The Imus case made clear

[elfs]

I think jaylake turned me on to this explanation from Kung Fu Monkey, and it's the one that makes the most sense to me about why there's been such an uproar over the Don Imus case:

For all these years, Imus stayed, barely, on the right side of the power equation. Always gone after public figures, or his bosses ...

... but then he screwed up. He didn't steal power, he used it. Used it to say just shitty things about people who, in our minds, just didn't deserve it. He broke the power equation. And when he did, we balked, even if we don't quite understand why this one got under our skin. The wiring goes both ways. It's actually heartening, because it confirms one of the admirable things about American society at large:

America loves a rebel.

America loves a bad boy.

But America hates a fucking bully.

I don't think it's simply a matter of "gone too far," as William Buckley so desperately wants it to be. And I agree: what we've seen is one of the admirable things about the American mindset.

I could analogize this line of reasoning to why Americans have turned against the war in Iraq, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.