EDITOR'S NOTE:
This is a corrected version of the original item. Imus's guest was Mike Barnicle. The original item, displayed briefly, incorrectly identified Imus's guest as Chris Matthews. My apologies to Chris Matthews and our readers.
H/t to reader PJG.
Does it get any more foul than this? During the 8 AM ET hour of Don Imus's show this morning he and Mike Barnicle fantasized about how various Republicans would react to being hung on the gallows.
Note: this item was prepared from the closed-caption transcript. It will be reviewed and corrected as appropriate in the course of the morning. Video: Real (3MB) or Windows (3.5MB) Plus MP3 (555KB)
UPDATE 11:35am: Transcript has now been checked against the tape and corrected in a few spots.
Imus: "I was – I tried to imagine how various members of the current administration would behave were they subjected to the gallows as Saddam Hussein was. Um, and I can see Rumsfeld –"
Barnicle: “He wouldn't take it. No blindfold for Rumsfeld.”
Imus: "That's what I was thinking, you know. ‘F-you.' You know, you go to the gallows with the noose you want, not the noose you– or the noose you have, not the noose you want–"
Barnicle: "That's exactly right."
Imus: "Or Whatever. But Cheney–"
Barnicle: "Just as that trap door opens, he'd drop an f-bomb to all of them."
Imus: "How about Cheney?"
Barnicle: “I don't think Cheney would make it up the steps.”
Imus: "Now this is a guy who would, this is a guy – he'd wet his pants and he'd whine and start
crying."
Barnicle: "Well He would order as a last meal 400 pounds of bacon."
Imus: "Yeah, ‘cause this is a guy got six deferments just to get out of Vietnam because he had, what was that phrase he used – he had some other more important issues to deal with. One of ’em, the last one, was getting his wife pregnant just to keep from having to deal with this."
Barnicle: "Oh God."
Imus: "Uh, who else? Wolfowitz, he'd cry."
Barnicle: "Oh yeah, he'd be shot in the back running away."
Imus: "Yeah, exactly. Yeah, or some of the other key players."
Barnicle: "Richard Perle."
Imus: "Oh, he'd, oh God, he'd, he would soil himself. So–"
Barnicle: "Can't you see him being dragged up by his cap?"
Imus: "Oh yeah."
Barnicle: "Clinging, splinters in his fingernails."
Imus: “A combover of his hanging all down the side of his head.”
In one of the oddest transitions Imus then asks: "Everybody well in your family, your kids, wife, all that?
Barnicle replies: “You know, thank God, everybody is, and I hope everybody is in your household and everyone else's household, because the health of your family, everything else pales in comparison to that. So you get up in the morning and draw a breath, Don, you're ahead on the day.”
Such wonderful family values, these guys.
UPDATE 01-04: An unchastened Imus was back at it this morning. With MSNBC analyst Craig Crawford as guest, Imus again indulged his fantasies of Republicans on the gallows. Crawford got into the spirt of the discussion. When Imus alluded to some of the officials being shot as they ran away, Crawford chimed in: "at least we know Cheney would shoot back."
Finkelstein was in Iraq in November. Contact him at mark@gunhill.net
