I NEVER LISTENED TO AN IMUS SHOW IN MY LIFE BUT I CAN'T HELP THINKING THAT MAYBE WE WERE A LITTLE HASTY IN THE RUSH TO JUDGEMENT

Last week, when those most outraged by Imus' racist outburst were howling loudest, Ken wrote a thoughtful and unique piece on how he saw what was going on. It seemed different from what anyone else was saying and it made me stop and think. But since then, the pile-on intensified, corporate advertisers started bailing, the "debate" grew shriller and then both NBC and CBS fired Imus. People are starting to look back on what happened and worrying that maybe we-- the collective "us"-- made a mistake.

Frank Rich wrote a sketchy piece in today's NY Times called Everybody Hates Don Imus:

What Imus said about the Rutgers team landed differently, not least because his slur was aimed at young women who had no standing in the world of celebrity, and who had done nothing in public except behave as exemplary student athletes. The spectacle of a media star verbally assaulting them, and with a creepy, dismissive laugh, as if the whole thing were merely a disposable joke, was ugly. You couldn't watch it without feeling that some kind of crime had been committed. That was true even before the world met his victims. So while I still don't know whether Imus is a bigot, there was an inhuman contempt in the moment that sounded like hate to me. You can see it and hear it in the video clip in a way that isn't conveyed by his words alone.

Does that mean he should be silenced? The Rutgers team pointedly never asked for that, and I don't think the punishment fits the crime. First, as a longtime Imus listener rather than someone who tuned in for the first time last week, I heard not only hate in his wisecrack but also honesty in his repeated vows to learn from it. Second, as a free-speech near-absolutist, I don't believe that even Mel Gibson, to me an unambiguous anti-Semite, should be deprived of his right to say whatever the hell he wants to say. The answer to his free speech is more free speech — mine and yours. Let Bill O’Reilly talk about “wetbacks” or Rush Limbaugh accuse Michael J. Fox of exaggerating his Parkinson’s symptoms, and let the rest of us answer back.

Liberals are kidding themselves if they think the Imus firing won't have a potentially chilling effect on comics who push the line. Let's not forget that Bill Maher, an Imus defender last week, was dropped by FedEx, Sears, ABC affiliates and eventually ABC itself after he broke the P.C. code of 9/11. Conservatives are kidding themselves if they think the Imus execution won’t impede Ann Coulter’s nasty invective on the public airwaves. As Al Franken pointed out to Larry King on Wednesday night, CNN harbors Glenn Beck, who has insinuated that the first Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, is a terrorist (and who has also declared that “faggot” is nothing more than “a naughty name”). Will Time Warner and its advertisers be called to account? Already in the Imus aftermath, the born-again blogger Tom DeLay has called for the firing of Rosie O’Donnell because of her “hateful” views on Chinese-Americans, conservative Christians and President Bush.

And JurrasicPork takes it apart and provides the ultimate fodder for anyone claiming-- as Rich did-- that a "national conversation" is really needed. Today on Meet the Press Gwen Ifill gave that national conversation a kick start that reverberated from coast to coast.

Michael Smerconish makes some powerful points about freedom of speech in his HuffPo piece, First They Came For Imus, this morning. And Pravda-- you remember them, right?-- has an entirely different outlook on why Imus got dumped. They think he was threatening to expose the Bush Regime's 9/11 secrets.

But, to the US War Leaders, Don Imus represented the most serious threat, to date, of the growing assault against them by America's media personalities threatening to expose the truths behind the events of September 11, 2001 and the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars; and to such an extent that another American media personality, Rosie O'Donnell, has expressed concern that US Military Leaders could actually imprison Mr. Imus.