My piece on why I’m pulling out of the Imus country club is online now (it’s a sidebar to an excellent essay by Jim Poniewozik):
I’m embarrassed to admit that it took Imus’ saying something so devastatingly crass to make me realize that there just was no reason beyond ego to play along. I did the show almost solely to earn my media-elite merit badge. The sad truth is that unless you have a book to promote, there’s often no other reason any writer or columnist has to do the show.
…
My giving up the show, I acknowledge, is too little and too late. I doubt that I’ll be missed. It’s depressingly easy to find female journalists who will tolerate or ignore bigotry if it means getting into the boys’ club someday. (If only I were the only one.)
As commenters have noted, the Imus flap is hardly the most important issue facing our country at the moment — and, yes, I’m going to turn my attention to the new DOJ scandal news ASAP. But I also wanted to explain my decision and to put it in context. I imagine I will be tempted to respond to the surprisingly passionate sentiments people have been tossing my way but we’ll try to make sure there’s some actual news on the blog, too.
UPDATE: Not that I expect it to make much of a difference to those who have made up their minds, but: I posted my decision to back out of the Imus show April 11, 2007 at 1:38pm. Confirmation that MSNBC was axing the simulcast of his show came at about 6:30 the same day. A five hour gap in announcements is not long enough to say that I deserve much credit (that should go to Cal Ripkin), but it is what happened.