Can you believe that it’s almost been twenty years since President Bill Clinton was still in the White House?
As nearly everybody knows, President Clinton left in disgrace because he lied about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. And Hillary Clinton left former President Obama’s administration after her Benghazi scandal that shook the nation.
And one legendary radio host that defied both Clintons had this unfortunate tragic thing happen to him.
This past Sunday before ringing in the New Year, the world received some terrible news about the passing of no-nonsense shock jock radio personality John Donald Imus Jr. or better known as Don Imus.
Imus began his career in sunny Palmdale, California at KUTY and three years later he landed the morning broadcast position at WNBC in New York City. He was catapulted in the upper stratosphere in his profession in an unprecedented amount of time.
But Imus was fired in 1977, rehired in 1979 and then held onto his job until 1988 when the station folded. Of course, when it comes to having national syndication, nobody achieved more success than Howard Stern and carved the pathway for people like Imus who adopted the “Imus in the Morning” show in 1993.
Imus was the definition of anti-politically correct culture, which is how he coined the term “shock jock.” In 2007, Imus described women’s basketball team at Rutgers University as “nappy-headed hoes,” which consequently got him fired. His career spanned nearly 50 years so he must’ve been doing something right.
But it was in 1996 during the Correspondents Association dinner in Washington, D.C. that really had people laughing at former President Bill Clinton and former First Lady of the United States, Hillary Clinton’s expense.
Imus was the featured entertainer at the Correspondents dinner that year.
Though it was long before most people knew the name “Monica Lewinsky,” Clinton already had a reputation of being a womanizer – and Imus used a recent broadcast-booth appearance by Clinton at a Baltimore Orioles baseball game to make a joke at the president’s expense.
Imus said to the audience, “The president was at Camden Yards doing play-by-play on the radio. Bobby Bonilla hit a double; we all heard the president in his obvious excitement holler, ‘Go, baby!’
And then he quipped, “I bet that’s not the first time he’s said that.”
Those in attendance claim the Clintons were not amused by his joke.
At another point, Imus referred to the president as “a pot-smoking weasel.” While running for president in 1992, Clinton had famously admitted to smoking marijuana while he was a college student. But he was widely mocked for saying he “didn’t inhale.”
Other Imus jabs targeted Hillary Clinton’s legal troubles after that fateful night in Benghazi and then-Sen. Joe Biden’s hair transplant.
Imus may not have achieved fame quite like Howard Stern but he was successful for nearly five decades before he did his final show in 2018. In today’s world with all of the PC social justice warriors, Imus wouldn’t be welcomed with open arms, but at least we were blessed with his talents for as long as he did.