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Imus: CBS Firing 'Is What Should Have Happened'
NEW YORK -- December 3, 2007: Don Imus returned to radio this morning on WABC-AM/New York, eight months after CBS Radio fired him in the wake of racially charged remarks he made about the Rutgers women's basketball team.
Addressing the controversy in the opening minutes of this morning's program, Imus said meeting with the women and confronting the effect his comments had on them impacted him profoundly, and said former employer CBS Radio's decision to fire him was appropriate. "I think what happened is about what should have happened," Imus said of his dismissal after the outrage that followed his description of the team as "nappy-headed ho's."
In fact, he had kind words for CBS CEO Les Moonves' handling of the situation. "I got a call from Les Moonves, and he said we can't take the pressure and we are going to have to pull the plug. While I knew I wasn't still working for [former Infinity execs] Mel Karmazin or Farid Suleman, Les couldn't have been more honest or straightforward in dealing with me. We understood the gravity of the remark."
Hosting this first edition of his new show from this city's Town Hall, Imus said, "You don't get to decide, nor should you, how the news media is going to treat a remark you make. You don't get to decide if they will put it in context, and you can't whine and complain if you pick up the New York Times and an essay rates what you said as a racist tirade. Every time I would get pissed off, I'd remind myself that if I hadn't said what I said, I wouldn't have to deal with it, the women at Rutgers would have to deal with it. I always remembered that it began with that remark."
Imus also reflected on the impact meeting with the team and their families had on him. "As we were sitting there listening to them, one mother was this far from my face and screaming. You could feel her heart breaking, and I was thinking how fortunate it was that I had been fired. Had I been there apologizing to them and offering them these excuses and still have my job, then they would have thought that I was there trying to save my job, and that might have been true. I was there to try to save my life. I had already lost my job." He added, "I don't know if it's melodramatic to say this was life-changing, but it was pretty close."
Imus also promised to never to do anything to make the team regret the forgiveness it ultimately showed him. "I had said earlier that week in apologizing that I was a good person who had said a bad thing. Sitting there, I thought about how irrelevant that was. That doesn't give you a license to make any kind of remark you want to make. I will never say anything in my lifetime that will make these women regret that they accepted my apology and forgave me. And no one else will say anything on my program that will make anybody think that I didn't deserve a second chance."
On the matter of this new incarnaton of Imus in the Morning,, which is being syndicated by ABC Radio Networks and is airing on the RFD TV cable network, Imus looks forward with optimism. "We now have the opportunity to have a better program and diversify the cast," he said, "but the program is not going to change."
In fact, $100-per-seat tickets to this morning's broadcast benefited Imus' Imus Ranch chidren's charity.
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