Hardball transcript (Guests: DeForest Soaries, Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, Elijah Cummings, Eugene Robinson, Pat Buchanan, Tom Oliphant, Chris Dodd):
GREGORY: Yes. And I think—the issues of comedy, of civility, of decency are very important issues, but we cannot get to the larger discussion until we focus on the very specific but unfortunate acts of Mr. Imus last week aimed at some very specific people. We are concerned about the global issues and all of those philosophical—the things that need to happen. My concern is that a member of my church who coaches 10 fine athletes was attacked and defamed by someone without regard to the impact it would make on their lives. These young women will have to wrestle with these issues.
And so they happen to be African- American. They happen to be female. But when this kind of very focused and targeted bigotry is aimed at specific people, not large groups of people, but specific people, then I think you‘ve got to—you‘ve got to respond in kind.
GREGORY: Reverend...
SOARIES: I‘m a Christian. I believe in forgiveness, but I also believe in justice, and justice requires that consequences are attached to our behavior.
GREGORY: Reverend, have you spoken to Don Imus?
SOARIES: I have not spoken to him in the last two hours. I expect to speak to him within the next two hours because when I left him last night, the question that I had posed to him was this: Now that NBC has dropped you, if CBS also drops you before the meeting with the Rutgers women, are you still interested in having a meeting? And his response was that he definitely wanted to meet with the Rutgers women and there was nothing that could happen to prevent him from wanting to do that. And I want to confirm that before the evening ends so that I can proceed with the plans that we had agreed to just two or three hours ago.
GREGORY: Will that meeting happen today?
SOARIES: Pardon me?
GREGORY: Will the meeting between Imus and the women happen today?
SOARIES: Well, the next step for me is to talk to Mr. Imus about his desire to meet and then to talk to the team about the status of the meeting in their minds—I‘m certain that the team still wants to meet—and then take it from there. Needless to say, we have committed to this being both a private meeting and a secret meeting. We don‘t want to turn it into a public spectacle. And so when the meeting takes place and whether it will take place will not be disclosed. The fact that the meeting takes place will be announced after it‘s done.
GREGORY: There‘s going to be a lot of people, Reverend, who ask this question. They‘re going to say there has been so much hysteria about this and that the hysteria took Imus down, not specific injury against these young women, many of whom didn‘t even know who he was, some of whom, including Coach Stringer, had a much more muted reaction when this first came about. You even said in our conversations previously you waited several days until speaking about this from the pulpit. Has Don Imus been caught up in an overreaction?
SOARIES: Well, Don Imus himself said to me last night words that I think all of us should remember, and that is this. Had he not said the words, none of this would have occurred. I can‘t be more concerned about the response to the words than the fact of the words themselves.
Granted, whenever a media frenzy begins, whenever the stories begin to become indistinguishable from rumors, there‘s no doubt there are probably some things that Imus has been accused of doing that are untrue. There are probably some accusations that are unfair. But again, personal responsibility is really foundational for a mature individual, and Imus in his maturity confessed that he had brought this on himself. Now, that does not excuse people from stooping to the level of accusations that are unfounded, et cetera. But we bring things on ourselves, and the Bible says you reap what you sow.
I would hope that now that this specific focus on his status has been resolved, and once the meeting with the Rutgers women has taken place, that we can let the Rutgers women go back to school, we can pray that Imus will grow (INAUDIBLE) from this experience. And then those of us who have a sincere desire to enhance the quality of life in our communities can (INAUDIBLE) in serious dialogue away from the public eye, without the glare of the TV camera, and really attempt to build a more genuine community.
GREGORY: Reverend Soaries, as you are busy trying to put this meeting together as soon as tonight, after CBS has announced that they have now fired Don Imus, one last question for you. What do you think is—what do you think? What is your conclusion—having dealt with him and been in the middle of this, what do you think about Don Imus?
SOARIES: I think Don Imus is a professional. I think he is a mixture of comedy and satire and politics and punditry. I think he has established a brand that is in some ways genius but in other ways dangerous. And he is not likely to change. I don‘t think Mr. Imus will suffer financially. The ego will be bruised.
And my prayer is that he will seek to understand exactly what happened because he touched a nerve in this country that I have not seen since the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. And I‘m not trying to be over-exaggerating, but I‘ve never seen this kind of response come from such a broad (INAUDIBLE) of people who agree on the basic proposition and who are so focused on and sympathetic for these 10 young ladies.
And so I think Mr. Imus is deeply apologetic, truly regretful, and will be seeking strategies to really figure this out and to find the next chapter in his life.
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