If This is How Imus Treats People He Likes...

For a change, Imus wasn’t terribly interested in what guest Chris Wallace had to say, a fact he made abundantly clear toward the end of their chat today when he interrupted Wallace, mid-reply, to denounce, “Enough. I’m tired of that.”
 
But first, we learned that Wallace, the host of Fox News Sunday, a title for which Imus pays him very little respect, sings in the shower. “You seem like the kind of guy who would be singing something from Guys and Dolls,” Imus said.
 
Having provided that riveting analysis, Imus had this to say on the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations in Washington: “Call me when they have a deal.” But Wallace insisted this is a story worth following.
 
One of the most interesting facets, in Wallace’s view, is the degree to which the House Republican leaders are not in control of their Party. “I think they are taking various ideas and bringing them to the 87 freshmen and saying, ‘Will you buy this?’” he said.
 
President Obama yesterday reversed on his original position, saying he would accept a short-term deal, but only if it was a matter of days while Congress puts together the final legislation. Wallace remains stunned that lawmakers in Washington would “allow the full faith and credit of the United States government to go off a cliff,” and suspected they’d cobble something together before August 2^nd.
 
As presidential historian Douglas Brinkley explained earlier this morning, and Wallace reiterated, raising the debt ceiling is such a huge deal this time because the deficit is bigger than ever, and the backlash against it from the Tea Party is also bigger than ever.
 
Except that Imus was barely listening; accused Wallace of being wrong; was informed that Wallace had, in fact, said exactly the same thing as Brinkley; and then apologized.
 
Basking in the glow of an Imus mea culpa, Wallace observed that Rep. Michele Bachmann suffering from migraines does not disqualify her from running for President. After all, millions of people get migraines, Wallace’s wife among them.
 
“I wonder what that’s from,” Imus quipped, then wondered if “that Barbie doll-lookin’ Rick Perry,” the Governor of Texas, has a chance of winning the Republican nomination for president in 2012.
 
Wallace began his answer, noting that more 30 percent of jobs that have been created since the recession began in this country have been in Texas, which bodes extremely well for Perry. On the other hand, Perry has never been on the national stage before, and would have to contend with other social conservatives like Bachmann and Herman Cain.
 
Not that Wallace finished his point, because Imus lost interest, and changed the subject to the phone-hacking scandal involving Rupert Murdoch and News International, the parent company of Fox News and the Fox Business Network. Is Wallace was too fraidy-scared to cover the story on his show?
 
Wallace claimed he did not broach it on last week’s show because it’s not the kind of issue that lends itself to debate. “Generally there need to be two sides to the argument for it to be effective,” he noted.
 
In his view, there was not “a scintilla” of evidence to implicate Murdoch or his son James in the scandal that has rocked the U.K. Imus, however, took something different away from Tuesday’s Parliament hearings, during which somebody tried to throw a pie in Murdoch’s face, only to be slapped away by his wife.
 
“You know who I want in a foxhole with me?” Imus said. “Wendi Murdoch. She’s got some gonads there, doesn’t she?”
 
-Julie Kanfer