Update: Money does really talk. MSNBC announced they're dumping the Imus show simulcast. While the NBC head made it sound like he was shocked, shocked that Don Imus could say such things, I'm sure he was more shocked when major advertisers General Motors, GlaxoSmithKline and Procter & Gamble decided to pull their ad dollars from the show. - April 12, 2007

Radio Show Down

First of all, their hair isn't nappy.

The women of the Rutgers basketball team are anything but "nappy-headed hos," as they
were despicably labeled by radio shock jock Don Imus. From the news conference pics I saw, they all had really sleek, well-groomed dos.

Look, I'm as much for free speech as anyone else. And speech that shows what everyone
knows, that Don Imus is an ass, is fine with me. But what gets me is, he's getting fired at in every direction by people who fall over themselves to get on his show.

And even though the talk-show host with the nasty racial and sex slurs about a bad-ass Rutgers women's basketball team is being publicly chastened, with his mea culpa to the media, money talks. I mean, the guy's radio show has 2 million listeners daily. And he makes these offensive remarks and then has the biggest players in the political scene on his show. It's like he's channeling his inner frat boy with an inner desire to play interviewer.

And the guests play along. Until Mr. Imus goes and does something really dumb.

Not that these classy, angry women ever asked to be thrown into a media maelstrom from a mouthpiece that gets his jollies off by picking on some college athletes who did nothing to deserve his invective but play really well. He says this stuff for radio play. His audience eats it up, advertisers make their money, everyone goes home happy.

But Imus slurred the wrong bunch of women. They're talking back to the talking head. This greasy-headed old white guy is headed for a fall.