One comment. One phrase. Three words.

Words spoken by a man I'm not particularly fond of. A man who has for many years made his living as a “shock jock”, always pushing the limits, tweaking the sensibilities of his listeners, because that's what those listeners wanted him to do.

Don Imus is not the worst of the shock jocks. He's certainly not the worst of people in the public media. And what he said was, while not particularly nice, no worse than many other things he's said in the past, about many people. And it certainly doesn't hold a candle to things that have been said by various “Hip Hop” singers (or perhaps I should say ' Hip Hop “singers” '), nor (when it comes down to it) even by people like Ann Coulter.

“Nappy Headed Ho's”. How much can people make of three words?

So much, that I've lost all respect for a lot of people over this. Let's start with Jesse Jackson. He's always seemed to me mostly harmless, always around to step out and orate poorly (that rhyming thing has GOT to go) whenever an issue involving race comes up, and really not doing much else, certainly not capable of doing any real damage to the nation. And yet to hear him speak on tonight's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, those three words are the most heinous thing to happen to blacks and women since slavery ended and suffrage was granted.

Next, there's Keith Olbermann himself. I have generally enjoyed his program, he's been willing to take stands on some things I think desperately need taking a stand on. Mr. Olbermann, this was not one of those. It was not worthy of fully half of your television show tonight, and it was certainly not worth the self-righteous “I was one of those who insisted there was no place for Don Imus at MSNBC” statement you made.

And there is the MSNBC news president (or some such title, I missed his name) on the Olbermann show tonight, trying to portray the decision to remove Imus from MSNBC's schedule as somehow a torturous thing that he had to go through, with much hand wringing. As though removing Imus were some horrible but noble deed he's done as opposed to a severe overreaction to one more comment, hardly worse than many others you'd hear out of Imus any day of the week.

Let's be clear, the original three words were insulting. Big deal. It's insulting to all Americans when the President speaks to us in his patronizing tone, as though we're all 6 and he's trying to explain nuclear (er, nucyuler) physics to us. It's insulting to people with Parkinson's Disease when Rush Limbaugh makes fun of Michael J. Fox for having it. It's insulting to anyone who has ever lost anyone to a drunk driver when Bill O'Reilly insists that there's something especially heinous when the drunk driver who killed the person was an illegal alien, as though the deaths of everyone who has died at the hands of a CITIZEN driving drunk were somehow okay. It's insulting to my intelligence any time Howard Stern opens his mouth.

The thing is, Don Imus' job is to shock his listeners. Can you imagine trying to do that job for twenty hours per week, always treading the line, pushing just enough to titillate listeners? Wouldn't you, occasionally, slip up, cross the line, say something you probably wouldn't have said on a better day?

But of course the problem with my whole diatribe here is that it's easy for me as a white man, not part of any group insulted by Mr. Imus, to say the whole matter has been overblown. So let me finish by pointing you to a couple of posts on the Huffington Post. Both are by black men, and both put more eloquently than I why this story should have been a non-starter, a momentary bit of indignation on the part of the Rutger's basketball team that quickly blows over.

First, there's Earl Ofari Hutchinson, who asks why this comment by Imus gets so much play while many prominent rappers say much more insulting things about black women and they're considered cool.

The second is a letter from Edward Lawson (posted by Norman Horowitz), whose take on the whole thing has to be read, I can't do it justice here.

Let it go. If you don't like what Imus said, do what I did years ago when I tired of him: Tune to another station and don't look (or listen) back. If enough people do that, he'll be fired when his show no longer gets the ratings. But this whole backlash by people who never listen to Imus insisting that he should be removed from the air for providing, essentially, what his audience is looking for is preposterous.