I haven't commented on the whole Don Imus imbroglio because I hoped if I ignored him, he'd go away. It worked!
The First Amendment is absolute; anybody has the right to say anything. So did Imus have the right to call the Rutgers basketball team "nappy headed hos"? Of course. Should he have been fired for it? I'd have fired his ass the first time he said something racist or anti-semtic or homophobic, because, though I support free speech, I wouldn't want such noxious views emanating from anything associated with me. But hey, I'm not CBS Radio.
That the network was willing to put up with this for so long doesn't surprise me--they're in it to make money, and nobody ever went broke from making fun of other people. On a business level, tolerating Imus made sense, and when advertisers got skittish, pulling him made sense. I understand that.
What I don't understand is why so many people over the years were willing to make the piulgrimage to Imus' show, to perform like tummlers in his court. We're talking the cream of the crop of the nation's tastemakers and influence peddlers here, and their willingness to overlook Imus' casual prejudices tells us everything we need to know.
For the likes of John McCain or Rudy Giulliani to offer tender mercies to Imus is no surprise, but what about John Kerry or Joe Biden, James Carville or Frank Rich? Tim Russert, the arrogant, self-regarding Meet The Press host who fancies himself a non-partisan voice of authority, appeared on Imus' show immediately after The Comment, and offered an apology on Imus' behalf. You suck my cock, I'll suck yours.
Russert is too smart to give casual vent to his prejudices in public, and I'm not suggesting he's a racist, anti-semite or homophobe. (I'm sure some of his best friends are et cetera et cetera.) Yet he was willing to show support to a racist, and by appearing on his show repeatedly, legitimized his views. Republicans and Democrats were all too willing to whore themselves out for Imus, without giving his prejudices a second thought, until he and they got called for it, and then and only then was there any contrition.
These are people, in other words, wholly without conscience, and we have put our nation's fate in their hands.
