Normally I wouldn’t post about something like Imus. It’s like posting about Bush or the war … it’s just too big for me. But in this case I’m making an exception because the situation with Imus symbolizes the worst of political theater. I’m not sure where this post is going to take me, but let me walk you through what I’m thinking …

By now most of you know that Don Imus is a shock jock (radio) and that he was fired for saying something offensive on the air. Imus made the statements on April 4. MSNBC dropped Imus. CBS suspended, then fired him.

And what did Imus say to get himself kicked off the air? Did he call someone a faggot? Did he call for an assassination of a former President or a sitting judge? Did he refer to Muslims as ragheads? Did he ask a US Congressman to prove that he wasn’t working for the enemy? Did he try to get his guest to pose for some nude pics?

Oh no, nothing like that. He merely called some basketball players a bunch of “nappy headed hos”.

I don’t know why he said such a stupid thing … maybe he thought he’d be invited to the White House for a personal visit with the President. Maybe he was thinking he could build his way up to the N-word, and then he’d be invited to Cleary College, where they pay for hate-speech. He probably wasn’t thinking at all … it was probably a thoughtless utterance, one of many that he’s had over the years. This is how he makes his living.

And America pays good money for shock jocks and raw speech. When Ann Coulter spews forth some disgusting thought, she is rewarded generously. I don’t think it’s right, but that’s how America works … we have this thing called free speech and we have this other thing called the free market. Usually the two converge to reward shock jocks & celebrity hate speech.

So what happened with Imus?

Imus did the silly thing of picking on the black people. It’s not ok to pick on black people anymore.

If Imus had enough sense to pick on the politically unpopular Muslims or gay people, he’d have survived. If those Rutgers girls had been “a bunch of tatooed bull-dykes”, we’d have forgotten all about it by now. But “nappy headed?” Oh, Imus.

And I suspect, if Ann Coulter had called them “nappy headed hos”, we’d accept it. We expect Ann Coulter to say the worst. The damage she does goes unnoticed by so many people, because so many people have turned a deaf ear to her long ago.

It wouldn’t have to be Ann saying it … maybe any woman could get away with saying what Imus said. It’s easier to take a woman calling another woman a ho (or a bitch), even if there is a difference in skin color. It has something to do with gender and power … I was supposed to learn all about that in that one women’s studies class in college.

Take Imus’ words and put them into the mouth of a white woman, and it would’ve been ok.

Take Imus’ words and put them into the mouth of a black man, and it would’ve been ok.

Sure, we’d all still be offended, but in the end, no one would’ve been fired.

(aside: I don’t want to hear from any of you white men about how you all are victims, because y’all control the world)

And I’ll tell you what else … people should be thanking Imus, because it gives them cover. I used to work for a company that wouldn’t hire black people (or anyone outside of the ages 21-35) … “It’s not the image we want to project.” My business parter once threw a fit because I brought in a black work study student from Baker College. “We’ll be run out of town!”

Oh I guarantee every last one of my racist friends don’t think they’re racist. They prove it to themselves by talking about how awful Imus is. Well I bet if you check Imus’ staff, he had some minorities there.

Some will say that firing Imus is a blow to intolerance. I disagree. A blow to intolerance would be to boycott the Beijing Olympic Games. But Americans don’t like our social outrage to be inconvenient, and we only demand decency from certain kinds of people. All others, we let slide.

This is not to say that what Imus said was cool. But in the broader context of what is America, firing Imus was just plain silly.

update 4/16 - recommending this rescued DKos diary - The Unintended Consequences of Rutgers