Has the "get Imus" crowd scored a historic triumph over racism? Or has the mob mostly proved the Right's point about how clueless we Lefties are?

The world is but a broken toy,
Its pleasures hollow, false its joy.
Unreal its loveliest hue, alas!
Its pains alone are true, alas!
Its pains alone are true.

I haven't posted for a while, for a number of reasons, one of which is, say, did you ever get the feeling that what's the point? what does it matter? what the heck difference does it make?

The Bush craziness goes on. We keep finding out more astonishing and lurid detail about the history of the craziness, the nuts-and-bolts of this misbegotten regime. But it doesn't seem to make any difference.

Apparently we now get our Fifth Amendment law via "Messiah College" (sorry, I can't stop myself from putting quotes around that name) and the esteemed Law School of what has now come to be known as "Pat Robertson's Regent University"--esteemed for the claimed 150 law school graduates infesting the Bush regime. Yes, thanks to that fine legal scholar Monica Goodling, we know that you can mail in an official Fifth Amendment "chuck you, Farley" on the ground that they're such meanies.

So Karl Rove has systematically transformed the U.S. attorneys and the Government Services Administration into propaganda arms of the nazified Republican Party? As the TV Felix Unger used to say, "Sew buttons!"

Meanwhile the war goes on, and some smart people say, No, we should call it an "occupation." The Bushpeople hate the word "occupation." Right, and the part of the country that barely notices we're fighting a war (if this were a war, wouldn't we have won it already?) is going to be really broken up by the news that we're occupied with, er, occupying something-or-other.

I guess you can't blame the smart people for going nuts. In this environment, who could stay sane? But really, could there be anything sillier than this chorus of cackling from people who imagined they were crusading to save democracy and decency, faith and hope--from Imus! (I tell you what could have saved Faith and Hope: decent writing.)

I've even read some normally really smart people, people I respect, really and truly, joshing about how they bet next we'll hear that Imus is going to rehab! As far as I can tell, they think they're being ironic, having no idea that Imus has a long and intimate history with rehab--a number of rehabs he wasn't serious about, and the one he was. It never occurs to them, who think they know all they need to know about him when in fact they don't know a fucking thing about him, that there all sorts of subjects, like rehab, he actually knows about.

Now, I'm not here to defend Imus. For one thing, as I've mentioned here a number of times, I'm a former Imus listener, and there are powerful reasons for that. Of course--and here we do shade into the ironic--they have hardly anything to do with the I-man's present difficulties.

But, and here's another reason I'm not here to defend Imus, I don't doubt that he's gotten out of control to the point where he really deserves a good smackdown. Hell, I'll go further. It could be that he's in need of a good firing. Back in the day, meaning his drinking-and-drugs days, he got fired often enough--and shuttled off to rehab or, worse, Cleveland--to periodically put him back in touch with his anarchic genius.

Is genius too strong a word? I don't know. But once upon a time, Imus was not only wildly funny but seriously funny, in a gleefully pull-no-punches way. He punctured pomposity wherever he found it, which was everywhere. Starting with himself, and any pretensions he might have developed toward grandiosity. Explaining why he had no interest in getting to know listeners or developing a relationship with them, he was the first to tell us that in real life he's exactly the same A-hole we hear on the radio. When he started to refer to himself as "the I-man," it was a term of self-ridicule.

Do the people who've been "saving" us from Imus have any idea how much he's made fun of himself? You can't pull one quote out of context and brand it as hate speech while ignoring the equally vicious things said about everyone else, starting with himself. What was always so exhilarating about him was that he was an equal-opportunity ridiculer. Everyone was fair game, and everyone got it.

Of course, the thing is that back in the day, puncturing balloons of pomposity meant above all sticking it to the powerful. While Imus was raking in money for "the suits," he ridiculed them mercilessly, and they took it--until it got to be too much and it was time to send him off to rehab, or Cleveland.

Recently I reported on the remarkable decision that TV's Craig Ferguson announced on the air on his Late Late Show: not to do any more jokes about Britney Spears while she was so clearly and desperately in need of help. I based my little item on a published account, but after that I saw a repeat of the actual show. I was blown away. It may have been the most remarkable thing I'd seen on TV since Craig returned from Scotland and did an entire show about the death of his father.

On this occasion Craig made it clear that he was speaking only for himself, and wouldn't presume to tell anyone else what to do or say. But he had found himself really hating the direction his comedy had taken, increasingly making fun of people who couldn't help themselves. He had reached the understanding that it wasn't fun making fun of powerless people, and he didn't think it was funny either.

Obviously this is a lesson Imus could stand to learn. Or rather re-learn, because he once knew it better than most anyone. I think the reason he's so stung now by accusations that he's a racist or bully is that he has always identified with the little guy, the outsider. It's who he was, and it's the glimpses into their outsider upbringing that used to make his on-air conversations with his weirdly lovable brother Fred--conversations that could go anywhere--so endearing.

Maybe the successful rehab was Imus's undoing. Because for once he didn't self-destruct in the face of success. Instead he did something I don't think he'd ever done before: He started taking himself seriously.

It wasn't that he started having serious people on the show--the pols and journalists whose names have been recounted endlessly, as if there was some shame in appearing on Imus. The fact is, many of them were great on Imus.

Frank Rich was always a treat. Jeff Greenfield too--I'd been watching him on TV for years and had no idea he was that smart or insightful or funny. Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw showed a side of themselves that never came through in their network news straitjackets.

James Carville's brain hadn't imploded yet--he was still the feistiest and bluntest liberal we were apt to hear. Even when he started appearing with Mary, she still seemed almost human, and there was something touching about James's lament that they felt their joint appearances had become like holding up a sign that says "Will bicker for food."

Of course, the format could be manipulated. As I've confessed here, I was totally taken in by the "voice of reason" persona created and perpetuated by Joe Lieberman. What can I say? Holy Joe had worked very hard on that persona; it's what made his political career possible.

Maybe Imus could be faulted for allowing his old bullshit meter to rust? Nah, I really can't blame him for that--although it's hard to imagine the old Imus sitting still for any of these self-important types. But no, that wasn't the problem. A lot of the "current events" interviews were terrific.

No, the problem was that Imus came to think of himself as a real force in politics and political journalism, which perhaps he was coming to be, and worst of all, he had switched sides. He may not have worn a suit, but he turned into one. I guess he succumbed to all the kissing up of all the fashionably right-wing gentry he now socialized with.

And it crept into the tone of his presentation of even his roster of liberal guests, who became sort of like zoo creatures to him. There were, too, the increasingly snide references to the clearly bone-headed attitudes of "my liberal friends." I wrote just recently about the trauma I endured when 60 Minutes underwent a transformation from scourge of the powerful and entrenched to their defender. That's the feeling I now had about Imus in the Morning. After an awful lot of years, it was time to kick the habit.

I think when it all became too much for me, and I had to go cold turkey to break the Imus habit once and for all, the person I missed most was loyal sidekick Charles McCord, a bright and witty and graciously low-key fellow of clearly conservative disposition, but old-style conservative, meaning respectful of others. And loyal. Chuck was nothing if not loyal to the I-man. I suppose he was also making a lot of money, and enjoying unprecedented job stability with the I-man no longer bound for rehab (or Cleveland).

I'm sure the growing influence of producer Bernard McGuirk was no help. I don't think there's much question that Bernie is a big-league bigot, but it's curious how selectively this seems to bother people. He can also be extremely funny, and when he started doing his "Good morning and God bless" routines as then-Cardinal O'Connor, he could be riotous. I suppose there were howls of protest from the Catholic Defense League, or whoever it is who makes it their mission to make sure that Catholics are never spoken of other-than-beatifically. I don't recall that any movement developed to save the Church from Imus's depradations.*

Of course ridiculing those Rutgers women basketballers isn't the same thing, and that's inexcusable, even assuming that the program retains some of its old we-insult-everybody ecumenism. At the same time, from the media beatification of the Rutgers women's team, one might be forgiven for thinking that one of the most pressing issues in our national conversation is the lack of reverence for athletes.

Would you believe that there are cranks who insist that one of these days we're in fact going to have to have a serious national conversation about our unholy worship of athletes and how it warps our society? Some of those cranks have already banded together to give us the altogether remarkable NBC drama Friday Night Lights, about which I've also written here.

By the way, as Friday Night Lights has shown, when we get around to having that national conversation about athletics, it's going to involve an inescapable collision with a subject we will go to almost any lengths to avoid: race in America.

So no, I'm not here to defend Imus. I do wonder, though, if anything can be done to mute the tone of triumphalism with which liberals are currently crowing, as if some historic triumph over bigotry had been achieved. At least Keith Olbermann had the decency and sense to ask tonight when the same treatment will be accorded the prominent media racists of the Right--authentic racists, I would say.

I wouldn't hold my breath, Keith.


*FOOTNOTE
How could I have failed to mention that those brilliant, gloriously scabrous "Cardinal" routines were written by none other than innocent-altar-boy-seeming Charles McCord? Sorry, Chuck. And a hearty "Which doesn't belong and why?" to you.