Don Imus, one of the most successful personalities in radio, has died. His broadcasting career lasted fifty years, minus time off for addiction recovery and temporary firings.
In the 1980s “Imus in the Morning” on WNBC was the essential AM (both amplitude modulation and ante meridiem) drive time show, with a mix of news and zany characters. In the 1990s it became the non-sports lead-off on New York’s WFAN, was syndicated throughout the country and simulcast on MSNBC. It was widely considered among the most important inside-the-beltway programs. Politicians from both parties would appear, as would commentators and authors hawking a book. The show ended in mid-2007 when Imus’s not-infrequent racially insensitive remarks proved too much.
“Nappy-headed hoes,” is how the cowboy-hatted sourpuss described the mostly African American members of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team who were competing in the N.C.A.A. finals. Demonstrations were held to have Imus taken off the air and Presidential candidate Barack Obama referred to his comments as “some of the worst stereotypes that my two young daughters are having to deal with today in America.” He was eventually dismissed, and while the statement was indeed beyond the pale, there were no shortage of warning signs. In 1993 Imus called esteemed African American journalist Gwen Ifill “a cleaning lady” and in 1998 called Washington Post columnist Howard Kurtz a “boner-nosed … beanie-wearing little Jew boy.”
Imus was back on the air in 2008, but he never regained the clout he once had. He retired in 2018.
His defenders can cite that he took aim at both political sides. He called Hillary Rodham Clinton “satan” and he called Dick Cheney a war criminal, as the New York Times points out. Also, a booster might say that Imus had his roots in comedy, having made his radio bones in the late 1960s ordering a delivery of 1200 hamburgers while posing as a military officer in California. (This bit made it to a 1972 album called, you guessed it, 1200 Hamburgers To Go. It’s on Spotify.) He was also known for playing characters like the Reverend Billy Sol Hargus, which lampooned televangelists. (Imus penned God’s Other Son, a mock memoir of the Reverend in 1981.)
Imus was also lauded for raising a great deal of money for charity. Indeed, his Imus Ranch, a working cattle ranch in Ribera, New Mexico that maintained an Old West look, hosted children with cancer and blood diseases. Imus also raised funds for wounded Iraq war veterans and the for siblings of victims of sudden infant death syndrome.
His grumpy growl was beloved by some and made morning rides to the airport miserable for others. During his long career he battle alcohol and cocaine addiction he was known for frequently arriving late for work and often carried a licensed gun. He maintained a love of country music and had a longstanding feud with Howard Stern, with whom he worked at WNBC AM, but who then eclipsed him with his more bawdy style of radio that took off on FM. As Stern made a self-deprecating (yet still self-deifying) autobiographical film, Imus leaned more into the politics. He wore headphones with thick, sturdy wires that hung down around his throat, looking more like a stethoscope than what typical DJs used, to make room for the giant cowboy hat he wore when broadcasting from Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, New York.