Don Imus Returns To Morinings

Barack in the saddle? Repentant Don Imus returns to mornings

Don Imus was back on the air Monday, 234 days after he was fired by CBS and MSNBC for his remarks about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.

And while much of “Imus in the Morning” sounded just as it did when it signed off in April, there were moments when the star sounded less like a divisive shock jock and more like a presidential candidate pontificating about the need for America to heal its racial wounds.

“There isn’t any reason we can’t learn how to talk to one another, and so I pledge that I’ll do that, and you’ll see demonstrated on this program,” Imus said from the stage of New York’s Town Hall theater during the first hour of his program, which debuted on WABC-AM in New York and was simulcast on RFD-TV. Only the Dish network makes RFD available locally, but the audio can be streamed live at wabc radio.com.

By “we,” Imus meant white people and African-Americans — such as the two who were conspicuously featured in the first hour of “Imus in the Morning.” Tony Powell, his new sportscaster, is a black comedian who has performed standup at college campuses around the country, including Rutgers.

“It’s a thrill to be here on the Tyler Perry version of the ‘Imus in the Morning’ program,” Powell joked.

And a female comic, Karith Foster, has joined the hitherto all-white panel of resident comics who josh the I-Man in some of the show’s most politically incorrect comedy segments.

Much less conspicuous was the man to whom Imus’ studio audience gave the most rousing round of applause Monday morning: Bernard McGuirk, his longtime producer and expert ad-libber, who once said (off the record, he thought) to “60 Minutes” his role on the show was to supply N-word humor.

McGuirk, news reader Charles McCord and pretty much all the core members of the Imus team followed him from WFAN to WABC. And indeed, Imus was quick to note that other than adding Powell and Foster to the team, “nothing has changed — Dick Cheney is still a war criminal, Hillary Clinton is still Satan and I’m back on the radio!” he declared to cheers from his audience.

Still, as Imus recounted the events of April 12 — the day he was dropped by CBS Radio and met for four hours with the Rutgers women — he clearly wanted to be seen as having gone through a come-to-Jesus experience similar to his famous trips into rehab.

“If I had been there speaking to them and apologizing to them and offering them these excuses and still had my job,” Imus said, “they would’ve thought that I was there to try to save my job. That might have been true. But I was there to try to save my life. I’d already lost my job.

“They forgave me, they accepted my apology and they said they would never forget. And I said that I would never forget. And I analogized it to being an alcoholic and a drug addict, which I also am. If you get into recovery, as I am for some 20 years now, you have the opportunity to be a better person, to have a better life than you ordinarily would have. And that’s true in this situation.”

Only time will tell whether Imus intends to do more than change the window dressing at his radio program, which has always been popular among older, affluent white listeners, but proved resistant over the years to critics who said Imus had a double standard when it came to jokes about minorities.

But Monday, it was all about accentuating the positive and taking note of the I-Man’s need to repent. He runs a million-dollar ranch for sick children in New Mexico, about 40 percent of whom are minorities, he noted during the show. About comparing the Rutgers players to hookers, Imus admitted, “I had some ’splainin’ to do” to African-Americans at the Imus Ranch.

At times his more irritable side broke through, as it will no doubt in the days and months to come. He was especially scornful of the media hubbub that blew up, and then just as quickly died down, over race in America during the Rutgers contretemps.

“I know the national media was saying as soon as they could get me out of the room they were gonna have this national dialogue on race relations in the major media and what could or couldn’t be said on radio or television,” said Imus, adding, “I must have missed that.”

But he was notably gracious toward his loudest critic, the Rev. Al Sharpton, whose low-wattage radio program benefited hugely from having Imus on to apologize during the Rutgers storm.

“I don’t know what you think of Al Sharpton, but if I’m gonna pick somebody to be in a foxhole with I’m picking Al Sharpton before I pick a lot of them people,” Imus said.

And he had nothing but kindness for Harold Ford Jr., who was possibly the quietest of all Imus allies last April, despite the fact that Imus had eagerly boosted the African-American congressman’s Senate campaign in 2006 with numerous on-air appearances and mentions. The audience in New York loudly booed Ford’s name when Imus mentioned it Monday.

But he would have none of it, telling the crowd that there were “a lot worse people on this planet than Harold Ford.”

Still, Imus made clear that he was the same bitter old coot with the inexplicably hot wife and important political and literary friends who was shown the door eight months ago. Gracing his program on the first day were author Doris Kearns Goodwin and presidential contenders John McCain and Christopher Dodd.

“We signed for five years, and one reason I did is it’s going to take that long to get even with everybody,” he said, as his audience at Town Hall laughed and cheered.

Originally Published by the Kansas City Star