Imus and Frank Luntz Talk About Health Care, Imus, Face Lifts, and Imus

As Frank Luntz, the renowned pollster and newly-minted I-Fave, waxed poetic about watching Tom Brokaw on television as the Berlin Wall came down 20 years ago, Imus saw an opportunity to bring the conversation back to himself.

"We've been friends for 25 years," he said of himself and Brokaw. "We had a rough period, but we made up, right? When I got cancer he sent me a nice note and I figured, the hell with it. He's a politically correct pansy, but he's a good person."

Then, because Imus asked, Luntz said he attended the University of Pennsylvania and then Oxford, where a 24-hour long speech at the student union about President Reagen and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher pretty much killed Luntz's social life.

"Let me talk about me for a second," said Imus, who shared his own story of staying up for hours straight (62, to be exact) during a radiothon in Cleveland to raise money for a drug abuse center. How did he do it? By abusing drugs.

Having traded these delightful anecdotes, Luntz said he spent 12 hours on Saturday watching the health care debate on television because, in his own words, he has no life.

"The public sees this, and they look at 1,900 pages...It's all legalese nobody can understand," he said. "They look at this and they say, 'What are the consequences? What is the impact? I know what they're promising me, but what am I actually going to get?'"

Every doctor Luntz talks to is against health care reform, and yet the American Medical Association has endorsed it. "Are they listening to their own people?" he wondered.

Members of the House of Representatives certainly did not listen to their own people, because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi forced a vote before they had the chance. "This is not the time for politics, and it's not the time to ignore your constituents," Luntz said.

Appearing deep in thought, Imus said, "Do you think Nancy Pelosi thinks she's hot?"

Luntz called Pelosi "proof that you get one shot at a facelift, and if it doesn't work the first time, let it go." He thinks Pelosi needs to take the health care bill more seriously because it concerns "issues of life and death," the sort of thing Imus is presently facing.

"I don't want to start thinking about my own mortality when I'm trying to interview you!" Imus said. "Now you've got me thinking about dying."

But before he keels over, Imus has some grudges to avenge, and he plans to use his impressive television ratings at Fox Business Network to do so.

"As soon as we get on Cablevision, it's over for a bunch of people who I want to get even with," he said. "And then I don't care if I die."

-Julie Kanfer