The Death of the I-Man

I am here not to praise Imus but to bury him. (Paraphrasing Cicero slightly)

CBS has pulled the plug on Imus in the Morning ending, this stage at least, his lengthy career in broadcasting. After several days of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson railing against Imus and threatening all sorts of boycotts the advertisers started jumping ship and this really left CBS with no choice but to fire him. Were his comments about the Rutgers Women's basketball team reprehensible? Yes. Were they any more reprehensible than any number of other comments and/or comedy sketches that have appeared on the program? No. I always found the anti-Catholic nature of Bernard McGuirk's Cardinal Egan particularly offensive. There was no round of censure for that from the media. In part because comedy is often offensive by its very nature. Listen to comics from Lenny Bruce to Sam Kinnason to Richard Pryor to Dave Chappelle and you will find this to be the case. And in part because most Catholics are generally white and who cares if you offend white people?

Taking one offensive line driving it to this level was a little extreme. I suspect that the majority of the people who complained never listened to the show. That was their choice of course. They have of course removed the option for those enjoyed an obnoxious curmudgeon in the morning.

What I have found particularly reprehensible in all this are the media stars who made millions as a group off of promoting their publications and their books on Imus who now are pretending to be outraged that an offensive comment was made. The superficial hypocrisy of the like of John Meacham and his fellow Newsweek writers and all the politicians like Harold Ford Jr. who built a national presence there knowing full well what the show was is astounding. They have shown themselves to be the money grubbing bottom feeders that we always suspected them of being.

Also, having a man like Al Sharpton who built his name on race baiting behavior proclaim himself the arbiter of what is acceptable is simply absurd.

The I-Man is gone, and perhaps he should be. But those that orchestrated his fall are not much better and perhaps they should go along with him to the dustbin of history.