DJ Don Imus, made and betrayed by his mouth, dead at 79
NEW YORK >> Radio personality Don Imus, whose career was made and then undone by his acid tongue during a decades-long rise to stardom and an abrupt public plunge after a nationally broadcast racial slur, has died. He was 79.
Imus died Friday morning at Baylor Scott and White Medical Center in College Station, Texas, after being hospitalized since Christmas Eve, according to a statement issued by his family. Deirdre, his wife of 25 years, and his son Wyatt, 21, were at his side, with his son Zachary Don Cates returning from military service overseas.
He died of complications from lung disease.
Imus survived drug and alcohol woes, a raunchy appearance before President Clinton and several firings during his long career behind the microphone. But he was vilified and eventually fired after describing a women’s college basketball team as “nappy headed hos.”
His April 2007 racist and misogynist crack about the mostly black Rutgers squad, an oft-replayed 10-second snippet, crossed a line that Imus had long straddled as his irascible rants catapulted him to prominence. The remark was heard coast to coast on 60 radio stations and on a simulcast aired each morning on MSNBC.
At the time, his “Imus in the Morning” show was home to presidential hopefuls, political pundits and his favorite musicians, a must-listen in the media and political corridors of New York and Washington. Ten years earlier, Time magazine had named him one of the 25 most influential Americans. But the remark made him an immediate pariah and he was dropped by CBS Radio and MSNBC.
Imus apologized repeatedly, calling his remark “completely inappropriate ... thoughtless and stupid,” and met with the team to hear how his comment hurt them. Although he returned to radio, and the Fox Business Network simulcast his show for a number of years, he never approached the same influence before retiring in 2018.
The incident “did change my feelings about making fun of some people who didn’t deserve to be made fun of and didn’t have a mechanism to defend themselves,” Imus told CBS News upon his retirement.
Imus’ unsparing on-air persona was tempered by his off-air philanthropy, raising more than $40 million for groups including the CJ Foundation for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. He ran a New Mexico ranch for dying children, and often used his radio show to solicit guests for donations.
A pediatric medical center bearing Imus’ name was opened at the Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey.
Joe Scarborough, who replaced Imus in MSNBC’s morning lineup, tweeted that “Morning Joe” owed its format to Imus.
“No one else could have gotten away with that much talk on cable news,” Scarborough wrote. “Thanks for everything, Don, and Godspeed.”