While driving up from New Braunfels, I had a moment of clarity on the Imus issue and was going to write a long brilliant post on it.

Unfortunately, by the time I got up here Radley Balko had said everything I wanted to say, only better. He has the best take on the comment:

Imus isn’t a racist. He’s a misanthrope. He hates people. All people. His show made broad, possibly offensive generalizations about everyone on a near-daily basis. We now learn that the Rutgers women’s basketball team was apparently hurt and offended by the comments. But were they really? I’d hazard to guess that not a single one of them was listening to the show that morning.

The Right:

Of course, the conservative reaction to all of this is pretty stupid, too. “Look at all the rap music! They call women ‘hos’ too!”

No, you idiots. How typical. The answer to politically incorrect censorship is not…more political incorrect censorship.. Not to mention that Imus’ comment was stupid, lame humor. Hip hop is art. Sharpton and Jackson actually are going after hip hop. And their efforts to take words away from rap artists are every bit as lame (lamer, actually) than their attempt to take words away from clueless, aging disc jockeys.

The Left:

Drudge also reported the other day that many activist groups were protesting Imus to the FTC, as well, a’la Brent Bozell. Note to my lefty friends: When you’re imitating Brent Bozell, you’re doing something wrong.

And what I think is the most important point, so much that I made a big deal out of it in my first post on the subject:

I guess my point is that it’d be nice if all the energy spent the last two weeks expressing self-righteous outrage over a mistaken comment from a harmless old fool were instead spent on, say, the racial sentencing disparities in the criminal justice system, or the fact that a substantially higher percentage of black men are in prison in America than were imprisoned in South Africa during apartheid.

Read it.

Was listening to Rush today and he was very dimissive of the Boortz concern that the Imus fiasco is the beginning of a campaign to get rid of talk radio. As he said, they’ve been after him for 18.5 years.

Both Sully and, I can’t believe I’m typing this, Snoop have a good response to the Right’s “what about rap?” meme. There is a difference between a black man dissing black people and a white man dissing black people. It may not be fair, but that’s the way it is. It’s one thing to bash your own group, it’s quite another to bash somebody else’s.

I’m going to have to tread carefully here. I shouldn’t stick my foot in the racial waters surrounding Don Imus. But I think there are three points to make:

First, what Imus said was out of line and disgusting. He should be punished. And don’t come at me with free speech. You have a right to say what you want . . . and the responsibility to take the consequences. He has no Constitutional right to have a job. And I’m afraid I have to disagree with the first half of Boortz’s comments. I don’t think this is a liberal conspiracy to “get” right-wing talk show hosts. We heard that when Trent Lott was forced to step down, that this was just the beginning of getting Republican after Republican. It was garbage then and it’s garbage now. There was no equivalent outcry when Rush Limbaugh “jokingly” suggested that the media was being hard on Rex Grossman because he was white. People just ignored him. Boortz has been making inflammatory comments for years, including his famous “Boo Got Shot” routine. No one’s calling for his head.

Second, and it pains me to say this, but the Right has a point. Where is the concordant outrage over violent and misogynistic rap lyrics? This has a far greater potential for doing harm in the black community than some idiot on a radio show that no one listens to. And Boortz has one point — is there any equivalent outrage over the Duke Lacrosse incident, which was highly racially charged? Are any of these same agitators backing off of their comments about how Duke, men’s sports, North Carolina and the entire nation were a bunch of racist crackers who were reponsible for this? It does seem that Mike Nifong will be held accountable for his action, however.

Finally — here’s my most controversial statement — don’t Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have something better to do with their time? While they are preening for the cameras over Imus’ words, black kids are dropping out of school, getting involved with drugs and crime, having kids out of wedlock and getting murdered. These are difficult but solvable problems.

OK, they’re politicans. Fine. How about advocating for letting non-violent drug offenders out of prison, then? How about doing something about the highway robbery that is our Social Security system? Why not advocate for fundamental education reform like school choice?

I’m reminded of 1991 when the Braves were in the World Series. There was some controversy over their logo and the Tomahawk Chop. I asked a genuine Native American, rather than a white agitator, what he thought. His response was something along the lines of, “When we’ve solved the problems of health, education, alcoholism, drug abuse, unemployment and poverty, then we can worry about offensive chants.”

Again, don’t they have something better to do? Imus’ words do not reflect some deep-seated racism in the industry or the country. He’s just a twerp on the radio. He’s now suspended and been pilloried. They’ve made their point. Move on to more pressing problems.