I'm not part of Imus's audience. For me to boycott his broadcasts or his sponsors makes no sense; having never listened to him, I wouldn't know who his sponsors are.

But since TAFKASE has kindly invited comment...

Yeah, he's appalling. I understand he's often appalling, because people have been so willing to pay him for his appalling behavior. If his advertisers have gotten pressure from their customers to discontinue their patronage of him, then that's the market talking. Good Republican practice, I'd say.

The first I heard about this was on the Today Show. Meredith Vieira had a couple of pointed questions to ask Al Sharpton concerning why we should draw the line on racism over Don Imus's body when he is only one of many voices degrading women and African Americans. (Strangely, misogyny is not mentioned much, even though all the women are women but only some of them are black.) Sharpton's reply was less than satisfactory. He suggested that the Feds should police the mouths of people on the air to prevent racist remarks from reaching the airwaves. When Vieira pointed out that many people on the air with this kind of civility problem are hip-hop and rap artists, Sharpton more or less brushed that off by saying that the artists are not employed by the radio stations, and therefore are not subject to Federal oversight.

Ahem.

So far, the most graceful and just remarks have come from the least willing participants: the members of Rutgers women's basketball team who have chosen to speak publicly. I'm waiting to hear from Bill Cosby.

We can leave the discussion of the First Amendment for another time.

Meanwhile, there's a very cute romantic adventure comedy playing right now on a local college station. Black & white, 1950, Claire Trevor, Fred MacMurray, Raymond Burr. Trevor is an LA policewoman assigned to get the goods on Burr, a gangster. MacMurray is an FBI agent assigned to bust the drug smuggling operation that Burr is involved with. They wind up masquerading as a honeymoon couple, smuggling dope from Mexico into California, with neither of them knowing the other is a cop. The gringos speak tolerable Spanish while they're in Mexico, the women are as smart and brave as the men, and the Mexican federales are intelligent and sophisticated. I'm going to finish watching a civilized movie, and then I'm going to work.