Frank Rich Listens To The Show Before He Comes On

Imus spoke today with the New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Frank Rich about his column yesterday, which boiled down to this: a certain group of white people in this country is terrified about becoming a minority in 30 years, as census reports have predicted they will.

“It reminded me of how the Native American Indians must have felt when all these immigrants came in and decided to take over their country,” said Imus.

Rich agreed the present climate is similar, and said that while researching this column he discovered that such sentiments are common throughout history.

“In the late 19th century there was similar panic in America among some native white people because there were these huge waves of immigrants—Irish, Jews, and so on—and African-Americans had been emancipated and were moving up North looking for jobs,” he said. “There was a lot of nativism and racism.”

Rich alluded in his article to FOX News being ground zero for this hysteria, which Imus disagreed with loudly prior to Rich’s appearance, and which Rich had heard Imus doing.

“It’s not really helpful if you listen when I’m hammering you before you’re on,” said Imus, who begged his guest to find something else to do before his next appearance.

Rich conceded that FOX News’s straight news operation, particularly Shepard Smith, has tried to beat down some of the mania. The problem, and one that can be attributed to all news networks, is the blurry line between opinion and news.

He pointed to the recent coverage on CNN by Lou Dobbs of claims that President Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen. “No one would think it was an important story if someone in the media wasn’t hyping it,” Rich said.

While those perpetuating the “birther” story are in the minority, Rich said they still exist, and that much of their uncertainty is driven by anxiety about the future on many fronts.

“Some of this is guided by the economic stuff, having nothing to do with race,” he said.

But last week’s focus on the incident in Cambridge involving Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley indicated that so much is still about race, a topic Imus has frequently covered over the last year and a half.

“You made a commitment, and have kept it alive as a theme of your show,” said Rich. “Our biggest tendency is when there’s a blow up we say there’s going to be a national conversation on race, we declare it, we congratulate ourselves for doing it, and then it’s just dropped.”

Dropping it is something Imus has been unwilling to do. He added, “I’ve said things and had conversations with people that I would have never even imagined.”

-Julie Kanfer