Daily Blague

Although I've never listened to Don Imus on the radio, and have no intention tuning in, I believe that NBC's bow to the forces of political correctness is a terrible mistake. Mr Imus may make racist remarks, but the simple fact is that those remarks have an audience. So long as the entertainer's remarks steer clear of the imperative mood, openly urging listeners to act on their prejudices, market forces ought to be allowed to determine whether his show is viable. By acceding to the likes of Al Sharpton, NBC executives are showing that they don't know their own job, which is to keep the airwaves open to a diversity of voices.

This isn't to say that Don Imus oughtn't to be sanctioned. Banishing him from the airwaves for a couple of weeks - I've no problem with that. His fans need a time-out, too. Mr Imus said a bad thing, and he deserves to sit in the nuisance corner for a while. And then he deserves to be forgiven. To drop his show is to brand him with a permanent (or semi-permanent) stigma; it is to withhold forgiveness. And for what? For being rude and insulting. To say what he said about the Rutgers basketball players was uncivil and nasty. But it was not "racist." Quite the opposite! Can't anybody see that the remark was a lame attempt to sound like a bro'? If there's an issue here, it's low-grade Afro-American misogyny.

Don Imus is, on the evidence, a jackass. And so are his listeners. So are all the middle-aged white men who misguidedly cling to their youth by affecting the styles of the young, which they will never really understand. Hurt feelings aside - and I must say that I am very tired of living in the era of Hurt Feelings - Mr Imus's comment was what in the law is called a "harmless error." There was no real damage. To banish the talk-show host from MSNBC - to refuse forgiveness - is both childish and infantilizing. Taking Don Imus off the air is not going to raise anybody's consciousness. He ought to be on the air until, like me, no one listens.