Imus' crudity outweighed his good

Part of what strikes you about Don Imus and his current predicament is that he has been known as a "good" shock jock whose verbal barbarities stand in line behind his charitable fund-raising and serious political interviews.

Go back a bit, and there's Time magazine proclaiming him one of the 25 most influential people in America. The publication quotes Maureen Dowd of The New York Times as saying he has "read everything, and he gets to the heart of everything." He was someone, said Time, who translated "stodgy politics into vital popular culture."

It is no small thing that Imus has raised millions of dollars for causes such as his New Mexico ranch for children with cancer. If you want to keep up with Washington, I was advised while living there, you have to tune into his "Imus in the Morning" drive-time broadcasts out of New York. His guests have included the likes of Cokie Roberts, Tim Russert, Al Gore, John McCain and, when he was running for president, Bill Clinton.

But Clinton was later to get an in-your-face look at the Imus crudity recently put on center stage by his remark that the players on the Rutgers women's basketball squad were "nappy-headed hos." At the 1996 Radio and Television Correspondents dinner in Washington, while Bill and Hillary sat nearby, Imus used his role as the evening's speaker to joke about the president's rumored extramarital adventures and the first lady's alleged illegalities. He also got laughs at the expense of Newt Gingrich's lesbian half-sister and then-Sen. Bob Kerrey's artificial leg.

As rowdiness goes, this was the merest trace of what usually comes with Imus. When Christine Todd Whitman was governor of New Jersey, Imus asked her to reveal her bra size. He spoke of the PBS journalist Gwen Ifill as "a cleaning lady." He pokes unfriendly fun at gays. He has called Arabs "ragheads."

Reports note that his anti-Semitic mouthings have included calling Simon & Schuster book publishers "thieving Jews," and as saying the "Jewish management" of CBS radio consists of "money-grubbing bastards." He once called Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post's media columnist, a "beanie-wearing little Jew boy."

By one account, Kurtz was nonchalant. "While Imus sometimes goes over the line, most listeners understand that he is in the satire game, and that makes all the difference," he said.