Disc jockey Don Imus, whose career was made and then undone by his acid tongue during a decades-long rise to radio stardom and an abrupt public plunge after a nationally broadcast racial slur, has died. He was 79.
Imus passed away on Friday morning at Baylor Scott and White Medical Center in College Station, Texas. He had been admitted there Christmas Eve. No cause of death has been released.
The cowboy hat-wearing radio personality hosted the “Imus in the Morning” for half a century.
Imus survived drug and alcohol woes, a raunchy appearance before President Clinton and several firings during his long career behind the microphone. But he was vilified and eventually fired after describing a women’s college basketball team as “nappy headed hos.”