imus with pen in nose

(Hi, I'm Don Imus and I can't find my pen.  I've been looking for it all day.  Have you seen it?) 

You know, of all the people on TV who make me cringe and hold my two fingers up to the TV screen while shouting, "I am CRUSHING your head!!  CRUSHING your HEAD!!" (and they are legion), Don Imus is the one who seems to have the least reason to live.  I mean, seriously.  How did this guy manage to insert himself into the national dialogue?  What laurels is he coasting on?  If you know, pray enlighten me, cos otherwise I could swear that he is basically the journalistic equivalent of a case of crabs.  He must have sneaked in and stowed away while something else was going on, and by the time anyone noticed him, he'd proliferated and set up residence.

What a piece of work this guy is.  I find it totally baffling that he has a career at all.  What niche does he ostensibly occupy?  Is he Howard Stern for pinheads who are too cheap to shell out for satellite radio?  Is he Hannity's drunk, coked-up uncle?  A poorly programmed refugee from Westworld?

Let's start with the hat.

Anyone who works in radio knows that you don't go anywhere near a live mic without your headphones.  So, does Imus take off the hat, put on his phones and then put the hat back on?  How stupid is that?  Headphones and a cowboy hat?  But see, I have actually known some real cowboys in my life.  (Stop snickering, Teddy.  You too, *ilson!  Only two of those were in the biblical sense.)  Men who work with actual horses and cattle, who spend the bulk of the day working outside, and who have never had a personal assistant, an agent, or a makeup artist.  And do you know what the first thing those men do when they come inside is?

THEY TAKE OFF THEIR GODDAMN HAT!

It's not just a gesture of respect, although for the cowboys I've known (none of whom call themselves by the sobriquet "cowboy", by the way), politeness is one reason to doff your hat, but mainly because those hats are not for ornamentation.  They're to keep the sun, rain, and wind off your face and neck.  There's not a whole lot of sun, wind, and rain in a heavily air-conditioned Manhattan studio, I'm thinking.  Really.  It's like he's wearing snow shoes in Key West.

Personally, I think that when li'l Donny Imus was nine, his mother told him he couldn't wear his Roy Rogers costume to school, and that got our boy Don pretty steamed.  He's been out for revenge ever since.  But hey, you think the hat looks stupid, you should see him giddy-upping into the studio each morning astride his broomstick horsie and wearing a pair of cap pistols slung on his belt.  Uh, yeah.  Git along, Li'l Doggies, to the SOUNDSTAGE!  Yeeeeeee-HAW!!  It's showtime at the ol' Boom Mic Corral!

But aside from his ridiculous sartorial choices, there are LOTS of other reasons to hate Don Imus.  Not only do Republican politicos like Joe Lieberman stop by his show to get a slow-motion hand-job while they crack wise about torture, but some of the most sewer-redolent rhetoric of the past few years, particularly toward women, has emanated from Imus and his proxies.

To wit, on the subject of abducted REAL journalist Jill Carroll, upon her release:

Morning frat-jock Don Imus's producer Bernard McGuirk said that "She may be carrying Habib's baby," and that "She strikes me as the kind of woman who would wear one of those suicide vests. You know, walk into the — try and sneak into the Green Zone." [VIDEO].

Imus just kept saying "no no no no" and "I'm gonna come over there and beat you up" but he was giggling and clearly wasn't offended by the remarks, saying only that "the official position, of course, of the program is that thank God, uh, correspondent Jill Carroll of the Christian Science Monitor has been released…" (ThinkProgress)

Nice, huh?  Classy.  But how about this from Wikipedia?

Racism, misogyny and homophobia

Imus and his crew, Charles McCord, Bernard McGuirk and Chris Carlin are frequently accused of racism, misogyny and homophobia. Imus referred to sports columnist Bill Rhoden as a "New York Times quota hire" and PBS anchor Gwen Ifill as a "cleaning lady".[5] Imus has repeatedly referred to Arabs as "ragheads."[6]

I do believe that it is worth pointing out here that Imus himself almost never has the stones to say the most egregious bullshit.  He always gets one of his surrogates to say it while he sits there and chuckles and puts up a tiny, insignificant, symbolic protest, "Oh-ho-hooo, Bernard!  That's going too far!"  But then he has the same bunch of dipshits on the next day, of course, to spew more swill.

Why is this shit allowed to go out over the air?  Why hasn't someone beaten him to death with one of his fake cactus set props and fed his corpse through a wood-chipper?  Can I?  Pretty please?

You can peruse a massive gallery of Imus's gaffes over at Media Matters, but be warned.  It won't be good for your blood pressure.  Imus and his sycophantic toadies seem to be in a headlong race to the bottom rung of the political discourse.  No remark is too pissy, petty, bitchy, tawdry, or small to get edited off of "Imus in the Morning".  No wonder he supports Joe Lieberman.  They're two peas in an egomanical, arrogant, supercilious little pod and heartily deserve each other's company.

The only question for me is how they can fit Joe's ego in the same studio with Don's AND the giant hats.  Maybe that's why they say such stupid shit, you know?  Lack of oxygen in that tight little space.

Well, hopefully, when the revolution comes, we'll finally rid ourselves of "Imus in the Morning", even if we have to shave our body hair and boil all of our clothes and bedding to do it.  It would be a real hassle, but if you ask me, totally worth the trouble.  

Thank you and good night.