Imus in the morning, Imus in the evening, ain't we got fun!

No doubt Don Imus joins the rest of the "shock-jock" world with his version of how to act like an idiot in public. The phrase "nappy-headed ho's" referring to the "rough" girls playing for the Scarlet Knight of Rutgers University is certainly out of place, derogatory and just plain rude. And? What did you expect?

These guys make their living as "shock-jocks," that means they are paid to shock us. People listen, advertisers sell their wares to those of us listening and that's it, pretty simple business transaction. What? Outrageous behavior?1st Amendment rights? What about it? This is a business deal and nothing more, don't get all politically correct over it.

The First Amendment guaranteeing our freedom of speech was designed with a purpose in mind by the Founding Fathers. That purpose is to expose stupid people by letting them open their mouth. If we kept them from talking, then no one would realize they were stupid. Pretty smart bunch, those Founding Fathers.

Now if things really get out of hand, the FCC (Federal Communication Commission) will be there to save us, after all, we can't include vulgar speech under those freedoms. Expletives will be met with severe fines, maybe even enough to offset the revenue flowing in from those listening to hear what outrageous thing might be said next. But other than that, it is pretty much free game for anyone to prove their stupidity in the national airwaves. You want to stand up for something, how about raising a fuss over Howard Stern's treatment of women (white or black) on his show. Only trouble with that would be most of the time he is just providing a means for their stupidity of even being there, oh well, back to the original plan of the founders. Howard is just wishing he called those girls something better than Imus did before Imus got all the credit.

What really makes this fun and interesting is that the very people who stand up and insist on freedoms, insist on equality, insist on fair treatment of everyone at all times and rub our noses in the dirt of the ACLU, they are the first ones to stand up and demand Imus' dismissal for this outrage. Come on folks, you can't have your cake and eat it too, either we get to talk about everyone with equal disdain or we get to talk about no one at all. Those same groups don't get all up in arms when one of our national leaders gets bashed over equal rights or some such similar topic, they only get up in arms when they see a way to get "righteous." We are not a nation together anymore, we are a nation made up of a zillion small groups with specialized agendas that just happen to occupy the same basic geography. I'd say the last time we were together on much of anything was World War II, and most of the people that remember that are dead.

Was Imus fulfilling his Constitutional right to stupidity when he made those remarks? Absolutely. Was he being a political figure, aiming to discredit women in general and black women in particular by his remarks? Of course not. He just wanted to sell more ad space, and he can say and do whatever he wants to get noticed, right up to the point of getting fined for a greater sum than the ad revenue generates. If you really want it to stop, impose your own fine and stop listening, stop buying products that are advertised on the program, and stop whining about him singling out minorities in some vernacular frenzy. They are just doing their job, and exercising their Constitutional rights to stupidity at the same time.

The real sadness is that we just continue down the road of providing one more wedge in our society, one more opportunity to drive us all apart. That is what we have lost. Our decency is not being eroded, that much is already gone because we let our community fail first. You want that to change? Then start finding ways to build us back up as a nation instead of delighting each time we can be an antagonist.