Imus Puts Chip Reid in a Number of Awkward Positions

Instead of talking to CBS News’s White House Correspondent Chip Reid about the major news stories of the day, like the Wikileaks scandal or the censure of Rep. Charles Rangel, Imus had a better idea.
 
“Wanna pick the football games?” he asked his guest, a conflicted Philadelphia Eagles fan/intense dog-lover. 
 
Reluctantly, Reid provided his picks: the Giants over the Redskins; the Vikings over the Bills; the Colts over the Cowboys; and the Patriots over the Jets. “I just think Brady’s unbelievable,” he said.
 
Having accomplished, well, nothing, Imus moved on and allowed Reid to do what he does best: the newsy stuff. On Wikileaks, he said, “It is the gift that keeps on giving.” The real “fun” story, he thinks, will be when somebody finally catches up with Julian Assange, the man behind the leaks, against whom charges were filed earlier this week.
 
As for how the leaks, which divulged hundreds of thousands of cables containing classified information, will affect American foreign policy going forward, the reaction has been mixed. “You have some members of the administration saying that this is just devastating for foreign policy, and then you have Hillary Clinton saying, ‘Well, it’s not going to hurt our foreign policy,’” Reid said. “So they don’t really know how to characterize it, or what to do with it.”
 
The documents make the U.S. look good at times, less so at others.  Kind of like how the execs at CBS News hope that firing the entire staff of The Early Show will make them eventually look good.
 
Reid was mum on the subject, telling Imus only that ousted weather guy Dave Price is a comedian of sorts. As such, Imus wondered, “Where’s he going to be funny now?”
 
Someone who is definitely not laughing much these days, at Dave Price or anybody else, is Rep. Charles Rangel, whose censure was ensured yesterday with an overwhelming vote in the House. Though certain members of Congress voted against it, Reid agreed with Bernard’s earlier point that the entire charade was as political as any other. 
 
“They are absolutely going to have to defend themselves down the road if they vote in his favor,” Reid said. “So people with safe seats feel comfortable sticking with him, and he has a lot of good friends up there, people who just like him because they’ve been hanging around him all these years, and he is a war veteran.”
 
It’s also necessary to consider Rangel’s alleged crimes: a number of ethics violations ranging from not paying taxes on real estate in the Caribbean, to holding onto four rent-stabilized apartments for his own use. “It’s not as though he pulled out a knife and stabbed somebody,” Reid said. “But man, just so steadily over so many years did things that he just shouldn’t have been doing.”
 
The Senate will debate whether to repeal the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell rule next week, and Imus wondered whether Senator John McCain was “dragging his feet” on the issue because he, in fact, was gay.
 
“I’m not going to go there, Don,” Reid said, using the tone Deirdre Imus often uses with her husband when “Don” is actually a substitute for “you A-hole.”
 
-Julie Kanfer