RIP Don Imus

Loopy.
'I said everything I needed to say’ — Don Imus, who worked nearly 50 years without a net, changed everything in radio

 

Yeah, Lupica's still a dick.

 

Loved Imus in the Morning from the Nineties to the Aughts. For about 5 years, it was THE dominant radio broadcast in the country. Like him or not, Don Imus was a great interviewer.

Like every other human, he had flaws and demons. People need to focus on his flaws and his strengths as they look back on his life and his career.

Rest in peace, good sir.

 

Lup was right.
Imus didn't care who it was.
He'd blast anybody.
I don't know how many times he hung up on his guests on the phone.
It could have been the content was no good. He wasn't feeling good, or it could have been because he was the grouchiest son of a bitch in the world at that time.....he didn't want to put up with it....therefore he didn't have to.

 

His racist comments are also a matter of public record. Let's not sugarcoat this guy. He got rich and famous by getting away with saying shit on the radio his audience of white males knew they could never say without getting a punch in the mouth. Was he talented and funny? Oh my yes. He was also a prick.

 

Exactly — classic punch the others guy who let people taking the LIRR feel better about their miserable lives.

 

I have always thought that Don Imus is a classic example of the New York based national media assuming a local star has a lot of national popularity. He certainly was a a dominant figure in New York radio. But while his show was syndicated I don't think it was nearly as popular nationally as Howard Stern. I don't think his ratings outside of New York City were particularly high.

I did not listen to it very much when the show was on an AM station in Washington because I found it generally very boring. Imus was smart and a good interviewer and I thought his comedy pieces could be good. But much of the show was Imus going on and on about how successful he was. I found the narcissism to be very boring.

 

I distinctly remember Imus saying he would rather tongue-kiss Sharpton than have to do something else. Must have been pretty horrific.

The bit when he accused Howie Carr's wife of performing oral sex on Riddick Bowe ... again ... was hilarious. That one went to court.

 

First time I remember the "shock jock" label applied was to The Greaseman at WAPE in Jacksonville in the late '70s. (And to know the dude behind the voice was a skinny white guy made the whole act even more of an inside radio joke.)

Imus' time in Stockton and Sacramento was so short, I never remember anyone in school mentioning the 1,200 hamburgers story or any weirdness associated with him. Radio was still very regional, and the idea of someone doing something raunchy in New York never reached the hinterlands.

Either because of the nature of the industry or the limitations of the day, no one in San Francisco went to the extremes that Imus was able to pull off on the other coast during that era. The morning comedy bits were way tamer on KFRC, KYA, KNBR and KSFO, despite the fact that SF was a pretty dysfunctional place between the Summer of Love, the Zodiac killer, Patty Hearst and the SLA, the George Moscone-Harvey Milk assassinations and Jim Jones/Guyana.

FCC vs. Pacifica Radio was a huge Supreme Court ruling, but that dealt with WBAI and the George Carlin recording. In the Bay Area, nobody outside of Berkeley actually listened to KPFA.

 

As an elementary school and Jr High kid, I woke up to Imus during his first incarnation in NY. He was great. When he was on in the 90’s he was very funny and still irreverent and liberal. But when he started making serious money and then got married again the show was all Imus all the time and he sucked. He became the pompous asshole he used to poke fun and he lacked that self awareness. There’s also a reason his daughters from his first marriage were never mentioned or seen with him.
He changed radio. Without Imus, there’d be no Stern. He made televised radio a thing.

He went from mocking pretense to becoming the poster boy for pretension.

 

True, but so was Stern (and I liked Stern). My 14-year-old self thought it was hilarious when Daniel Carver's messages would be played. "Wake up, white people!" And there were semi-regular uses of the N-word in parodies.

You could draw a line, slightly warped of course, from there to here.