Social - Don Imus situation

"What do you think about the Don Imus thing?" is really at least 3 different questions.

1. Were his comments outrageous enough that you would want him off the air? Not really. I tend not to get overly bent out of shape over public statements, but I can certainly understand people who take the other side of this one. 2. Do you think it's reasonable that he was, in fact, fired, and that people brought concerted pressure to bear to get him fired? Absolutely. That's economic free speech and freedom of association. First of all, despite my answer to #1, if I owned a business and I had an employee refer to ANYONE as "nappy-headed hos" and he was overheard by FIVE people, let alone a national audience, I'd have fired him. Above and beyond that, the economic pressure tactic is one of the great things about a free society. He's not thrown in jail. He's not thrown off the air by a coercive government. He just ****es people off. And when he ****es enough people off, those people say, "Hey, you can advertise wherever you want, but if you advertise on this jackball's station, we're not going to buy your product." And then the advertisers say, "Hey, you can have whoever you want on your station, but if you have this guy on, we're not going to buy that spot." So you get a nice chain of people pretty much doing what they want, but having to live with the consequences. That's how it should be. 3. Do Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have any business calling out someone for offensive, racist speech? Legally, sure...they get to exercise their free speech, too. But as a matter of principle? C'mon. What a pair of opportunistic, racist hypocrites.