Ana Marie Cox Repents

And now come the confessions....

Libs from Don Imus' inner circle of guests have to repent.

In TIME, Ana Marie Cox writes of her rejection of all things Imus.

Every time I've been on Don Imus' show, he has reminded listeners that he "discovered" me. It's not exactly hyperbole. He first invited me on when I was just a foulmouthed blogger who ran the gossipy political site Wonkette.

...Last fall I became a regular guest and took up slightly more serious topics (on my last appearance we talked about Senator John McCain's Baghdad trip and Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani's lack of social graces), but the subjects hardly mattered. I had been invited inside the circle, and to be perfectly honest, I was thrilled to be there.

As the invites kept coming, I found myself succumbing to the clubhouse mentality that Imus both inspires and cultivates. Sure, I cringed at his and his crew's race-baiting (the Ray Nagin impersonations, the Obama jokes) and at the casual locker-room misogyny (Hillary Clinton's a "bitch," CNN news anchor Paula Zahn is a "wrinkled old prune"), but I told myself that going on the show meant something beyond inflating my precious ego. I wasn't alone. As Frank Rich noted a few years ago, "It's the only show ... that I've been on where you can actually talk in an informed way — not in sound bites." Yeah, what he said!

Cox cringes at Imus?

That's rich.

In response to Tony Snow's health setback, Cox said:

"Snow, despite being fairly smarmy, is not actually one of the individuals currently f---ing everything up that we’d happily say cancer is too good for, so we wish him a speedy and full recovery."

Maybe it's just me, but I find that cringe-inducing. Actually, I think it's disgusting.

It's ridiculous for Cox to have kidded herself into agreeing with Frank Rich's claim that Imus' show was the only place where one could talk intelligently instead of in sound bites.

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.

"Devastatingly crass"?

This, from Cox??

Give me a break.

...Of course, having a venue where one can speak frankly — talk in the way everyone does privately — about political figures can be liberating. I have said things on his show that cannot be printed here. But do I really want to give my tacit approval to someone whose greatest gift to public discourse could be fairly described as allowing pundits to get potty-mouthed?

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.) And I'm not so vain that I think I brought something unique to the airwaves. In fact, I assume that one reason he had me on was the tantalizing prospect that I might say something scandalous or racy. That, and he and his cronies seemed to enjoy having the occasional guest they could leer at.

This is just a mass of idiotic rationalizations and hypocrisy.

Cox's self-flagellation is a joke.

The "I've been a bad girl" routine doesn't fly.

She knows that it's too little, too late. (Can you hear the violins?)

Once, after I was on, he and his gang proceeded to discuss my "creamy" skin and compliment my nice pair of ... "eyes." I later asked the producer to remind him that as far as I knew, my father was listening. Now I'm going to ask my dad not to anymore.

Obviously, Cox wrote this before Imus was axed by both MSNBC and CBS. Daddy can no longer listen to Imus if he tried.

That aside, what a stupid thing to say!

She planned to ask her dad not to listen anymore. WAAAAH!!!!

Cox just said that she would be foul-mouthed on the air. Did she have a problem with daddy listening then? Does she have a problem with daddy reading her foul-mouthed stuff?

Now we're supposed to believe that Cox, too, was a victim of Imus' misogyny?

"He leered at me and my creamy skin and my...eyes! Boo hoo! I let him do it because I so badly wanted to be part of the Imus inner circle."

Simply put, Cox's soul-searching confession is lame. She's already in a hole. Too bad she thought it would help to keep digging.