I'm us.

The flap over Imus is interesting- calling the women athletes at Rutgers "nappy headed hos" was cruel, racist and designed to be offensive. The word "Nappy" with its connotation of the more overt racism of the days of yore of is probably what propelled this controversy into mainstream awareness although I think the main reaction comes from how mean it was.

I listened to him for many years in Boston in the late 90s (ironically until his show was eventually pulled from the air for being too soft and replaced with something called "guy radio" whose hosts were shortly thereafter suspended for joking that an escaped gorilla from the zoo looked like an inner city student waiting for the bus)- and this is not very different than what he's been doing for years. (OK Timothy Noah on Slate has already made the same point). The Cardinal John O'Connor sketches- where a thickly Irish accented O'Connor character would tell the racist/sexist/otherist jokes were probably offensive to everyone from true believers & Irish Catholics to the minorities that were mocked. This particular nastygram happened to catch a perfect storm of opposition (and of course got much greater circulation as a result)

Of course the issue is not really that Imus is offensive on lots of grounds- thats his shtick. The apologies and how Imus actually feels are not the point. The issue is that he is very popular (as are the Boston knuckleheads) and this humor finds favor. Why is that? This was no angry tirade where he actually spoke his mind- this was his act. Chasing him off the air will not change why he is popular-in fact it may propel him into cool version of Rush (there's a contradiction in terms) and Poster PC victim. The better way to go at this would be to accept Don's misery and sorrow, bring him to a couple prayer breakfasts and then go big time after the networks that make big bucks playing to this audience- the bigwigs have had it pretty easy so far -with their pablum "we were horrified blahblah and we deplore blahblah..." organizational blather (I get the feeling however that Al Roker won' be going after MSNBC).

They might even get Imus on their side- going after hideous corporate weasels would play to his strength. Coul be more fun to watch.

LAGuy adds: "Nappy" was the offensive part? Are they gonna ban Stevie Wonder's "I Wish" from the radio then?

Imus goes way back. I remember seeing his 1200 Hamburgers To Go album in the record stores when I was a kid. When I moved to New Jersey, he was the big morning man on WNBC, and Howard Stern did the afternoon. I've been a big Stern fan ever since, but found Imus too boring.