There is a limit on free speech

Freedom of speech is a cherished right in Canada and the US but there are limits as to what you can say in public. For example, you cannot publicly refer to a black person as a nigger and get away with it. Here is a tale that shows you just what can happen to a pubic figure who makes insulting comments against people in a rude and derogatory manner.

Donald Imus Jr., who was born July 23, 1940, in Riverside, California began his radio career as a disc jockey in 1968 in California, working in Palmdale, Stockton and Sacramento. He also spent a short time in Cleveland, then moved to New York in 1971, remaining there except for another brief stint in Cleveland in 1978. In 1996, the CBS Imus program, "Imus in the Morning" began simulcasting on MSNBC. There's a reason Imus was classified as a "shock jock". Just like Howard Stern, Imus liked to shock his listeners.

A scandal in 2007 erupted the day after the Rutger’s Women’s Basketball team, which includes eight women who are black and two who are white, fell to Tennessee in the NCAA women's championship. The young team, which began the season with low expectations by losing a game, nevertheless, won a big following. Speaking on air with his producer Bernard McGuirk, Imus had referred to the team as "nappy-headed hos" and "jigaboos," along with other derogatory remarks. Since slavery times, “nappy” has been used to malign the natural hair texture of many people of African descent which is dense, dark and tightly curled. “If your hair wasn't straight, it was called nappy. Nappy hair meant you weren't beautiful or desirable,” said Nsenga Burton, professor of communications and media studies at Goucher College in Baltimore. The irony of Imus' comment is that many of the Rutgers players have straightened hair. Nevertheless, nappy hair for a long time was seen as a bad thing. When Don Imus referred to the women of the Rutgers basketball team as “nappy-headed hos” – The word ‘hos’ may have been a shorted version of the word ‘hosed’ which means, “referring to a situation beyond salvage or repair”. He possibly may have been referring to the manner in which the team played basketball. However, "hos" is also the short form for"whores". The word "jigaboos" is a demeaning slang word describing back people.

Until his idiotic flameout, Don Imus was the nearest thing radio jocks ever had to a success story in talk radio.

Imus initially was given a two-week suspension for calling the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos and jigaboos on the air but outrage continued to grow and advertisers bolted from his CBS radio show and its MSNBC simulcast, so CBS fired Don Imus from his radio program on April 13, 2007, the finale to a stunning fall for one of the nation's most prominent broadcasters. Previously, his show was bringing in $20 million annually in advertising. His ten-cent brain caused him to lose his $10 million dollar annual salary.

Now this fool will no doubt get another job as a radio jock but he won’t be making the kind of money he made with CBS and MSNBC. That is the cost of being stupid when one steps over the limits of free speech. On his final show, Imus was moaning how the “hypocritical” newspapers had turned on him. Talk about being clueless --- he was counting on editorial writers to save him. Trying to save him would be akin to rearranging the deck chairs while the Titanic was sinking.