I suppose that, as a good liberal, I should comment on the whole Don Imus thing. I wasn't going to, but after thinking about "what it all means", if it means anything, I have decided that there is something here that liberals and progressives need to be aware of. Perhaps they are, perhaps not, but I think it is important to bring it up.
Imus is gone. After a vigorous, sustained campaign by many both within and without the blogosphere, he is now unemployed, although probably not for long. His prospects in commercial radio are gone. Satellite radio, perhaps, but even there, this whole episode will follow him.
I view this as a warning shot across the bow to all those sewer-spewers on the right - Glenn Beck, Michael Smerconish, Michael Savage, Michael Levin, Sean Hannity, and the Dark Lord of them all, Rush Limbaugh - to sit up and take notice. Imus was viewed as untouchable because of his ratings, his market appeal, his place within a tightly knit group of political and media insiders, and his connections. With the entire navy of the right fairing badly, when this particular ship started listing, the rats deserted it so fast you could hear their bloated little bodies splashing, and their breathing as they paddled to get as far away as possible. The momentum from this action needs to be kept up, and we need to target all of them. Imus was the biggest precisely because he had a certain cachet with political insiders. The rest of them are fringe personalities - sometimes beyond the fringe and right out there, with no umbilical cord tying them to earth - with the possible exception of Rush "Oxycontin-Viagra-on-a-trip-to-sex-tourist-land" Limbaugh. With those two strikes against him, however, it would seem to me making a case to force sponsors to make a decision regarding their support for a whole host of these reverse-peristaltic creatures only increases. This is the time to make the move to remove the blight from our public airwaves. We should not rest on our laurels, but keep the pressure on. Perhaps the public airwaves can be returned to the public through good old-fashioned grass-roots campaigning.
