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Imus Meets Team at Rutgers: 'Very Intense'
The Rutgers University women's basketball team met at the governor's mansion Thursday night with fired radio host Don Imus to discuss offensive remarks he made about the players. A person participating in the meeting, which lasted nearly three hours before ending around 10:45 p.m., characterized it as "intense, very intense" in a text message sent to a reporter for The Associated Press. The person requested anonymity because the private meeting was still in progress at the time. Imus left the meeting without commenting to reporters, and it was not known if any of the Rutgers players or their coach, C. Vivian Stringer, would comment or issue a statement Thursday night. The meeting was held at Gov. Jon S. Corzine's mansion near Princeton. Corzine was on his way to the meeting from Atlantic City when he was injured in a traffic accident on the Garden State Parkway, according to spokesman Brendan Gilfillan. Corzine was flown to Cooper University Hospital in Camden, where doctors said he underwent surgery for a broken left leg and several broken ribs. A doctor at the hospital said Corzine was in the intensive care unit in critical but stable condition following surgery.
Story Continues Below The street outside the governor's mansion was lined with television news vans. Reporters were restricted to a strip of grass near the fence, about a football field away from the white, two-story mansion. Imus, who is famous for interviewing - and insulting - political and media figures, has taken heavy criticism over his racist and sexist comments during his radio show last week when he called the Rutgers basketball players "nappy-headed hos." The comments came one day after the team lost the NCAA national championship game, the culmination to their Cinderella season that saw them come back from some devastating early season losses - including a 40-point thrashing from Duke. Stringer on Thursday described MSNBC's decision to pull Imus' television broadcast as a demonstration of moral fiber - the same day that CBS also decided to pull the plug on his broadcast. The Rev. DeForest Soaries said he was moderating Thursday night's meeting between the team and Imus. The team was seen walking inside the governor's mansion, known as Drumthwacket, around 7:30 p.m. Thursday. The governor volunteered his mansion because it was a good location for the "private meeting," Gilfillan said. Earlier Thursday, Stringer and her players appeared on Oprah Winfrey's nationally syndicated show via satellite, while sitting on chairs on the court of the Louis Brown Athletic Center at Rutgers. Speaking during the team's appearance on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," before the CBS announcement was made, Stringer said the decision by MSNBC "shows that we do have moral fiber. And people are speaking up." Rutgers' player Kia Vaughn told Winfrey the Imus comments completely overshadowed their amazing season - one their coach has called the most rewarding of her career. "Our moment was stolen from us. Instead of us coming here to enjoy what we accomplished and how far we came, we had to sit back and look at media asking questions about what he said," Vaughn said. Stringer told Winfrey on Thursday that she and her players never had "a purpose or an agenda" on whether Imus should lose his TV and radio jobs. "We wanted to have an opportunity to have a face-to-face meeting with him," Stringer said. Soaries, pastor at Stringer's church, the First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, said the fact that Imus was off the air on both MSNBC and CBS took some pressure off of the meeting with the Rutgers women. "This removes the burden from Rutgers women to determine the status of Imus' employment," Soaries said. After the Winfrey interview, Stringer told reporters that she marveled at the level of public outrage over Imus' comments and the support for her team. "For me it's been 25 years to reach the championship game, and in 50 seconds, he said what he said," Stringer said. The coach, who was leading her fourth team to the NCAA Final Four, said this experience has been "emotionally and mentally exhausting," and that immediately following the shock jock's comments, she had no idea of the repercussions to follow. But Stringer said Imus' comments go way beyond just her players. "What woman reads this and cannot be personally touched?" Stringer said. "It was always bigger than us, bigger than Rutgers University." The radio host's comments have thrown New Jersey's 50,000-student state university into the national spotlight and have made the women's basketball team one of the hottest topics of conversation. "I thought it was pretty ridiculous to target a group of girls ... They were just a group of girls playing basketball," said Elaine Blatt, 22, a senior at Rutgers who is from Lacey Township. Other students said the situation was being manipulated by politicians intent on gaining some publicity for themselves. "He's a shock jock. This is what he does," said Jason Moehringer, 20, a junior from Hightstown, N.J. He said while Imus' comments were "nasty," throwing the radio host off the air was a form of censorship. The news came down in the middle of Imus' Radiothon on WFAN, which has raised more than $40 million since 1990. The Radiothon had raised more than $1.3 million Thursday before Imus learned that he lost his job. On the air Thursday before the CBS announcement, he acknowledged again that his remarks about the Rutgers team had been "really stupid."
© 2007 Associated Press.
Editor's note:
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