That's a very interesting take, especially the part about your joke and the reaction of the white liberals to your comment. Many people in our circles are overly sensitive to comments. You ought to hear what activists say in their meetings if somebody makes the slightest offensive mark about race, geneder or whatever.
I listened to Imus for several months back when I lived in the D.C. area. He was mildly entertaining, but not somebody I missed when I moved on to listening to other stations.
In your last paragraph you touch on one reason why I'm offended by Imus' remarks, especially the "jigaboo" part of that exchange. I think that the older white men of Imus' generation should be held to a tighter standard on these issues. These guys are mostly arrogant privileged pricks who have lived lives where everything revolved around them. If any group of people have held back progress on racial and gender issues, it's Imus' generation and folks older then him. These are the people, after all, who constitute the core of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News' core fanbase. This is the generation that has benefited from entrenched racial and gender policies and institutions. Remember that the women of Imus' generation where the ones who fought in that wave of feminism that developed in the late 1960s. The men of Imus' generation where the pricks who supported the Vietnam War and made jokes about hippies. The motherfuckers still make jokes about hippies.
Imus should not get a free pass because he is an entertainer who makes living off of being offensive. Imus and others of his ilk get away with this crap and the light treatment of them sends the message to white guys that it is ok to be offensive and to hold these retrograde ideas about women and people of color.
Imus' comment also offends me because it is directed at some talented women atheletes. Imus is being disrespectful and an asshole on a scale that is unprecedented. These woman athletes almost won a National NCAA Championship. They didn't get into any scandal that might subject them to public ridicule. Imus' remarks also piss me off as a long time supporter of women's sports. I've seen the Tennessee women's team play in person. I've been to more than one WNBA game. I'm tired of listening to sports radio and listening to asshole guys put down women's sports. Imus is part of that problem.
Fuck him.
Chuck