By Jay Ambrose
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Kia Vaughn says Don Imus ruined her reputation when he called members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos,” but it’s something else entirely that stands to hurt her name: a lawsuit she’s filed seeking money from the shock jock.
The suit on behalf of this star center of the team says “defamatory, sexually denigrating and slanderous statements and comments against the women athletes . . . were heard, believed and understood by millions of listeners . . . as factual pronouncements concerning the character, chastity and reputation of the plaintiff.”
Her lawyer, Richard Ancowitz, has been quoted as saying Vaughn “would do anything” to “restore” her “good name.”
How much is being sought in monetary damages? We don’t know, but Imus is worth multimillions, and he is not the only one being named in the suit. There’s also the producer of Imus’ old show, Bernard McGuirk, along with CBS Corp., Viacom Inc., MSNBC, CBS Radio, NBC Universal and Westwood One Radio. We could be talking about a high stack of dollars, although some of them, the lawyer has said, would be used for the study of bigotry, misogyny, that sort of thing.
For just a moment in these unhinged times in which we live, let’s get rational enough to say what should be obvious to any and every adult who has paid the slightest bit of attention to the Imus saga, namely that there was no way in the world he meant his remark about that team to be taken literally. It was intended as a joke. To be sure, it was a tasteless, stupid, insulting joke, but exactly the sort of way-out, scandalous joke on which Imus has built a long career.
No one with a lick of sense could conceivably have thought Imus was suggesting anything factual about members of that team, and it is utterly absurd to think their reputations were diminished. Imus himself apologized and guess what the players did? They accepted the apology.
Vaughn’s good name was not put in jeopardy by Imus, and if she wants this whole thing to go away, the last thing she should do is file a suit that earns fresh headlines and makes people wonder whether this is yet one more instance of someone using the courts for undeserved enrichment. Those who advised this course of action have done her a disfavor while simultaneously abetting the further diminishment of respect for law.
Imus, who has just settled his own lawsuit against CBS, could be headed back to his own radio show again and may be tempted to settle with Vaughn just to get it over with. But if he does, do all the others he has joked about over the years then line up to get their share?
I am not here to defend Imus. My concern is with a society that is forever damaging itself through the abuse of a magnificent mechanism, the law, which is meant to set things right.
Jay Ambrose was Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
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