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Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation's press

Look Out, Howard Stern: “It doesn’t get any better than this,” radio shock jock Don Imus said Monday of the uproar he caused last week when he lambasted the Clintons and others with off-color jokes at Washington’s annual Radio and Television Correspondents Assn. dinner. “I actually cut them some slack. This thing was so watered down I was embarrassed,” Imus said of his jokes about the president and first lady, including references to Clinton’s alleged extramarital affairs and his wife’s alleged financial misdeeds. Imus’ comments prompted a letter of apology to the Clintons from Terry Murphy, chairman of the correspondents’ association and a vice president of cable’s C-SPAN, which aired Imus’ keynote speech live Thursday night and rebroadcast it Saturday--despite a White House request not to. Monday, Imus called the group “gutless weasels” and said he expects an apology, too. “Let’s not all pretend we don’t know what the deal was. They knew what they were getting when they asked me,” he said. Murphy has promised that next year’s featured speaker will be “very vanilla.”

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Morton Dean Leaving ‘America’: “Good Morning America” news anchor Morton Dean will leave the show within a month, as part of several changes expected on the ABC program. Dean, 60, could not be reached for comment Monday, but sources said he would likely be reassigned within ABC News--possibly as a correspondent. His replacement has not been determined, but ABC News has held discussions with “Dateline NBC” correspondent Elizabeth Vargas, whose NBC News contract ends this week. Dean’s departure comes at an unsettling time for “GMA,” which consistently loses in the ratings to NBC’s “Today.”

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