Paying the Price

By BOB HERBERT

You knew something was up early in the day. As soon as I told executives at MSNBC that I was going to write about the “60 Minutes” piece, which was already in pretty wide circulation, they began acting very weird. We’ll get back to you, they said.

In a “60 Minutes” interview with Don Imus broadcast in July 1998, Mike Wallace said of the “Imus in the Morning” program, “It’s dirty and sometimes racist.”

Mr. Imus then said: “Give me an example. Give me one example of one racist incident.” To which Mr. Wallace replied, “You told Tom Anderson, the producer, in your car, coming home, that Bernard McGuirk is there to do nigger jokes.”

Mr. Imus said, “Well, I’ve nev — I never use that word.”

Mr. Wallace then turned to Mr. Anderson, his producer. “Tom,” he said.

“I’m right here,” said Mr. Anderson.

Mr. Imus then said to Mr. Anderson, “Did I use that word?”

Mr. Anderson said, “I recall you using that word.”

“Oh, O.K.,” said Mr. Imus. “Well, then I used that word. But I mean — of course, that was an off-the-record conversation. But ——”

“The hell it was,” said Mr. Wallace.

The transcript was pure poison. A source very close to Don Imus told me last night, “They did not want to wait for your piece to come out.”

http://wealthyfrenchman.blogspot.com/2007/04/paying-price.html

usually its, "oh, ok, yes, we will edit that out"

Thanks for posting it.

Don

but hadn't seen it.

I had only been able to read an excerpt previously due to the original column being a NYT select item. I fervently hope Mr. Hebert's closing comments holds true:

"It appears that on this issue the general public, and the women at Mr. Imus’s former network, are far ahead of the establishment figures, the politicians and the media biggies, who were always so anxious to appear on the show and to defend Mr. Imus.

That is a very good sign."

C&L or Thinkprogress has the video

Al said that part of the premise of Imus's show was to have a "racist sidekick". Al didn't understand why that would be or why anyone would think it was funny.

http://imgsrv.wfan.com/image/wfan/UserFiles/Image/Bio%20Head%20Shots/Regular/Bernard%