Mr. Asim makes a good point (regarding the lame Imus "Hip Hop Defense"), but also points out that one can't very well function as a critic if one is not at least passingly familiar with the medium in question. In this case Mr. Asim disappoints because he appears to be so dangerously unhip as to have been forced to take a crash course, based on some questions he posed to people he felt might be able to light his way into the Black Chamber of hip hop and wound up sitting and listening - for the first time, critically - to a bunch of NWA recordings. The conclusion, unsurprisingly, was that "...this stuff is awful." I'd have given him a longer list of more current and relevant artists to check out and maybe even learn to appreciate. No, it's probably too late for that.

The "n" word (my mother, an Appalachian-American, taught me from the time I could converse, in late 1948, that I was never to use the "n" word, despite the fact that my father, my grandparents, my aunts, uncles, cousins and the neighbors all used it, because it was a "hateful, hurtful word, and you don't hate, you don't use that word either, and you don't want to hurt people, now do you?"). No, I didn't. As a nominally white person I have no earthly reason (other than to quote someone) to use that word. Black people do have reasons to use that word, and they were given that word by us, white people, yes, even we marginally white people who cannot account with certainty for that "one drop" that may be circulating among our corpuscles, who do have numerous drops of American Indian blood for certain, but who live as white people, if only as a choice - we gave them that word and sufficient reasons to use it. They got the license from us.

Imus didn't use that word, but he did try to invoke its use, along with the misogynistic terms used in some - not all by any means, but some - hip hop lyrics, in his argument that he was "tricked" into thinking it was now OK to say that stuff, that it would somehow come off as funny - and no, he is not a comedian and no one should mention his name in the same breath alongside a social critic of the stature of Lenny Bruce - so he got fired. He got fired not for incivility, which is quite a fine thing so long as it sells, but for costing his company money by losing sponsors because somewhere down the line someone was actually offended - badly offended - by his idiotic use of cruel, inappropriate, unjustified and totally out-of-place terms. Talk about the dangerously unhip!

It doesn't matter whether Imus was fired because he cost his employers money (which is a reasonable rationale for firing someone, especially when he's done the same thing over and over again) or if he was fired for being an offensive boor on open airwaves (that clearly wasn't the reason).

We didn't really need Jabari Asim to explain to us why it's OK for NWA (RIP) to use the "n" word but not ordinary white folks.

It shouldn't be an issue. Decent, ordinary white folks, don't want to hurt people, even if they are innately and irredeemably racist (and while I believe many of us are, I also happen to believe tanmack is hanging out with some people he really ought not hang out with, but that is his problem, isn't it?).

This piece would have been a total waste of time were it not for the fact that I have already been confronted numerous times with the Hip Hop Defense on behalf of Imus, and I'd just love to lay it to rest now. Get real, people. If some of you honkies use the "n" word it's only for one reason; the rest of us masturbate.

This translation of a latin legal term also says it all for the Mayor of Wig City (not to be confused with his former position as mayor of NYC). The more Giuliani is allowed to run on at the mouth, the better off we all will be. Sometimes a gift is so perfect one should just sit back and admire it.

This writer is one Republican who has been repulsed by Hizzoner since Day One, and as for his "Comforter-in-Chief" performance on 9/11, lemme just ask you this: Would anyone have done any less? Well except, perhaps, George W. Bush, who was tied up elsewhere (tongue-tied, apparently). No, I think I would have liked to see, oh, maybe John Lindsay's ghost do the honors that day, or maybe even an ectoplasmic Fiorello LaGuardia. They at least would not have been making mental notes on how to use the event later to build a platform (or is it a raft?) upon which to run for President following perhaps the worst President this nation has ever seen.

No, I think it might be better to just report any future Giuliani activities straight-up. That would be enough to gag any self-respecting American.

We have more important fish to fry: the ones who got us into this mess we've been living with for the past nearly 6-1/2 years. This horse won't get out of the gate.

Let The Thing speak. That's the worst thing we can do to him.