Don Imus was cut loose from CBS today in the culmination of his week-long battle with his critics. Now I may be alone in this, but don’t think this was quite a fair state of affairs. I am no Imus fan, but a personality that I am a fan of, Bill Maher, was treated to the same sort of media frenzy a few years back. This is a new form of blacklisting. Create “grassroots” attacks on people that disagree with you and have their sponsors pull support. It is all very “free-market” but it makes me mad.
The Christian right really perfected this technique and they have used it like a cudgel. Now any special interest with an ax to grind can create this sort of maelstrom of anger and indignation to achieve their ends. I would love to set some breaks on this, like we have on the stock market. If there is a huge drop of some percentage in some time, we stop trading. At some point in these situations, we should stop for a few days and take a few deep breaths.