Imus Stands His Ground With Chris Wallace...Or Does He?

To serve as an entrée, Imus asked Chris Wallace, the host of Fox News Sunday and an esteemed political observer, what he thought about President Obama’s speech last night at a memorial service for the victims of last weekend’s shootings in Tucson, Arizona.
 
Immediately snippy (we’d later learn why), Wallace replied, “Well, I was actually on the Fox News Channel commenting on the President’s speech. I would have thought you would have noticed.”
 
Before delving into his analysis, Wallace wondered what Imus had already said on the air about the event, lest he unnecessarily repeat anything. But Imus, of course, interpreted this statement as proof that Wallace had been listening to a different morning show prior to appearing on this one.
 
Insisting he had been “doing other things,” and not tuning in elsewhere, Wallace then asked Imus, “Are you going to have my wife Lorraine and me on your morning show on Tuesday?”
 
Told, emphatically, “Not if you go on another morning show first,” Wallace became indignant, claiming it should not, and does not, matter who goes on which show when. “I have people who go on Meet the Press, and This Week,” he said, making it all about himself, a classic I-Man move. “And my feeling is…unless they’ve been on my show, and answered my questions, they haven’t really been interviewed.”
 
Figuring Imus lacked that same self-confidence, Wallace pointed out that he and his wife had offered to do Imus’s show first, via satellite from Washington, DC, three whole days before their scheduled appearance on Fox and Friends, to promote Lorraine's book Mr. Sunday's Soups.
 
“Fiends,” Imus corrected his guest, who wouldn’t let up, promising Lorraine would make Imus some gazpacho, his favorite, or the appropriately entitled, “family wellness soup.”
 
Then Imus dropped the F-bomb, a sign of growing frustration, and begged Wallace to move on to a discussion of the President’s remarks.
 
Noting that the event felt “more like a pep rally than a memorial service,” Wallace nevertheless praised Obama for his fine performance. “Obviously the emotional high point was when he talked about the fact that Gabby—Gabrielle Giffords—had opened her eyes for the first time,” Wallace said, referring to the Congresswoman who was shot in the head on Saturday. “If that didn’t get you, I don’t know what could, as Michelle Obama held hands with the astronaut husband of Congresswoman Giffords, Mark Kelly.”
 
Obama was smart, in Wallace’s view, to focus on the hopes of another victim, nine-year old Christina Taylor Green, who was killed in the tragedy, by saying, “What we need is a politics as good as she imagined it would be.” Obama did not assign blame for the actions of Jared Loughner, the gunman, to anyone, but instead challenged Americans to have a political discussion worthy of Green, and of all the victims.
 
“Framing the whole idea of civility, and not finger-pointing, and dealing reasonably with each other not as a blame game, but as an aspiration, as the lesson we should learn, was a really smart way to do it,” Wallace said.
 
Noting his guest’s remarks were more prescient today than they were last night, Imus accused Wallace of being “a vicious hater” because he said Obama’s speech, at 34 minutes, was too long. 
 
“No,” Wallace corrected Imus. “I just hate you.”
 
-Julie Kanfer