NOW THAT THE DUST HAS SETTLED

OK ... It's been about four days since CBS pulled the plug on Don Imus. We've had a weekend to calm down and think about things. So .... are you sitting around today and wondering just what in the hell happened here? I suspect a lot of people are wondering just how this incident over a bad jock joke became a 24/7 news story that cost an iconic broadcaster his career. Sure ... what Don Imus said was mindless and cruel. He admits it. But it was nothing that heard every day of the week on hundreds of rap stations across America. The big difference here? Al Sharpton stormed into the picture and the media ran with the story ... big time.

This a story about rhetoric ... racial rhetoric. Just where in our culture has the true degeneration of rhetoric occurred? Has the rhetorical rot advanced more from the era of white racists like David Duke to Don Imus, or from the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. to Al Sharpton? Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for a little over 8 minutes during that march on Washington in August of 1963. Al Sharpton was about 9 years old then, and the combined effect of every word that Sharpton has uttered from that date can't add up to King's eight minutes.

Al Sharpton, the man who once referred to "Greek homos", "White interlopers", and "diamond merchants" (as a euphemism for Jews), was the man who sat in judgment of Imus. Imus, though edgy and often crude, is a man with a giving spirit. Someone please tell me just where Sharpton's home for children with cancer is. If you can't give me that information, perhaps you can tell me when Sharpton had his last radio fundraiser for charity. Sharpton does have a radio show, you know. Last week while Sharpton was stirring the racial brew Imus was busy raising over a million dollars for charity. Sharpton the good guy, Imus the bad.

Al Sharpton holds his National Action Conference convention this week. Virtually every single Democrat presidential candidate will show up. Every single appearance at this convention by a Democrat candidate serves to further legitimize Al Sharpton and to excuse the bigoted and hateful statements he has made in the past. During the past few days we've heard media and political figures say how bad they felt about appearing on Imus' show -- with his objectionable rhetoric now in the limelight. These same people have no problem showing up at Sharpton's conference. Al Sharpton --- a man with the blood of innocents on his hands --- beckons and the Democrats come running. Imus lays out his retirement plans.