Advertisers Pull Out of Imus Show

In March, Imus's executive producer and longtime sidekick Bernard McGuirk said that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was "trying to sound black in front of a black audience" during a recent speech on civil rights in Selma, Ala. McGuirk added that Clinton "will have cornrows and gold teeth before this fight with Obama is over."

In a November broadcast, Imus referred to the "Jewish management" of CBS Radio as "money-grubbing bastards," according to the Forward, a Jewish daily newspaper.

Imus has endured barbs from critics in the past. But this time, Imus may have picked the wrong victims at the wrong time.

The Rutgers slur was directed against blameless and generally unknown young women who had just played for a national championship. The story was picked up by media outlets facing the news vacuum of a long holiday weekend. Finally, the evidence was preserved by video-sharing Web sites.

"Chatter on the Web makes outrage spread father, faster and hotter than ever before," said Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, who appeared on Imus's show several times during the 1990s.

In May 2000, Imus was under attack from people who called his show racist and took out an ad in the New York Times criticizing him. As that controversy crested, Page went on Imus's show and asked half-jokingly: "Am I your last black friend in America?"

During that appearance -- Page's last on the show -- the columnist asked Imus to swear off racially and otherwise offensive humor.

"I, Don Imus, do solemnly swear that I will promise to cease all simian references to black athletes," Imus said. Further, Page urged Imus to swear off "homophobic epithets . . . xenophobia . . . no more mocking Indians as Gunga Din," and so forth. Both Imus and Page chuckled through much of the pledge.

"I am very disappointed about him going off the wagon," Page said yesterday. He said Imus's suspension is merited, "but he's still getting special treatment because he's worth a lot of money to these companies," meaning CBS Radio and NBC Universal, which owns MSNBC.

"It's easy for me to say I won't be on his show again -- I haven't been asked back," Page said. "But I couldn't look myself in the mirror if I went on again."

Imus's pledge in 2000, which was quickly broken, was written by Brooklyn author Philip Nobile, a longtime critic of the radio host. The shock jock's suspension and excoriation are sweet vindication of a decade-long quest -- almost: "Only if he's fired," Nobile said yesterday.

"The fact is, Imus is a skinhead in elite-media dress," said Nobile, who once was a guest on the Imus show. "It is the shame of elite journalists and politicians to enable him to thrive on his bigotry shtick."

Despite its incendiary content, Imus's daily program defies simple categorization. Imus and a crew of sidekicks banter about news, politics, sports and popular culture, with the often cranky host often veering off into idiosyncratic comments and diatribes.

It is also a platform for an array of Imus's philanthropic causes, from his cattle ranch and camp for children with cancer to his advocacy of autism research. The show once featured more song parodies and sketches -- an enduring Imus character was a preacher named Billy Sol Hargis -- but these have been downplayed in recent years in favor of discussion and interviews with prominent guests.

The range of Imus's racial commentary is also more complicated than the current controversy would suggest. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, he said the government's sluggish response reflected an indifference to New Orleans's poor and black residents. When former congressman Harold Ford Jr., who is black, lost his bid for the Senate last fall, Imus blamed racial prejudice. And as Imus himself has noted, he has hosted countless minority children at his cattle ranch and camp in New Mexico.

Although Imus has hosted some of Washington's most famous figures on his show, ratings suggest that he's actually a marginal figure among viewers and listeners in the region. But Imus's show, which last year generated as much as $20 million in total revenue for flagship station WFAN in New York, is low-cost, high-revenue programming for MSNBC.

Imus is scheduled to return from his suspension April 30 -- just in time for the spring TV ratings sweeps in May.

Staff writers Chris Cillizza and Lisa de Moraes contributed to this report.