Talk show host Don Imus’ derogatory comment about the Rutgers women’s basketball team might remind some listeners of a remark he made about "Washington Week” moderator Gwen Ifill, reportedly referring to the black journalist at a "cleaning lady.”
In 1993, Ifill was covering the White House for the New York Times when colleagues began asking her why Imus "seemed to have a problem with me,” she recalls in Tuesday’s Times.
"I had no idea what they were talking about because I never listened to the program.”
But five years later, New York Daily News columnist Lars-Erik Nelson clued her in.
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"Isn’t the Times wonderful,” Nelson quoted Imus as saying on the radio. "It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House.”
Ifill writes in the Times: "I haven’t talked about this much. I’m a big girl. I have a platform. I have a voice. I’ve been working in journalism long enough that there is little danger that a radio D.J.’s juvenile slap will define or scar me.
"Yesterday, he began telling people he never actually called me a cleaning lady. Whatever. This is not about me. It is about the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.”