"I thought you were going to stop," the bespectacled newsman calmly intoned. "I thought you had ONE more question to ask Sam Tannenhause, and then you were going to DROP Whittaker Chambers."
"I did! I have," the saddlebagged face under the cowboy hat intoned.
"Clearly you haven't," shot back the newsman, "because you're still waving the damn BOOKS around." He's yelling now. "Don't you understand? You have driven us all CRAZY with this CRAP! THEY'RE DEAD! WHITTAKER CHAMBERS IS DEAD! ALGER HISS IS DEAD! RICHARD NIXON IS DEAD! I WISH I WERE DEAD!"
Making my way into work one morning in the mid 90s, as I listened to the usually subdued, urbane Charles McCord completely lose his mind on live radio, I needed to pull off to the side until I could stop laughing, because Don Imus, the face under the hat, had been driving ME crazy for weeks with his tales of the Woodstock typewriter and the Alger Hiss tapes, etc. With the tenacity of a dried-out drunk, or a dog that refuses to give up on the bone that had stopped yielding meat days ago, he had gone on forever.
What I didn't see until later, on YouTube, where this clip keeps the Imus legacy alive, was Imus silently goading on McCord ... revving him up, much as a conductor would lightly cue the woodwind section of a symphony orchestra. The genius of the Imus in the Morning program was in how spontaneous and combustible it appeared to be, yet how tightly wound and orchestrated it was in reality.
When the airplanes hit the twin towers in New York city on September 11, 2001, Imus' reserve sports guy Warner Wolf, who lived across the street, provided a somber play-by-play, which eventually disintegrated into choking disbelief at what he was describing. Warner's emotional color commentary was a contrast to the somber, neutral tones of Charles, as he read the news as each tower crumbled according to the AP.
I've been reading a lot of obituaries about Imus since he passed away the day after Christmas. There have been the obligatory mentions of the Rutgers volleyball controversy that got him fired, the time he ordered 1200 hamburgers from a local McDonald's, his ribald performance at Clinton's White House Correspondent's dinner, etc. A few have seen themselves clear to highlight the philanthropic aspects of Mr. Imus ... his cattle ranch for kids with cancer, his support of the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, and other, mostly anonymous charitable donations. But not one of them really highlighted the education he gave us ... or at least me ... in the right way to do radio.
Much as Lieutenant Columbo would disguise himself as a shambling incompetent, only to trap his prey under an unrelenting barrage of cogent questions when they were least expected, Imus, in his guise as pirate radio, would begin an interview with the Speaker of the House by complaining that he didn't feel good, and what was with that shirt he had seen him wearing on Larry King last night. Within three or four minutes, though, Imus would frequently get his guest to be saying things he'd never tell King, Tim Russert, Dan Rather, or anyone else in the mainstream. Imus was fair. While he frequently disagreed with Sean Hannity and Paul Begala, he was still loyal to them, and treated them with equal amounts of disdain when he'd catch them in mid-spin. And no host since has offered intelligent regular segments that present both sides. James Carville AND Mary Matalin would appear with the same regularity, and I'd learn from educated people from the other side who were able to present their arguments intelligently and coherently. Now we have Facebook. Sigh.
One of my primary responsibilities here is in producing informational programming on the weekends, and a trick of the trade that I've provided to each of my hosts is one that I got from Imus. You'll find that, when you're listening to something I've produced, the host will pause every five minutes to re-establish the name of the program, his name and the name of his guest. Imus would do this like clockwork, for folks who would be turning in just past the half hour, or midway through the conversation. While Imus in the Morning SOUNDED like remedial class, it really was a master class in interviewing technique and content.
Imus' radio idol was Jack Benny, and like Jack, Imus loved to make himself the punchline. Sure, he'd call Charles "four-eyes," and producer Bernard McGuirk a "bald-headed stooge." But nothing would make him laugh harder than when McGuirk, in his guise of Cardinal O'Connor, would pray for his boss' demise on nationwide radio. In addition to McGuirk, and dangerously funny engineer Lou Rufino, Imus employed comedians such as Larry Kenney, who would provide commentary by such dead luminaries as Nixon and General Patton, and disturbingly contemporary renditions of an over-expressive Wilford Brimley doing Thanksgiving Day Quaker Oats commercials that defy description here. Rob Bartlett was another major talent, who specialized in doing Rush Limbaugh, burned-out Beach Boy Brian Wilson and Carl from "Sling Blade." My favorite Imus put-down is also immortalized on YouTube, when Charles begs him to eat some meat. "You look like an emaciated fly rod with a cowboy hat."
I have a couple of hundred of old Imus shows on my hard drive to listen to on occasion when I miss the old cowboy. A true irony was always his attitude to the inevitable sobbing of a retiring athlete during a sports report. "Man up, sissy boy," he'd mutter. "You can't be doing that, can you? You gotta grow a pair!" Yet it was Imus who was openly weeping when he signed off for good a couple of years ago. "For fifty years, I've done this show for just one person. Just one. It was you." His voice cracked. "I don't know who you are. I don't know if you're black or white. I don't know if you're male or female. I just know that you were there for me when I needed to talk about stuff. People have been asking me if I'll miss doing this. Hell, no." Another sob. "But I'm going to miss you!"
We're going to miss you too, cowboy!
