Don Imus has been fired by CBS.

Imus no longer has his show "Imus in the Morning" because of his racist comments against the woman's basketball team of Rutgers last Friday.

Good. He should have been. There is no room for someone who specifically aims such racist comments at the women of a very successful basketball team as he did. and for those who don't think it was racist, listen to the kind words he spoke about the "good-looking white girls" on the Tennessee team. The only people who will object to CBS firing Imus will be the other racists who feel threatened by such social opprobrium and real penalties for despicable behavior they don't want to give up.

The red herring that Rap artists use the same terms all the time without penalty is ridiculous. Sure it is disgusting when Rap artists "use those words," but they are using them generally. That is a lot less than what Imus did. The rap "artists" are not calling real live very talented people in front of everyone those names. Which is not to defend the Rap artists' use of the terms. They also deserve to be taken down for such incivilities. But they don't point to specific women right in fron of them and call her a "ho" to her face on national radio and TV just to entertain an audience!

That is what Imus did to those fine young women when they fought on a team that came literally out of nowhere (in basketball terms) and amazingly made it to the final championship.

Then there is the fact that, very stupidly, Imus said what he did on national TV. He has done this several times before, but (as far as I can find) never on TV. In this case, it was picked up by UTube, and I was able to watch it that afternoon. Always before it was on radio, and he was able to simply apologize and continue as before. Most of his fans liked it, and the rest of us never saw it. Rush Limbaugh has said the same kinds of things, but when he has tried it on TV his shows failed.

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Addendum 1:36 PM CDT
Editor & Publisher brings back a column from 1995 in which the late columnist for New York's 'Daily News," Lars-Erik Nelson discusses the disgusting vulgarity of the Don Imus show, and the even worse sanctimony of politicians who go on the show to reach their age 18 to 36 male voters, then stand up in the Senate and complain about how bad TV and Hollywood have become. Specifically named is the unctuous Senator Joe Lieberman.

I thought that Phil Gramm and John Cornyn of Texas were rotten Senators and not worth much as people. I didn't know of Joe then.

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Addendum 2 5:44 CDT
Apparently slate has picked up my argument here, so let me make it stronger. The vulgarity of music, radio, TV and the blogosphere is to be deplored. But what Don Imus said is far beyond that. It was a combination of racism and bullying of specific individuals who had no reason to expect it, for no purpose other than to titillate his audience.

A conservative blogger made a comment that if the members of the Rutgers basketball team can't handle the insult, they should look to themselves and toughen up. In the long run that may be true, but those women have pulled off an amazing feat by going all the way from Basketball nowhere to competition for the national title. They did that by being focused on what they were doing and ignoring unimportant side issues, one of which is how to deal with *ssh*le bullies who want to look good in front of an approving crowd that is not emotionally any better than he is.

Imus seems to think he is a "good person." OK. From what I hear, he actually does some good things. That does not immunize him from blame for the fact that his comments were plain, low-level bullying of people who had no reason to expect to have to deal with him. Unlike rappers, the victims of this bullying can be identified in this case.

I am an older white guy who graduated from a segregated all-white high school. I didn't ask that it be segregated, and for many years I did not understand what it meant that it was; certainly not in the personal terms for the Black students who went to the other high school. Obviously I still do not understand how it feels to be told that I am inferior even as I achieve one of the greatest feats of athletics in years as these women have. But I don't have to bully some of the finest Black women athletes in the nation just to make myself feel better than them or to make a similarly retrograde audience feel good about themselves, either. That is what Imus did.

We do not need people who earn a living by bullying others to titillate an audience. If it were his first time, Don Imus might sufficiently abase himself and apologize to save his job. As Clarence Page has pointed out, this is not Don's first time - or his second or his third. Always before he has apologized and skated.

This time our society has grown enough so that being paid to be a racist bully costs the advertisers too damned much money, so they are bailing on him. Imus is a dinosaur whose schtick has passed and become unacceptable. America has done away with slavery, then with segregation, and now it is eliminating racism and making bullying into something socially unacceptable. A society defines itself by who it rejects. Rejecting Don Imus tells us that our society is getting better.

Anyone who doesn't recognize this needs to look into themselves to see why they approve of racism and bullying. It is Imus, his audience and those who support him that are wrong in this case. The rest of us don't need them.