From last night’s Special Report with Brit Hume:
—On Don Imus’s Firing—
FRED BARNES: [F]or years and years Imus was on saying these offensive things . . . And I mean, this was his style, he was a shock jock. And there were a lot of complaints, but nothing happened. Now this time, what’s the difference?
Advertisers bailed and so the show’s off NBC and off CBS . . . And I don’t blame them. I don’t blame the networks if the advertisers bail, they’re not going to put the shows on and lose money on it — but you ought to admit it.
MORT KONDRACKE: He calls the New York Knicks “chest thumping pimps.” He calls — he’s used a lot of anti-Jewish slurs, he called our colleague, Howard Kurtz, a “boner nosed, beanie-wearing Jew-boy.”
Now, this has been going on for years and years and years. Clarence Page was on there one day and made him pledge — and he started make jokes about it, that he wouldn’t call black athletes “monkeys” any more, you know, like that.
So, the wonder is that he’s lasted this long and . . . I say good riddance. The problem is that there’s Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio. Sirius gave Howard Stern, that potty-mouth, $200 million. I’m afraid that Imus will walk to the bank.
JUAN WILLIAMS: But, my sense of what you have here is was that the market spoke. [Y]ou know it’s interesting, you look at the guy who runs — Ken Chenault, who runs American Express, they pulled their ads, Ken Chenault is black. I think there are a lot of people, in American corporate positions, wouldn’t have been there a generation ago, who now have some say, have voice over people like Imus. And I think Imus just didn’t anticipate that.