The Power That Was

As he spoke, Don Imus had no inkling—none, he later told NEWSWEEK—that he had said anything that would cause him trouble. Wednesday, April 4, started and finished like any other day for the talk-show host. Enthroned in his high-backed chair in his New Jersey studio just outside New York City, Imus, cragged and cranky as ever, bullied and joked and cajoled his way through his volatile four-hour morning radio program, broadcast nationwide five days a week by CBS affiliates and simulcast on MSNBC. Always particular about his looks, Imus wore his hipster cowboy jacket with the collar flipped up, his studiously tousled hair grazing his shoulders.

Imus's show that day was supposed to be the usual mix of the high-minded and the profane. Among the guests: Sen. Chris Dodd, an Imus favorite who had announced he was running for president on the show earlier this year. In a sports segment, talk turned to the NCAA women's basketball game between Rutgers University and Tennessee. "That's some rough girls from Rutgers," Imus cracked. "Man, they've got tattoos and ... " At that point Bernie McGuirk, Imus's longtime friend and producer, jumped in. "Some hard-core hos," he said. Imus, laughing, pressed further. "That's some nappy-headed hos there, I'm going to tell you that now," he said. Belly laughs all around. After a few more ugly jibes, they were on to the next thing.

Or so he thought. Imus, who had been on the air for more than three decades and claimed he'd practically invented shock radio, had spilled countless words into the ether, many of them crude, tasteless, racially charged and intended to insult. Most of them simply evaporated. He got a thrill from his role as a provocateur, and rarely missed a chance to push the boundaries.

Imus's show, like the shock jock himself, had always been something of a one-man culture clash. At 66, the "I-Man" was still big on tasteless caricatures of anyone in the news, or in his sight. (He called Dick Cheney "Pork Chop Butt.") He seemed to revel in reducing his targets to crude racial and ethnic stereotypes. A running gag had McGuirk lampooning New York Roman Catholic cardinals John O'Connor and Edward Egan as vulgar Irishmen with thick brogues. Arabs were "ragheads." NBA star Patrick Ewing was a "knuckle-dragging moron." McGuirk did an impression of poet Maya Angelou, telling whites to "Kiss my big black a--."

But Imus took special pride in his unlikely role as host and scold to the nation's ruling political class. He goaded the journalists and politicians who begged to appear on his show, belittling them as "fat losers" and "baldheaded weasels" or worse, and asking, with mock solemnity, for their analysis of the presidential "erection." He once called Washington Post reporter Howard Kurtz, a regular on the show, a "boner-nosed, beanie-wearing Jew boy." Kurtz considered it part of the game. "I wasn't thrilled, but I just shrugged it off as Imus's insult shtik," says Kurtz, who has said that Imus helped make one of his books a best seller. "I don't believe for a second that he doesn't like Jewish people." Like the coolest bully on the playground, the outlaw kid others wanted to be seen with, Imus made his guests feel honored to be insulted by him. He tempered the abuse with just enough ego-stroking flattery to keep them coming back for more. (Those who didn't care for his shtik either avoided him or quickly fell off the invite list.)

Between insults, he gave politicians and journalists, including some from NEWSWEEK, lots of air time to discuss serious issues and plug their books. He asked real questions and then listened to the answers. The show became an influential salon for the politically connected. Powerful people tuned in to hear what other powerful people would say. For a certain segment of status-obsessed journalists, being called names by Imus was better than not being called at all. Imus had a talent for coaxing his guests into saying what they really thought, often in salty language they'd never use on more "respectable" shows. "I wanted to be where the action was on my beat," says NEWSWEEK's Howard Fineman, an Imus regular. "The show, however unsavory it could be, was one of those places. I thought, or perhaps only imagined, that being on the show gave me more clout on the beat." NEWSWEEK's Evan Thomas, another regular guest on the show, sometimes wondered if Imus went too far. "But I rationalized my appearances by pointing to other prominent journalists and politicians who did it, too," he says. "I was eager to sell books, and I liked being in the in crowd."