Ana Marie Cox On Imus



(image via wnyc)

Even though Imus' show was cancelled even as Ana Marie Cox's disavowal of that leathery racist was going to press, The Corsair thought it was one of the most thoughtful and acutely personal essays published in Time Magazine in a long time. Cox talks candidly about how her ambition got in the way of her better judgement -- in a nattional magazine. And, it seems, Cox's article appears to be the only high-profile response to a question Wasington Week's Managing Editor Gwen Ifill asked earlier in the week of the DC media Establishment. From Time:

"Every time I've been on Don Imus' show, he has reminded listeners that he "discovered" me. It's not exactly hyperbole. He first invited me on when I was just a foulmouthed blogger who ran the gossipy political site Wonkette. As I recall, my first on-air conversation with him was about the Bush twins, or, as I called them, 'Jenna and Not-Jenna.' Last fall I became a regular guest and took up slightly more serious topics (on my last appearance we talked about Senator John McCain's Baghdad trip and Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani's lack of social graces), but the subjects hardly mattered. I had been invited inside the circle, and to be perfectly honest, I was thrilled to be there.

"As the invites kept coming, I found myself succumbing to the clubhouse mentality that Imus both inspires and cultivates. Sure, I cringed at his and his crew's race-baiting (the Ray Nagin impersonations, the Obama jokes) and at the casual locker-room misogyny (Hillary Clinton's a 'bitch,' CNN news anchor Paula Zahn is a 'wrinkled old prune'), but I told myself that going on the show meant something beyond inflating my precious ego. I wasn't alone. As Frank Rich noted a few years ago, 'It's the only show ... that I've been on where you can actually talk in an informed way — not in sound bites.' Yeah, what he said!

"I'm embarrassed to admit that it took Imus' saying something so devastatingly crass to make me realize that there just was no reason beyond ego to play along."

If this is Stengel's new Time Magazine ... then c'est goddam well avec moi. The full article (Time)