We're going back in time.....
back......
back.......
to Saturday, March 23, 1996. Don Imus spoke at the Radio-Television Correspondents Dinner on Thursday, March 21, 1996:
NYTimes:
NATIONAL DESK
Unexpectedly, the Clintons Are Skewered at a Dinner
By LAWRIE MIFFLIN (NYT)
Published: March 23, 1996
When the Radio-Television Correspondents Association invited Don Imus, the WFAN radio morning man in New York, to be the after-dinner speaker at its annual gala on Thursday night in Washington, members knew how uninhibited his barbs could be. And how well informed; Mr. Imus is as well known for being obsessed with politics as for being a so-called shock jock.
But the correspondents apparently got more than they bargained for when Mr. Imus made fun of President Clinton's supposed extramarital affairs and Hillary Clinton's legal problems -- with both the President and the First Lady sitting on the dais as he spoke.
The remarks were deemed so insulting that the association sent a letter of apology to the Clintons yesterday, and Michael D. McCurry, the President's press secretary, asked C-Span, the cable network that routinely rebroadcasts Washington events, to refrain from retransmitting this one.
At C-Span, the vice president for programming, Terry Murphy, said the dinner speech would be rebroadcast, tonight at 8, as scheduled. Then, Mr. Murphy -- who is also the chairman of the correspondents association -- signed the letter apologizing to the Clintons.
At his daily news briefing yesterday, Mr. McCurry said he had not discussed Mr. Imus's remarks with President or Mrs. Clinton, and had acted on his own in calling C-Span.
"I just thought it was so bad," Mr. McCurry said, "that they ought to just think about it before they automatically re-aired it."
About 3,000 people in the Washington Hilton heard Mr. Imus, along with a live C-Span audience. Not many more than that would have been expected to hear him on C-Span tonight, if not for Mr. McCurry's calling attention to the rebroadcast. The cable network, the home of endless Congressional hearings, political speeches and policy discussions, does not typically attract a large crowd on Saturday nights.
Mr. Imus's program -- 660 on the AM dial in New York -- is syndicated to radio stations around the country, and Mr. Clinton and many other politicians have been on the program.
On Thursday night, Mr. Imus began by shuffling some papers in front of him, saying that they did not appear to be his notes. He wondered where they had come from, and said that they did not look like papers someone would leave lying around.
He then looked directly at Mrs. Clinton, making an obvious connection to an aide's finding of papers important to the Whitewater investigation "lying around" in a room at the White House. Later, Mr. Imus jokingly referred to Mrs. Clinton's having been "indicted."
He also made insulting references to Speaker Newt Gingrich's lesbian half sister, Senator Bob Kerrey's "wooden leg," and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s hair transplant, and allusions to the marital problems of several television people in the room.
"His satire was in many ways brilliant," said a television correspondent who was there but who insisted on anonymity, "but it was deeply and personally cutting. The President, the First Lady and Speaker Gingrich were clearly not amused; you could see by their faces. But it was Imus to the hilt; he was right on his game."
Asked whether the association had been aware of how tasteless Mr. Imus's "game" could be, Kenan Block, the outgoing president, who selected Mr. Imus, said he and Mr. Imus had talked several times beforehand about what was appropriate for this audience.
"He said, 'I can't tell womanizing jokes about the President with his wife sitting right there,' and 'Don't worry, I'm not going to embarrass myself,' " said Mr. Block, a producer for "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" on PBS.
"I felt he knew what the limits were," Mr. Block said. "We took a risk, and unfortunately it didn't turn out the way we hoped. I can't pass the buck. It was my fault."
Mr. Imus, who is on vacation, was unavailable for comment yesterday.
Yet Stephen Colbert is ignored. And they say we have a liberal media. Hah!
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