In the Nes: Imus the Idiot

tThe recent controvesy about racist remarks that Don Imus made about the Rutgers University women's basketball team are so distressing for so many reasons. Here ar a few tht I can come up with, eary in the morning before spoeeding off to work:

1. Think what you will about college basketball and sporta in general, the members of the team have worked hard for years to achiveve the honor of winning the championship. Little did they know that their achievememt would be besmirched by a fool with a big mouth.
   
2. With a single misplacved comment, Don Imus shifted the attention away from peole who actually accomplished something difficult, to himself.
3. Add to the fact that again a white man is reaping he attention deserved by blacks.
4. Add to the fact that MSNBC is backed into a financial box by this incident. They can and should fire Imus. That would be the fate that any of the rest of us would suffer for making this kind of remark. But if they cut Imus loose, he just gets poicked up by someone else. When it's a contest between principle and the almoghty dollar, principle loses.
5. Add to thr fact that Imus's "apology" on Al Sharpton's radio show was combative and belligerent. Kind of a "how dare you call me a raciost" kind of aplogy. Imus claims that "he is not a bad person, but a good person who did a bad thing." If Jesus called a women's basketball team a bunch of that would be a good person saying a bad tbning. But Imus is no Jesus. He is not a good person, but a person who is good and bad. To deny his own sinfulness and proposensity for evil is a sign of his moral blindness.

We have all probably thought and even said things that were cruel, unwise, racist, homophobic or misanthropic in one sense or another. These things are not accidents. They come from deep within us, in a place that fears the stranger and the unfamiliar. Some of us are very good at hiding these dark impulses. But no human being can say that he or she is without them. They can be managed but they cannot be eradicated.

For Imus to say that his ciomments come from a pure heart is nonsense. No one's heart is pure. For MSNBC to allow him to go on is to sanction the idiot cult of name-calling and immaturity that has taken the place of public debate. For news outlets to repeat the racist insult is simply to teach it to a new generation of kids and to paradoxically increase Imus's popularity among thr empty-headed testosterone-soaked fools that make up his audience is inexcusable, bad sadly, quite typical.

What a sorry mess we have made of our media.