Is that really you Pat? Nah, must be Kent lurking aloud from your terminal.

Pat wrote: Imus was a sacrificial liberal lamb offered up to send notice of what can happen in the future.

Gotta agree with your conclusion.

When was the Fairness Doctrine ever fair anyhow. It was a means of chilling speech, limiting conversation.

And PK, on this thread, you're no better than the O'Reilly types: attacking the messengers rather than speaking to the message. That said, I'm am generally appreciative of your comments, AND, I'm undoubtedly guilty too.

And as for me, I miss Air America. I didn't realise it was gone entirely, I thought it just faded out in my neck of the woods. Which is really odd as this is a Gentry left wonderland electorally. And yet, the local guy was resorting to PBS begging. Might've gone better if he'd followed the entire annoying formula(give and we'll return you to the program). So, I'm going to miss Randi and especially Thom Hartmann(interesting fella that one).

And David, the Huffington article was way off base. Supposedly, Imus' market is angry white men over 35. That according to two national experts in the field of talk radio. When I'm up that early(6-9am) on Saturday mornings I listen to a radio program about this week in talk radio, a national review. Kinda interesting what with clips from all over the nation. Anyhow, that's their conclusion. One of them also pointed out that the FCC had not received a single complaint; meaning this was a media driven fiasco, which I too submit was an other step in justifying the limitations of speech. (Which reminds me, did anybody else hear that Free Speech Zones were disavowed by the courts? I haven't seen the documentation so I'm still hoping it's true!)

I didn't listen to Imus in his shock jock days, but since I began listening to him(maybe 7-10 years ago), I listened because of his interviews and some skits were okay. Granted most of his guests are liberals but they were interviews and commentary from the horses mouth, sometimes unguarded(which I particularly liked). Which made the whole tiresome hipster thing tolerable(but it was hardly shocking).

Btw, these experts(ones name was Levine) said Imus has offers and could be back on the air Monday, as there is nothing in his contract to exclude him from competing immediately. One said he wouldn't be surprised if he ended up on the air again at CBS' WFAN(his now former base of operations).

It was also pointed out that economic boycott was the sole reason for his axing. And I'm betting that's what irks Imus the most, as he was always patting himself on the back about being #1 in ad revenue, if not audience share.

Anyhow, let it snow. We're only about 2 degrees from snow at our elevation.

peaceably