I’ve heard way more insulting and degrading things blaring out of cars at stop lights than “nappy head ho”.

PG – made you elaborate, I win. Seriously though, so true that he cannot expect to avoid fallout the way a Colbert character would.

No let’s talk about the 80s party or something…

[side note - somegosoftly is at risk of losing her puff blog status here ;o) ]

http://mediamatters.org/items/200704120010

At least Imus apologized and took responsibility for what he said. Any of these other guys would have just attacked the Women more for getting upset.

The right to free speech includes the right to offend. the right to offend comes with consequences which you defacto concede when you make the offense. as such, he is burdened with the responsibility of representing the people who have made his show possible, including those who participated in its discoures. to that extend he is only empowerd to be on the air as long as they empower him to be there. in this case, given Imus’ history, and the level to which he raised his show through an impressive guest list and socio-political discourse, the offense was beyond that which we generally accept from a serious news show (unless you’re parent company is owned by Rupert Murdock….then it’s just fuck all). i expected that people would just stop particpating, his ratings would go down, a handful of advertisers would bail, and Imus in the morning would shrivell in importance (the same way Fox News has). You don’t get to be both a serious news person and comedic hack at the same time….the successful personalities who do this are actually funny (Maher, Sterwart, Colbert), and either accept the consequenes of their statements up front (ie. Maher gets fired and then rehired by HBO), or never claim to actually be new shows, even though they may be just as informative (Stewart, Colbert)…the difference between the latter two and Imus is that they have carefully crafted characters on screen that act as a buffer for this kind of personal retribution.

in the end it’s unclear that Imus is a racist – how does one sensible gauge what is a “racist?”…but he sure said some stupid things, and deserved the consquences given the image he has crafted for his show (THIS above all else is the key point to keep in mind).

were the Rev. Jackson and Sharpton hypocrites and out of line? yup. but that’s a point for another post.

…i actually just wrote out a big logical reponse to you in disagreement…but i don’t particularly want to get involved in it either because i don’t really care.

however, i will point out that, according to Countdown with Keith Olbermann, the first company to revoke it’s advertising contract because of the Imus kerfuffle was Head-On. YES. The product with the most annoying commercial in advertising history decided that Imus constituted too negative of an association….wow. when Head-On backs out, you know you’re fucked.