What did I think of Imus's ten-minute mea culpa this morning? I'm glad you asked, and though I'm also certain you'll call me gullible, I think it sounded reasonably sincere. I also think there were - as they might say out in Imus country in New Mexico - some bull pies thrown in for good measure. (For those, see below).
But mostly sincere? Sure. Why not. I met the guy some years ago when I did a profile of him for another newspaper: Found him ornery, hard-assed, mean, funny, interesting, obtuse, strange, and surly but never once phony. And believe me, after interviewing four million people over the course of this career, you get to know when someone's phony or not. That impression of Imus sort of stuck with me, and so that long on-air thing this morning felt sincere as well.
(But really, who cares? Imus is back, he has to make amends, suck up to the African American community, and hope this thing is forgotten by tomorrow morning.)
Now, a couple more impressions that may just belie my "sincere" stamp of approval:
a.) If all is well and good with CBS and Les Moonves - as he said - then what was that $40 million (or whatever the figure was) breach-of-contract suit about last May? Here's what Imus said:
"At around 4 o'clock that afternoon [when he went to New Jersey to meet with the Rutgers' team] I got a call from Les Moonves at CBS and he said, we can't take the pressure and we're gonna have to pull the plug, and I said I understood that...Les Moonves could not have been more honorable and more straightforward and more honest in dealing with me, not at any point that he said everything would be fine. We understood the gravity of the remark...we all recognized that it was just a matter of time before he did what he had to do."
Now hold on there one minute, cowboy: If Les did what he had to do, what was that breach suit all about? Just "lawyers talking?" I doubt that; Imus - if my read at the time was correct - was furious for being fired, and furious at Moonves. When I heard this load of bull pie this morning, I thought: Is "happy talk about Les" a requirement of the (no doubt huge financial) settlement?
b.) Imus said he wasn't going to do a Larry King mea culpa tour, but - hold on again - he's doing Barbara Walters this Thursday on her "Ten Most Fascinating" show!
Now Don, as you're well aware, a mea culpa's not been properly mea culpaed unless it's uttered - hopefully with tears brimming in your eyes - before the Queen. That's the law. And of course, you didn't mention it in the opening. Ok, fine, sure - Imus did later say he was doing Babs because she's such a good gal, an old friend, etc. But on a bull pie scale - with ten being the largest whopper - I'd say that rates a nine.
What did he say to Babs? Not much, but here are some outtakes:
She asked whether the new black cast members were added out of "guilt" (whaaa?) Said Imus: "No, I thought it was an opportunity to diversify the cast...I suddenly find myself now in this unique position to present a better program...Most programs are so ratings driven, people are so cowardly and terrified...And people don't want to have this conversation about race relations, so, out of this idiotic thing that I said, a lot of good can come, because I'll have a huge audience and an enormously influential audience."
A kinder Imus? "Well, I don't think so, no," he replied.
He said the Rutgers players were "hurt...The coach and I talked for hours. It took a while for everybody to get down to talk about how they felt. I told them about who I was and what my life was about, but I could see that I wasn't getting through."
"This had so much impact on them, because it was made such a huge deal. I had people say to me, 'Well, if the news media hadn't have blown it up, if Rev. Al hadn't have done that. &' I said, 'nonsense.'"
"The point was, it got to the point where they were, in fact, distraught about it. One of the kids said it's heartbreaking, one of the kids said to me, 'you know, it's just so upsetting.' I just kept thinking over and over again, 'thank God that I'm here and I'm here because I want to be here. I'm not here just trying to save my big time job.'"
He added, that he "probably" should have been canned.