CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – Radio personality Don Imus is scheduled to do a show next month from a site where abolitionist Frederick Douglass once spoke, and the venue’s manager said Wednesday that Imus had better show some repentance if the show goes on.
“He has to acknowledge that he’s on a black heritage site. He has to acknowledge that this is the same site that Frederick Douglass spoke from.
“We would expect that he would be humbled and would acknowledge that he would be humbled to appear on the same site,” said Patricia Lynch, executive director of the Music Hall in Portsmouth.
“In light of his recent remarks … he would again seek forgiveness.”
Lynch spoke as national sponsors pulled ads from the syndicated program and civil rights leaders and others called on CBS Corp. to fire Imus, whose program earns millions.
CBS has suspended the program for two weeks starting April 16, which means the show could resume a few days before Imus’ sold-out broadcast from the Music Hall on May 4.
The concert hall, built in 1878, is a stop on the Portsmouth’s black heritage trail. The Portsmouth Lyceum stood there when Douglass, the famed abolitionist, visited in 1862.
Lynch said Portsmouth radio station WQSO-FM rented the hall for the broadcast. Lynch said she had received calls demanding the show be canceled, but also from people seeking tickets.
She said the decision to cancel lies with WQSO-FM and its owner, Clear Channel Communications, and that she had communicated her conditions to Imus through a local Clear Channel representative.
A message left with the representative Wednesday by The Associated Press was not immediately returned.
“I can’t see into the heart of Don Imus,” Lynch said. “I can however urge him and myself, and everyone else, that when confronted with difficult situations that we look for a civil, thoughtful way to manage.”
Some say the show should be canceled.
“I would hope that the majority of New Hampshire folks feel like me, that we don’t need that kind of talk in our neighborhood, in our state,” Fred Ross, NAACP state coordinator, told WMUR-TV in Manchester.
Imus, whose stock in trade is being skeptical and satirical and pushing the boundaries of taste, touched off a storm of criticism on his April 4 show by describing members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team, which has eight black members, as “nappy headed hos.” Imus has apologized.
Across the state in Lebanon, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center pulled its advertisements from local broadcasts of the show, the Valley News of Lebanon reported Wednesday. The hospital said it is moving dozens of ads from Imus to other time slots on radio station WHDQ-FM.
AP-ES-04-11-07 1613EDT
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