I avoided any comment on the Imus fiasco for the past week because it was so, well, tacky.  We all know what was said.  It is universally agreed that it was mind-bogglingly stupid.  What’s left to say?

Just one question:  Why?  So Imus popped off a shockingly inappropriate comment.  Certainly not the first time, but then again, this was blatantly racist and sexist from a former shock jock who now plays host to important public figures, and is supposed to know better.

But why care?  Obviously, he wasn’t referring to any meaningful assesment of any woman on the Rutgers basketball team.  While the young women responded that the characterization did not fit them, no one ever thought otherwise.  This really had nothing to do with them.  They were just the lunchmeat in the Imus sandwich, and it could just as easily been any other group that became the inadvertant subject of abject stupidity.  It had to do with Imus’ mouth, disengaged from his (or anyone else’s) brain.  So Imus is a jerk.  A moron.  An idiot.  So what?

Based upon Imus’ career, no one thinks Imus is really racist or sexist.  Stupid?  Sure.  But he’s done some good things too.  So much for fair and balanced.  But the real question is this dopey comment generated this much interest.  This is Imus, for god’s sake.  He’s a radio talk show host.  He is not a Washington decision maker.  He has never been elected to any position anywhere.  He is the conduit by which information is provided over the free airwaves to listeners.  It is the guests, the people who are important, that matter.  They have the power to make decisions that impact our lives.  Imus is the comic relief of his show, not the substance.

Granted, as the host of the program, Imus gets to exert a degree of influence over people’s thinking because his words reach so many, just like those other geniuses of the airwaves, Hannity and O’Reilly, whose random venom has allowed so many to believe that they are not alone in their hatred of any concept that requires more than 10 seconds of thought.  But even so, no one has ever thought, or believed, that Don Imus’ opinion on any subject matters.

To put this in perspective, take a look at the very important regulars who fill in the voids when Imus can’t get a real person to appear on his morning drive show.  Bo Dietl, a former NYC cop who can barely speak English and whose only topic of conversation is his own self-aggrandizing buffoonary?  If it wasn’t for his appearances on Imus, Bo would be hanging around the laundrymat hoping someone would toss him a quarter. Imus is not hanging around with movers and shakers, kids.

I fully support meaningful discussion on the subject of racism and sexism.  It matters.  But Don Imus doesn’t, and unfortunately we have allowed a real subject to be dictated by the half-baked comment of a radio host.  Who cares how this impacts on Imus.  Think instead how this impacts on the rest of us.  Let’s talk about how rap music lyrics have made the denigration of blacks and women fashionable.  Let’s talk about how suburban kids take comfort emulating the prison culture that has been glorified by celebrities.  But let’s not waste our time on Imus.