Imus and the F word

Don Imus is fired.

It is quite likely that the popular, controversial, risk-taking, crude (choose your own term) radio personality will never work in broadcasting again.

Or he might be back (on XM or Sirius, perhaps) by the end of the Spring Semester.

Imus and his now-infamous comment about the Rutgers Women's Basketball Team brings a lot of societal and media issues to the surface.

•Is he a racist, or a sexist, or both, or neither?
•Is his unceremonious canning a defeat for uninhibited free speech, or is it a victory for the free speech of relatively powerless young women and their coach in responding to a powerful media figure?
•Do his comments represent a new low for our popular culture, or does his firing signal that our popular culture has finally touched bottom, and is now ready to bounce back up?
•And what about the advertisers who yanked their advertising over the incident? Are they heroes or cowards? Or was that just business?

There has been a lot of interesting commentary over this story during the past several days. I began today's discussion after playing an NPR News Analysis by the venerable Daniel Schorr.

MWF classes only

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #36