The I Man

Don Imus has done it again. He’s put his foot so far into his mouth that it’s starting to come out of his ass. “Nappy headed ho’s?” Don, you’re an idiot.

I remember listening to “Imus in the Morning” during the early 70’s on WNBC out of New York City. At the time I was living in New Jersey and caught his program on my way to work each morning. He may have been addicted to drugs and alcohol at the time, but the sumbitch WAS funny. That seems to have changed with his sobriety.

While watching his interview on The Today Show yesterday, one of his “slips of the tongue” caught my attention. I don’t know how many others noticed it or if they read into it the same significance that I did.

Matt Lauer was interviewing both Imus and the Reverend Al Sharpton at the time. Following one of Sharpton’s comments, Imus responded with, “Well, Reverend Hargus – I mean Sharpton…..” Anyone who had listened to the old Imus would have caught that immediately.

Imus had recurring characters on his old radio program and one of them was the Reverend Billy Saul Hargus, “Broadcasting to you from the Gold Buckle of the Bible Belt, Del Rio Texas.” It was a rip on radio evangelists, and regularly tore them all new assholes.

The lead-in for the skit was musical and performed by a black, female gospel choir. To the best of my recollection, and remember this was 35 years ago, the choir sang:

“I don’t care if it rains or freezes,
Long as I got my plastic Jesus,
Ridin’ on the dashboard of my car.
I can do a hundred miles an hour,
Long as I got the almighty power,
Sittin’ up there beside my fuzzy dice.”

So, was Imus’s miscue an actual slip of the tongue or one of those Freudian types, meant to stick it to the Reverend Al? We may never know, but I’d be willing to bet on the latter.

Later,

obi