Just the sight of his sharp face, bushy eyebrows and exaggerated cowboy hat evokes in me the same feeling as that obnoxious TV ad, “Apply directly to the forehead, apply directly ...” But Don Imus is only a symptom of a deeper malaise in broadcast journalism. Even though we have followed our hearts to Blacksburg, Va., forgetting Imus, the sickness he revealed in our cultural discourse should draw us back to examine the origins and history of the disease. When the Fairness Doctrine, which imposed a degree of civility on the use of public airwaves, was repealed during the Reagan...