So this Imus thing... I'd like to hear the whole initial incident for context. I don't understand why nappy headed hos is necessarily racial. I don't see why there couldn't be a white girl with nappy hair that plays college basketball. So first I'd like to know, if I can tell from the context, if Imus was simply being insulting (in which case you can hear far worse insults every day on a lot of radio shows), or if he was including their race as part of the insult.

If the latter, then maybe he should be fired. But I'd like to see the standards held all around. I believe I have heard the word "honkies" used on black talk radio shows. I know that Jesse Jackson called New York "hymie-town," and unlike "nappy headed hos," "hymie" is very definitely an ethnic slur in any context, and I'm pretty sure no one threatened to fire him from anything over it.

I really don't want to defend Imus. One, I think he's a jerk, and two, I have a feeling if I heard the tape I would agree he was over the line. But I'm going to defend him. You can't just randomly select this one comment out of all the over the line comments made on radio every day. Enforce standards on everyone or no one.