Imus' wife postpones book tour

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The fallout from radio and television host Don Imus' racist and sexist comments about a women's college basketball team has claimed another casualty -- his wife Deirdre's new book tour.

Deirdre Imus, an environmental activist, was due this week to appear on various television shows and go on a tour to promote her book, "Green This! Volume 1: Greening Your Cleaning," which is the first in a series of books she is writing on green living.

But her book promotion fell victim to the controversy over her husband who was abandoned by major advertisers and dumped from cable television by MSNBC after last week calling the mostly black Rutgers University basketball team "nappy-headed hos" after they lost a national championship game.

CBS Corp unit CBS Radio has suspended Imus for two weeks while black leaders and others press the radio station to fire him.

Simon & Schuster, also a CBS unit and the publisher of Deirdre Imus' book, said on Thursday that her book tour promotion had been postponed.

"Because of the enormous pressure that Deirdre and her family are under, family must be their first priority at this time," Simon & Schuster spokeswoman Kristan Fletcher said.

"One hundred percent of the author profits from 'Green This!' will benefit the Imus Cattle Ranch for Kids with Cancer, and it is our hope that someday Deirdre will be able to continue raising money for that charity through her book promotion," she said.

Deirdre and Don Imus founded the Imus Ranch, which is a working 4,000-acre cattle ranch in northern New Mexico which provides the American cowboy experience to children suffering from cancer and various blood diseases as well as to siblings of the victims of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

She has one previous book to her name, "The Imus Ranch: Cooking for Kids and Cowboys."

She is also the founder and president of the not-for-profit Deirdre Imus Environmental Center for Pediatric Oncology, part of Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, that aims to identify and prevent exposures to environmental factors that can cause health problems, especially pediatric cancer.