I say alive. I predict you’ll be hearing Imus on XM Satellite Radio any day now. I’ll bet you a frothy ale they’re in negotiations as I write.

Last week I said Don Imus belonged in the nethermost circle of hell for calling Rutgers’ near-champion women’s basketball team “nappy-headed ho’s”. But XM may be the next best place. Don’s soulmate Howard Stern is on Sirius. XM probably would love to match Howard slur for slur. XM already has Opie & Anthony but Don would add firepower.

My objection to Don was that he was using the public airwaves to spew his venom. The airwaves, O gentle reader, belong to us; the broadcasters merely license their use. But XM, Sirius, cable TV and the Internet do not rely on licensed spectrum. So go with my blessing, Don. You deserve your freedom of speech, and your following deserves you. Just don’t force me to listen.

(But my friend Dick Foster makes an interesting comment: “I used to listen to [Imus]. I quickly learned that he is very, very smart. That is, he was not only a shock-jock, there was more to him than that, although of course he was the gross character that he was made out to be. A very important part of interviewing, be [it] in journalism or in psychotherapy or in other activities, is asking good questions. The information you get depends in large measure on how to elicit it. The best question-asker I ever heard was the late Peter Lisagor of the Chicago Daily News. Imus was not as good as that, but his questions were absolutely terrific. Questions, that is, that he would ask politicians on his show, like Chris Dodd and Joe Lieberman and others, especially during the business of Clinton and Monica.”)

I imagine the firestorm of reaction that ultimately led to his firings by CBS and MSNBC caught Don by surprise. He’d been making similar comments for years, decades, and getting away with it. This time he crossed the same line and got fired.

What happened? I’m going to stick my neck way out now and propose that … the line moved.

Consider: We have a woman and a black man running for President for the first time in history and both have a shot at victory. Consider: Legislatures in one border and two southern states (MD, VA, NC) have passed resolutions of “profound regret” for their states’ roles in slavery. Consider: The pissed-off white male, so well represented in the national dialogue, may be losing ground as Bush Cheney & Co. prepare to exit. (I hear ratings are down not only for Imus, the ur-pissed-off-white-man, but the McLaughlin Group and other pissed-off white men as well. We can only pray for an eclipse for Ann Coulter, my personal candidate for honorary pissed-off white man.)

Can’t you just feel, ever so slightly, the zeitgeist shifting?

Finally, be it noted for the record that (1) I called for Don Imus to be taken out and shot and, a few days later, he was; (2) I called for a national time of atonement on slavery, and shortly thereafter the legislatures of Maryland, Virginia (and now North Carolina) passed resolutions expressing “profound regret” for those states’ roles in slavery; (3) I sent Jim Webb $250 in the last moments of the campaign and not only got him elected but won the Senate for the Democrats too. Then Webb told George Bush to stick his nose in someone else’s business. Is this a great country or what?

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Come join me this weekend! I’ll be chatting and signing books at –

– The Bethesda (MD) Book Fair, Saturday, 1-4 p.m. I’ll be near the Writer’s Center, 4508 Walsh Street just east of Wisconsin Avenue.

– The Kensington (MD) Book Fair, Sunday, 12-5 p.m. I’ll be near Kensington Row Bookshop, 3786 Howard Avenue in the Antiques District.