Imus

Mrs. Evan and I had a debate about Imus being fired for his stupid Rutgers comment. My position was (and is) that society is too sensitive, and we need to get over ourselves. People are dying all over the world -- from violence, from hunger and from disease -- and here in America, we're worried about a stupid insult.

For the purpose of self-disclosure, I want to point out that I've watched Imus a couple of times, and I kind of liked his cantankerous, no-punches-pulled demeanor; but I'm not a fan per se. I also agree that his quip was colossally stupid and insensitive. At the end of the day though, I think it was an idiotic remark and the tree-hugging, politically-correct crowd got all worked up for the wrong reasons.

My wife looked at things somewhat differently. In fact, she completely disagreed with me, and said that Imus deserved to be fired. I said "Look, the guy made a stupid, gargantuan mistake."

"Yes," she replied. "And if you or I made a huge mistake at work, we could expect to get fired too." She won the argument with that point.

With that said though, I think that Imus is being judged a little harshly. Though I now agree that he did probably deserve to lose his job, I really think his comment was a by-product of being an abrasive, cranky old man, and not racially related. When he realized what he said, he quickly apologized, and I believe that he honestly regretted his words. Imus' screw-up wasn't even close to what Michael Richards did.

In the end, I guess my whole issue with the Imus issue is that we, as a society, are heading for an Orwellian form of wrong-speak and wrong-think. What do you think?