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So Don Imus has been fired from his radio show, and all is well in the world.  We all know about the maelstrom that developed around the aging shock jock, who has found out how loose lips sink ships, in this case his own.  But even though his is a vessel I never would have christened, I find a certain conclusion inescapable here.  I must defend Don Imus. Lest I be misunderstood, I have no use for the man, nor any for the rest of his ilk.  I know him to be a poster boy for our cultural decay, a...

Everything worth saying about the Don Imus thing — which isn't much — has been said already. We've now moved beyond Imus to the "national dialogue" phase of this familiar cycle. This is where we're supposed to tackle hard questions and deep truths about our society. People have been calling for national dialogues and conversations for decades. It usually works something like this: Liberals say we need a frank discussion about race (or class or gender) in this country, and then they proceed to bludgeon any conservative stupid enough to take them up on their offer. Consider a recent non-Imus...

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry yesterday said he doesn't think Don Imus should have been fired for his racially charged comments - a sharp break with the current Democratic 2008 front-runners. "You know, the punishment has to fit the crime, so to speak," Kerry, the Democrats' defeated 2004 White House hopeful, told NY1. Kerry, who had Imus' support in that race, said he might be willing to go on a future Imus show if the radio host finds a new station - but "if he goes back to doing the same old, same old, I'd have trouble doing that."

A reader (who found my take on Obama's Milwaukee talk cynical) points me to the audio of his remarks last night, a 23-minute .mp3 file you can listen to here. It's worth a listen, and it captures what moves a lot of people about Obama, and bothers others: His instinct for abstraction and large themes, and his sense that America's problems have at their root solutions that have as much to do with hope and process as with any specific course of action. Other politicians would -- and will -- stay with the concrete. They'll talk about this tragedy, and,...

Slurs against Italian-Americans considered no big deal by Liberal Mainstream Media even though Italian-American organizations have complained to the Liberal Mainstream Media. Why do you think that is? Could it be the Imus affair was more about politics than ethnicity? Here is the link. If it doesn't work cut and paste to your browser. http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=18219856&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=6

Dear Oprah: After Don Imus's comments and his apology, you're promoting a discussion that you say "needs to happen" on your show today. Fair enough. But what exactly is the "discussion." I've heard many describe the comments of Imus last week as "racist, sexist" and "approaching homophobic." Those are pretty charged words in and of themselves. But before we go any further we need to define ourselves. Oprah, you were a mystery to me when I watched the newscasts you presented on WJZ-TV Baltimore in the 1970's. The promos for you even said: "What is an Oprah?" I think it's...

The right-wing US broadcasters who fill the air with invective operate way beyond the conventions of good taste.But now one of them, Don Imus, has gone too far - and paid for his loose lips with his job LIKE Earl Grey or English Breakfast, whether the radio host Don Imus is your cup of tea may simply be a matter of taste. He is brash, he is outspoken, he often says things that many people find utterly inappropriate. And yet he has been there forever. For 30 years or more Imus has entertained and shocked listeners to his morning radio-show...

COWARDS KICK AWAY ANOTHER PIECE OF AMERICA'S SOUL By KINKY FRIEDMAN April 15, 2007 -- Author, musician and former Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman has been friends with Don Imus since 1975, when they met on stage at The Bottom Line. I MET Imus on the gangplank of Noah's Ark. He was then and remains today a truth-seeking missile with the best bull-meter in the business. Far from being a bully, he was a spiritual chop-buster never afraid to go after the big guys with nothing but the slingshot of ragged integrity. I watched him over the years as he...

Make no mistake about it, Don Imus deserved to be fired. In fact he should have been fired over a quarter century ago when he was calling out the N-word to black people, including Robin Quivers, who worked at his WNBC station. Imus himself confirmed that he did this when he responded in the affirmative to Larry King's question about this. So it isn't an issue of being PC. It is a matter of common decency. However, neither WNBC nor its parent company were willing to part with Imus and continued enabling him for years because Imus wisely decided...

"Freedom is everybody's business, your business, my business, the church's business and a man who will not use his freedom to defend his freedom, does not deserve his freedom." (Dr. Carl McIntire-preacher who lost radio station to "Fairness Doctrine" in 1973) Back in the 1970's this controversial radio preacher's right to free speech was championed by the National Association of Broadcasters and the Radio TV News Directors Association. The attack on Don Imus and his firing, along with Al Sharpton's moves to define what is "acceptable" on the airwaves brings back memories of the "Fairness Doctrine" Days" when "right-wing" radio...

In 1984, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan said that Adolf Hitler was a "great man." Rapping Adolf Hitler and the Ice People (Ku Klux Klansmen) sing about how Farrakhan thinks Hitler was a great man, and what Hitler thought of Black people. The song ends with a warning, "Just you beware of all who sell hate." [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sXwKy6Ni_g to view in YouTube.] "Ice people" is from Professor Leonard Jeffries' assertion that Blacks are "sun people" who are racially superior to melanin-deficient "ice people." Al Sharpton (who recently demanded the firing of radio personality Don Imus for crude remarks about Black...

A racial storm in America Don Imus, the line-crossing talk-radio host who broadcast daily across America from his New York studio, has been fired for referring to a team of black women basketball players as “nappy-headed ho’s”. Imus, a former Marine with a gruff demeanour, had an unsentimental show or, as they might say in America, it featured “guy talk” (any Briton, by the way, who uses “guy” or “guys” deserves a glossectomy). There was some banter and unsubtle opinions were aired. It was not out of control but it also wasn’t a sanitised PC affair. He’s quite amusing and...

Some years ago, Cokie Roberts, faithful to her profession and to the proposition that those engaged in public discourse, at whatever level, should be left free to do as they liked, stopped short. What did it was a speech at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association dinner, an annual affair at which, in 1996, 3,000 guests ate and drank in the company of President and Mrs. Clinton and listened to Don Imus. After that night’s performance, Ms. Roberts changed her mind. “I really don’t think it would be appropriate for any of us to ever go back on [Imus’s show],”...

Here are some outrageous and racist comments by environmentalists. These are compiled and documented in my book Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism Is Hazardous to Your Health. John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club: Muir said American Indians are “mostly ugly, and some of them altogether hideous.” They “seemed to have no right place in the landscape,” he continued. Muir is still honored without qualification on the Sierra Club web site, which proclaims, “John Muir is as relevant today as he was over 100 years ago.” Paul Ehrlich, influential “overpopulation” guru and professor of population studies at Stanford University: In his best-selling book,...

Hillary Clinton will try to make more political hay out of the Don Imus controversy by visiting Rutgers University – home of the women’s basketball team disparaged by the now fired talk show host. Clinton will visit the school’s Eagleton Institute of Politics on Monday, April 16, to deliver an address on "Women and Public Leadership.” On Wednesday, Clinton sent out a mass e-mail to her closest supporters saying Imus’ comments about the team showed "small-minded bigotry and coarse sexism,” and calling on recipients to join her in sending the Rutgers women a message of support. As NewsMax reported, Sen....

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday that radio host Don Imus' comments about the Rutgers University women's basketball team were "disgusting" and she was pleased he was fired. Imus called the women players "nappy-headed hos" -- racist, sexist remarks that resulted in a barrage of protests and ultimately in the outspoken host losing his CBS Radio show, which was also televised. "I'm very glad that there was, in fact, a consequence. I think that this kind of coarse language doesn't belong anywhere in reasonable dialogue between reasonable people," Rice said in an interview with syndicated radio show...

I've avoided commenting on the Duke rape case intentionally. I was happy to see it finally end at least somewhat well for the three players, and there's not much to be added to the conversation. Then I saw this from ABC "reporter" Terry Moran and completely lost my cool: Don't Feel Too Sorry for the Dukies If you don't feel like reading the condescending ramblings of a frothy-mouthed liberal hypocrite, here's a taste of his twisted logic: ...there are many, many cases of prosecutorial misconduct across our country every year. The media covers few, if any, of these cases. Most...

Ask not for whom the cross burns, it burns for Don Imus. Poor I-man, kicked down the stairs like a Bob Gamere, abandoned by the Beautiful People he served so faithfully these past few decades. We won’t be MSNBC’ing the senile old crackhead anymore. No more summer party invitations from his media enablers in the Hamptons. Henceforth, he is a nobody on Nantucket. Wherever will we get our fix of Doris Kearns Goodwin now? And what’s the over-under on how many days until trophy-wife Deirdre walks out forever? Don Imus - $10-million dollar salary, 10-cent brain. From the penthouse to...

The April 11 edition of "The View" again discussed Don Imus’s recent racist and sexist remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team. Rosie O’Donnell likewise continued her tirade about Imus’ alleged "free speech."

In 1989, a young woman jogger in Central Park was viciously raped and beaten by a gang of youths. Sharpton led a mob outside the court which claimed, without a shred of evidence, that "the boyfriend did it," and screamed that the victim was a "whore." At a rally in Harlem, Sharpton denounced a Jewish small business owner as a "white interloper," and then stood by approvingly while one his associates incited the crowd to violence. Later, a listener killed seven people in the store. Sharpton then lied and claimed he had never been at the rally. Sharpton helped incite...