Don Imus Meets With Rutgers Team

Don Imus’ racist remarks got him fired by CBS on Thursday, the finale to a stunning fall for one of the nation’s most prominent broadcasters.

Imus was initially suspended for two weeks after he called the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos” on the air last week. But outrage kept growing and advertisers kept bolting from his CBS radio show and its MSNBC simulcast, which was canceled Wednesday.

“There has been much discussion of the effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society,” CBS President and Chief Executive Officer Leslie Moonves said in announcing the decision. “That consideration has weighed most heavily on our minds as we made our decision.”

Imus, 66, had a long history of inflammatory remarks. But something struck a raw nerve when he targeted the Rutgers team — which includes a class valedictorian, a future lawyer and a musical prodigy — after they lost in the NCAA championship game.

The team met with Imus for about three hours at the governor’s mansion in Princeton, N.J. Thursday night. Imus left without commenting to reporters, but C. Vivian Stringer, the team’s coach, spoke briefly on the mansion’s steps.

“We had a very productive meeting,” she said. “We were able to really dialogue. … Hopefully, we can put all of this behind us.”

She did not say if the team forgave him for the remarks.

Photo Credit: AP (Stringer talks to the press after the meeting)

However, one person noticeably absent from the meeting at the governor?s mansion was New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine, who was critically injured when his motorcade crashed on his way to the meeting.

Photo Credit: AP (NJ Governor, Jon Corzine)

Corzine, 60, suffered numerous broken bones but his injuries were not considered life-threatening, officials said. He recuperating early Friday at Cooper University Hospital in Camden after two hours of surgery to repair a seriously damaged leg and other injuries.

Photo Credit: AP (The scene of Governor Corzine’s crash)

Dr. Robert Ostrum said that Corzine’s surgery was successful but noted that the governor would need two more operations on his leg in the coming days. Doctors also inserted a breathing tube that would remain “for days to weeks, until (Corzine) is able to breathe on his own again,” Ostrum said.

Corzine had a broken sternum, a broken collarbone, a slight fracture of his lower vertebrae, a broken left leg, six broken ribs on each side and a laceration on his head, said Dr. Steven Ross, head of trauma for the hospital.

Corzine was riding in his two-car motorcade’s sports utility vehicle when a white pickup truck swerved to avoid a red pickup truck that had corrected itself after driving onto the right shoulder of the Garden State Parkway around 6 p.m. EDT, said State Police Superintendent Rick Fuentes.

The white pickup slammed into the passenger side of Corzine’s vehicle, causing the driver’s side to strike a guardrail.

The trooper driving the vehicle, Robert Rasinksi, suffered minor injuries but was resting comfortably, Fuentes said. An aide to the governor also was in the vehicle, but was not injured.

Imus was fired in the middle of a two-day radio fundraiser for children’s charities. CBS announced that Imus’ wife, Deirdre, and his longtime newsman, Charles McCord, will host Friday’s show.

Photo Credit: AP (Don Imus leaves the Governor’s mansion)

The cantankerous Imus, once named one of the 25 Most Influential People in America by Time magazine and a member of the National Broadcasters Hall of Fame, was one of radio’s original shock jocks. His career took flight in the 1970s and with a cocaine- and vodka-fueled outrageous humor. After sobering up, he settled into a mix of highbrow talk about politics and culture, with locker room humor sprinkled in.

He issued repeated apologies as protests intensified. But it wasn’t enough as everyone from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama to Oprah Winfrey joined the criticism.

The Rev. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson met with Moonves on Thursday to demand Imus’ removal.

Jackson called the firing “a victory for public decency. No one should use the public airwaves to transmit racial or sexual degradation.”

Said Sharpton: “He says he wants to be forgiven. I hope he continues in that process. But we cannot afford a precedent established that the airways can commercialize and mainstream sexism and racism.”

In a memo to staff members, Moonves said the firing “is about a lot more than Imus.”

“He has flourished in a culture that permits a certain level of objectionable expression that hurts and demeans a wide range of people,” Moonves said. “In taking him off the air, I believe we take an important and necessary step not just in solving a unique problem, but in changing that culture, which extends far beyond the walls of our company.”

It’s also likely to trigger a wider debate about expression and forgiveness. Some of Imus’ fans have pointed to inflammatory statements made by Sharpton and Jackson in the past, or in the lyrics of popular music.

Losing Imus will be a financial hit to CBS Radio, which also suffered when Howard Stern departed for satellite radio. The program earns about $15 million in annual revenue for CBS, which owns Imus’ home radio station WFAN-AM and manages Westwood One, the company that syndicates the show nationally. One potential replacement: the sports show “Mike & the Mad Dog,” which airs afternoons on WFAN.

The radiothon had raised more than $1.3 million Thursday before Imus learned that he had lost his job. The annual event has raised more than $40 million since 1990.

“This may be our last radiothon, so we need to raise about $100 million,” Imus cracked at the start of the event.

Volunteers were getting about 200 more pledges per hour than they did last year, with most callers expressing support for Imus, said phone bank supervisor Tony Gonzalez. The event benefited Tomorrows Children’s Fund, the CJ Foundation for SIDS and the Imus Ranch.

Imus, whose suspension was supposed to start next week, was in the awkward situation of broadcasting Thursday’s radio program from the MSNBC studios in New Jersey, even though NBC News said the night before that MSNBC would no longer simulcast his program on television.

He didn’t attack MSNBC (a unit of NBC Universal, owned by General Electric Co.) for its decision — “I understand the pressure they were under,” he said — but complained the network was doing some unethical things during the broadcast. He didn’t elaborate.

Sponsors that pulled out of Imus’ show included American Express Co., Sprint Nextel Corp., Staples Inc., Procter & Gamble Co. and General Motors Corp. Imus made a point Thursday to thank one sponsor, Bigelow Tea, for sticking by him.

The list of his potential guests began to shrink, too.

Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham said the magazine’s staffers would no longer appear on Imus’ show. Meacham, Jonathan Alter, Evan Thomas, Howard Fineman and Michael Isikoff from Newsweek have been frequent guests.

Imus has complained bitterly about a lack of support from one black politician, Harold Ford Jr., even though he strongly backed Ford’s campaign for Senate in Tennessee last year. Ford, now head of the Democratic Leadership Council, said Thursday he’ll leave it to others to decide Imus’ future.

“I don’t want to be viewed as piling on right now because Don Imus is a good friend and a decent man,” Ford said. “However, he did a reprehensible thing.”

Imus’ troubles have also affected his wife, whose book “Green This!” came out this week. Her promotional tour has been called off “because of the enormous pressure that Deirdre and her family are under,” said Simon & Schuster publicist Victoria Meyer.

People are buying it, though: An original printing of 45,000 was increased to 55,000.

Imus still has a lot of support among radio managers across the country, many of whom grew up listening to him, said Tom Taylor, editor of the trade publication Inside Radio.

Rutgers’ team, meanwhile, appeared Thursday on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” with their coach.

At the end of their appearance, Winfrey said: “I want to borrow a line from Maya Angelou, who is a personal mentor of mine and I know you all also feel the same way about her. And she has said this many times, and I say this to you, on behalf of myself and every woman that I know, you make me proud to spell my name W-O-M-A-N.”