Blonde on Blonde: Disappearing Women; Getting High on Help; and Vaccine Developments

Imus was immediately critical of both Deirdre Imus and Lis Wiehl today. “You’ve both got the cleavage thing going on,” he said. “We have children watching this program.”
 
Apparently growing comfortable in his new role replacing Charles, Connell McShane complimented the women for their wardrobe selections. Flattered, Deirdre admitted, “I’m even more motivated to get up in the morning to come here for Blonde on Blonde, now that Connell’s sitting here.”
 
As Imus silently wished he could erase his wife from the studio, he wondered what she and Lis thought about a Brooklyn-based Hasidic newspaper deleting Hillary Clinton and another woman from the photograph of President Obama and his team monitoring the mission in Pakistan that killed Osama Bin Laden. The paper, Der Zeitung, has since apologized, claiming they eliminated the two women because of Jewish “modesty laws.”
 
“Too little, too late,” Lis said, and scolded the paper for trying to rewrite history. Deirdre took a more pragmatic approach, asking, “They’re getting all hot because Hillary was in the photo?”
 
Picking up on that, Bernard noted, “It wasn’t exactly Kim Kardashian eating a banana.”
 
Imus, however, wondered why the two women had not been airbrushed into a kitchen someplace, where they could, conceivably, be “making the I-Man some tasty snacks.”
 
Police in Minnesota should probably have some snacks handy for a program they’ve recently implemented, where drug users help train cops to tell if an erratic driver is impaired by something other than alcohol. (See also: Imus’s retirement plans.)
 
“It doesn’t get any more stupid than this,” Deirdre defiantly declared, though Lis, an attorney, noted that it is perfectly legal for police to use underhanded training methods.
 
She added, “But is it smart? No.”
 
Also not smart: phoning the police in the middle of the night on day four of a cocaine bender after you witness a fatal shooting from the window of your drug-filled penthouse apartment, as Imus did in the 1980s. The incident, which involved Chinese gang members, ultimately went to trial, and featured testimony from yours truly.
 
“I had to say, ‘Well, I’d been up for four days on cocaine,’” he recalled. “They said, ‘Fine, thank you very much, get out.’”
 
Though he hated to broach this fiery topic, Imus noted a major development yesterday in the debate over whether childhood vaccines are linked to autism. The Pace Environmental Law Journal found that, in the majority of a sampling of cases, parents who won settlements or awards in the federal government’s vaccine court had demonstrated evidence of autism, even thought their lawsuits focused on other serious injuries, like brain damage and mental retardation.
 
For the first time, a parent, Dr. Sarah Bridges, admitted publicly that she was instructed not to mention her child’s autism when trying to get a settlement from the court.
 
“Originally, she had to say, in order to be compensated…that her child was diagnosed with encephalopathy, which is brain damage,” Deirdre said, adding, “It’s this whole thing with the government not wanting to admit that these vaccines are linked to autism. She’s one of many parents now who have won in this vaccine court.”
 
Hoping to score a small victory himself, Imus changed subjects to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver announcing yesterday that they were separating after 25 years of marriage. “Relationships are complicated!” Deirdre insisted.
 
And who would know better?
 
-Julie Kanfer