out in his pledge. Jack Nichols: Do you have a homophobic worst of Imus? Philip Nobile: Do I? It was in 1997 when Andrew Cunanan was on the loose in Miami. Imus's brother Fred, another lowbrow regular, called in to complain about the intense police effort because Cunanan was "only whacking off freaks." As wretched as that was in 1997, Imus brought back the deathwish exchange in a promo this year. How's that for contempt of gay people? Jack Nichols: I don't suppose he has many gay guests.
Philip Nobile: Only two in my memory, both Bostonians and both conservatives. One was
David Brudnoy, a talk show host with HIV; the other was Reverend Peter Gomes,
Harvard's campy African American chaplain. Not long ago, Brudnoy told me that
he would still appear on Imus despite the slurs. I apprised Gomes of Imus's
racism and homophobia before his last guest shot in
Jack Nichols: Have you contacted GLAAD about Imus? Philip Nobile: GLAAD is out to lunch on Imus. Won't say a word against him, at least not in public and certainly not on their website. Last year, incredibly, GLAAD gave Imus a clean bill of health. At my urging, Scot Seomin in GLAAD's L.A. office reluctantly agreed to investigate. Imus was allegedly taped for week and, claimed Seomin, nothing homophobic was found. End of GLAAD's involvement. Jack Nichols: Do you think Seomin was telling you the truth or just brushing you off? Philip Nobile: The latter, of course. How can I be sure? I went back to GLAAD this year with transcripts from my "Imus Watch" on tompaine.com. Seomin and a communications whiz named Steve Spurgeon were horrified by the evidence and promised to make Imus a priority alongside Dr. Laura. I have that in writing. Still. Months later, GLAAD remains silent on Imus. I cannot think of a worse institutional betrayal of principle. GLAAD was founded to check powerful phobes like Imus. Yet he gets a free ride. It's like Simon Weisenthal letting a Nazi concentration camp commandant slip through his hands. If I were gay, I'd go on a hunger strike until cowards at GLAAD came out to fight. Jack Nichols: Have you had any luck getting gay writers and activists to pay attention to Imus? Philip Nobile: Yes and no. Andy Humm, a swell old friend, has blasted Imus on his Gay Cable Network program in New York. And, my former editor at the Village Voice, Richard Goldstein, quoted my Imus transcripts in a splendid Voice cover story on celebrity bigots. Unfortunately I was not able to rouse interest in Andrew Sullivan or various gay outlets. Jack Nichols: If you're not gay, whence your passion in gay issues? Philip Nobile: Actually, I am a Kinsey O, that is an exclusive heterosexual. This diagnosis was conferred by a Kinsey associate and so it's official. But sometimes I pass. Once I was on a Jackie Mason television show sitting with a group of gays. At one point, I lampooned Mason's honored guest--an outrageously busty showgirl pretending to run for president--as "Miss Dairy Queen." Whereupon, the indignant woman replied, "Well, I'm sorry if my lifestyle offends you." Apparently, I fooled some of the gays, too. When I was outed on the bus back to Manhattan, some of them kidded me. I recall asking rhetorically, "If I were gay, what kind gay would I be?" I'll never forget the reply--"a straight-acting gay." Jack Nichols: Finally, if you could wave a magic wand, what would you have gays do about Imus? Philip Nobile: Raise holy hell. Imus is a heartbeat away from total disgrace. Nobody with any class can defend his bigotry, which is why his regulars won't take my calls or answer queries from other reporters. Gay bigfeet or organizations could easily pressure someone with clout to speak out, preferably someone in Imus' camp. Someone like Times columnist Frank Rich who poses as a great Friend of Dorothy and who accepted an award from GLAAD while maintaining traitorous relations with Imus. I'd also love to see Andrew Sullivan unleash his righteous Catholic spleen on the the closest thing to an anti-gay Anti-Christ in the American media. |
Philip Nobile: Wallace exposed Imus's racism on 60 Minutes in 1997. After Imus
recklessly challenged Wallace to come up with a single example of bias,
Wallace nailed him with using the word "nigger" in a conversation with his
producer. Imus denied it at first. Then producer dramatically stepped forward
to confirm Imus's low vocabulary.
© 1997-2000 BEI