"Shock jock" Imus finally faces music

By Arthur Spiegelman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pioneering U.S. radio "shock jock" Don Imus has insulted pretty much everyone -- blacks, Jews, Arabs, homosexuals, women -- in a 30-year career in which he may have finally gone too far.

Often his apologies are insults.

Take the time in December 2004, when Imus referred to publishers of a book called "The Christmas Thief" as "thieving Jews." Later, he apologized, saying the phrase "thieving Jews" was "redundant."

The list goes on and on: he's called Arabs "towelheads" and he said of an African-American woman journalist then working for the New York Times, "Isn't the Times wonderful? It lets the cleaning woman cover the White House?"

Reporter Gwen Ifill's supposed offense was that she had declined to appear on his show or even return phone calls.

But now the ex-Marine, who helped popularize "shock jock" radio of provocative disk jockeys who cast aside taste boundaries, is up against the wall.

Imus' lucrative career is either at an end or hanging by a thread because he called a group of young black women basketball players "nappy-haired hos," a slur referring to hair texture and a slang term for "whores."

He has had to apologize and do it in a way that people believe him. Not something he is used to or particularly good at.