“This event has scarred me for life,” said a Rutgers player in the Imus wars. One would have thought Imus himself might have said that, except his visage has been pretty well scarred since at least his earlier days in pre-rehab. But to return to that Rutgers dribbler — doesn’t living in New Jersey leave lifetime scars? Wouldn’t losing to Tennessee in the NCAA women’s final have added a few new ones? What about the many days during which she and the rest of humanity were kept blissfully in the dark about what Imus had said back on April 4th? Wouldn’t not knowing have created even more scars than knowing now has?
The scar campaign may extend beyond the lone voice quoted above. A report in Newark’s Star-Ledger hints at the scale of hurt being felt: “Ten young women whose lives were disrupted when a man they did not know maligned them…” At this rate, Imus will be lucky to be sentenced as a mere sexual predator. But the greater tragedy is that he’s off the air as the Duke lacrosse story is resolved and no one will ask him to weigh in against the discredited accuser or to offer congratulatory words to the Duke defendants as they resume their quiet lives of books, seminars, and poetry readings at the Phi Beta Kappa house.
Perhaps the most profound insight during the recent unpleasantness came from the Washington Post censor who defended hip-hop as an “African American art form” yet with every fiber in his being called on every last one of us to “banish that hateful word ‘ho’ from the language.” So there goes Christmas. Will Santa Claus be charged as a repeat offender?
We’ll know soon enough, once Obama Barack interrupts his run for student body president to demand Santa’s resignation.
People power remains the name of the game. Although major Democrats refuse to engage us in debate, Mr. F.S. Lewis of Roswell, Georgia, has written in to request a “fair and balanced presentation of the Don Imus situation.” It would include “a slow on the air reading of some current rap music lyrics.” Sorry, F.S. Lewis. We prefer C.S. Lewis. Or T.S. Eliot, if nepotism is a concern.
Chicago’s lone conservative Jack Hughes does Ben Stein one better to say that “just about any week a person could nominate Al Thurmond Sharpton for Enemy of the Week and be right on target… but this week the nominee is the person who groveled before Preacher Al — Don Imus.” But what about those who groveled before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? It really wasn’t their fault, our faithful friend Sir Donald Parnell informs us, but that of the Rt. Hon. Desmond Browne, who serves as the Secretary of State for Defence in the United Kingdom. Brownie’s crime? “Dragging a once proud institution, the Royal Navy, into the tabloid, ‘Oprah’ filled sewers of modernity by allowing the sailors and Marines held hostage [in Iran] to sell their noninspiring story to the tabloids…”
Still, we rather like the Hon. Browne’s job description — just what we have in mind in dealing with the seditious menace of one Nancy Pelosi plus one Tom Lantos. Those two claim they’re simply enforcing a Democratic foreign policy. Well, others can play this came as well. We can start with Condoleezza Rice and (sorry, Bob Gates) rename her position, Secretary of State for Defense in the United States. Then we’ll expand Dr. Rice’s resume further, as she also becomes Republican Speaker of the House and Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Right before Nancy and Tom file a grievance with President Ahmadinejad’s ethics council, Dr. Rice will draw on the conflict resolution advice of Democratic poet laureate emeritus Bob Dylan to ask them, “How does it feel?”
At which point we’ll intervene to ask Tom and Nancy how it felt to win this week’s EOW medal? And they’ll respond in one of three ways: See you on Imus, see you in Tehran, or see you in hell. Oh, well.
Send your Enemy of the Week nominations to Enemy Central c/o editor@spectator.org.
