Who "fired" Imus?

Jesus.

Damn,I wish I could argue with you on this column--buttttt!!! I can,t! Good column. Tommie27

If anyone would care to explain why Imus should be fired for racism and sexism, and rap artists denigrating niggers-and-whores should be given our esteem, I'd love to hear it.

[And don't give me this "you said the N-word" crap. There's a term for deciding what actions someone should be allowed, based on the color of their skin. It's not a one-way street.]

Hey Joan, your presence is requested on another talk page. You've got some firing of your own to do.

Next on the list to go, Ann Coulter.

Given the things she says, she should be been fired long ago.

MSNBC gets massive complaints. Advertisers get complaints. Advertisers and MSNBC decide that Imus' 2 million listeners are not worth hassle.

Last time I looked, boycott, pickett, and letter campaigns ARE free speech. Imus' speech was met with MORE free speech, and he lost. The government did not censor him. The market did it.

As for true victim of double standards, that would be Howard Stern. Imus has been violating the FCC rules for a long time in worse ways than Stern without FCC sttention. Yet STERN got the fines, STERN got the condemned, and STERN got ran off into satellite, It seems the political extremist Right, who goes after Stern regularly, finds strippers dangerous and sex talk frightening, find racial and religious bashing acceptable and worthy of defense (Imus should have gone down for the Cardinal Eagan thing, to me. How hypocritical is DOnohue for going after Edwards et al and totally ignoring Imus' vicious, ongoing anti-Catholic slurs. I gues we know who Donohue was paid for- or afraid of).

Just because people get away with bad behavior for a while does not mean they should get a pass.

We just saw democracy at work. Many people disliked what Imus said. They wrote letters and made their disapproval known to Imus' employers. They won. Free speech is a two-way sword.

Bill Maher wasn't fired for the "cowards" incident: that's a myth that has given him the "free-speech martyr" cred I'm personally glad he has.

If ABC had really wanted to continue to produce Maher's expensive show, they would have supported him and kept him on the air. He's better off on HBO, and it was BETTER for his career to be let go from ABC "for cause" rather than simply because his ratings were down.

If MSNBC had had Imus' back before this incident, he would still be there.

Incidents like these can often just be a network or corporation's way of taking advantage of timing.

Imus means nothing to me; but the whole media circus became a kind of comedy today when I realized it was like Day 5 or 6, and IT'S STILL THE MAJOR STORY for America's worthless corporate media -- which apparently has no celebrity court case or missing white woman to go 24/7 on. Imus MUST be praying for war to break out with Iran, something, anything, that will blast him off the headlines like 9/11 did for Gary Condit; but instead, five or six days gp by and . . . nothing. So every day it just gets worse for him. If a major blonde female celebrity doesn't OD soon, I'm afraid before the week is out I'll turn on my TV and see that Imus has been put to death before a live studio audience.

Yeah, I know; he's a despicable old white male scumbag whom time passed by in 1982; but so are at least half the other "entertainers" on TV. Limbaugh and his local imitators say worse things on radio every day. The real story here is that America's mass media simply sucks, to an extent that is probably unimaginable for Salon's overseas audience.

Imus thinks he is so much better than everyone else that he thinks it is ok to demean people as a matter of course. What this shows is that he can dish it out. Now he must learn to take it too. About time.

I agree with your defense of freedom of speech, in that only the government can censure while the public may speak out, including via boycott to protest anyone, regardless of popularity, and the ability to broadcast over a public medium is not necessary to exercise freedom of speech but a privilege. However, as a young man of color with two sisters I must criticize your view that blatantly bigoted rap targeting (black) women and girls is completely different than Imus' rant. Do you even listen to rap or see videos? How can you so casually dismiss anti-female slurs being used as synonyms (bitch, ho, trick, etc.) or the openly violent extremism glamorized in rap, including the raping, torturing, enslavement, and killings of women and girls as the staple of the most influential force in global pop culture?!

Rap succeeds because it exploits our deep-seated assumption that women and girls are not human. How else could we routinely trivialize bigotry as "disrespect," as if intolerance and hate were mere rudeness? Or allow the casual use of anti-female slurs with the false pretext of (female) misbehavior, reinforcing the belief that men can serve as infallible judge, jury, and executioner of women and girls on the basis of (inherent) immorality? Only when society distorts sexism and misogyny as bad manners can bigotry easily blur into no-holds-barred "truth."

Anyone who believes Imus' comments merit a harsh rebuke must fiercely attack rappers who enjoy global admiration, especially by young men, because they ruthlessly dehumanize and demonize (black) women and girls, which normalizes male violent oppression. The level of violent hatred unleashed towards those who happen to commit the sin of being born a girl in rap is on par with the ultra-violent hate of neo-Nazi music (Compare: "Fuck a whore with a knife" with "Doesn't it feel good to kill a kike?"). Dre, Snoop, Eminem and others express the sadistic bigot's point of view, justifying and strengthening the violent hate of their massive audiences.

Hate speech itself does not cause bigotry to fluorish, but the legitimization of such overt incitement of hate as "entertainment" by society at large ensures it deepens and spreads unchecked with women and girls suffering the consequences.