Don Imus is fired — again — and the silence is quite welcome

Don Imus is finally off the air.

Certainly he deserved to be fired. There was nothing redemptive in his racial slur against the Rutgers women's' basketball team.

We hope something good can come from Imus' comeuppance.

Perhaps America will finally see the pendulum of angry, hurtful talk radio has swung far enough. Perhaps the shock jocks and mad-as-hell pundits that many of us love can find a way to make a living while toning down their gratuitous slander. And perhaps we, the collective audience, can demand a higher standard in our national discourse.

Stocktonian Ort Lofthus saw through Imus right from the start. He didn't hesitate to fire him from KJOY back in the '70s. How our values changed from those old days.

Imus left Stockton and became immensely popular for all the wrong reasons. If he's allowed back on the air, he might well command another large audience, but we hope not.

In the beginning, Imus may have served a purpose. His anything-goes ranting may have opened up topics Americans struggle with, such as race and political correctness. But for 30 years, he accomplished this goal in the most personally hurtful way possible.

Finally the gratuitous insults and empty-headed anger caught up with him.

We think there's a difference between Imus and others who have laughed at Americans who get all wobbly in the knees every time they talk about race. Comics such as Dave Chappelle and Carlos Mencia often utter racial stereotypes and even insults, but they don't stoop to re-enforcing the ugliest stereotypes. They are not malicious. They are consciously equal when they poke fun and adopt a certain humanity that lampoons our stuffiness — not the texture of our hair.

To give Imus his due, we do admire what he's done with his ranch for kids with cancer.

It is possible that Imus might have survived had this been an isolated incident. Unfortunately, though, this seems to have been the ugliest utterance in a series of marginal diatribes.

Perhaps if CBS and MSNBC had given him a second chance, he could have undergone a sort of public anger management training. Maybe we could have learned something worthwhile from his struggle for redemption.

But the networks, the advertisers and most Americans don't think grumpy, nasty Don is capable of worthwhile new tricks.

He's gone from the public stage. We appreciate the silence.

— The Lodi News-Sentinel