With money and success often comes a false sense of entitlement, a notion that we can say things, and that those things may not come back to haunt us. Imus knew all too well the power he wielded from his microphone: Presidential aspirants wanted to come before him to be anointed, journalists sought his company to elevate their reputations. Imus dispensed validity, but he also took the powerful down a notch, pointing out their foibles and hypocrisies, the very things that make them human and keep them so. His efforts on behalf of children with cancer and SIDS and autism are amply recorded, but what always made him so engaging—his glib, careless confidence in the moral authority of his own irreverence—was his undoing.

Near the end of the broadcast last Wednesday, Imus played a song by Lucinda Williams, a sweet throwback to his days as a disc jockey, when his life was a lot simpler. Before playing the song, he asked, in a plaintive voice, “Where are you, baby?” As the words to “Are You Alright?” filled the studio at MSNBC, Don put on his sunglasses and sat there, taking in the song before taking his leave.

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• Archive: “Intelligencer”
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