So there is no more Imus in the morning. Good, I’d say normally, I hate Imus. I hate him right up there with other no-talent sphincter centers who are rich and famous and don’t deserve to be like Paulie Shore and Howie Mandel and Paris Hilton and on and on. I call them no-talents because they have no talent. None. They are not smart, they are not funny, they don’t sing, dance or act, they are just there. Immovably, it would seem, unless they pull an Imus. So, as I said, Good. Now we know there IS a salt for these slugs. But, of course, not so fast. Nothing is ever easy when it comes to banishing demons and it turns out that we may have cast out a minor leaguer—Imusibub— only by conjuring the S-Man himself. Sissymodeus.

So, since such an obviously racist and prudish hair-critic has been vanquished for offending their delicate if selective sensibilities, the Sinster Set should be smugly elated, right? Not so fast. What we hear from the cynics is the typical: Imus wasn’t toppled by progressive enlightenment, he was done in by dollars. According to the Pol Potian vision of a People’s Paradise where Tolerance and Free Speech are not confused with tolerating it when people speak freely; if he had been removed because of his “wrong thought” and “incorrect talk” that would have been a great victory for the progressive forces. But really, say the depressed Bereted Brigades, Imus only got the bum’s rush when the Big Sponsors threatened to pull their Big Money. It wasn’t correctness, it was capitalism. Just another exercise in exploitive economics.

But wait….I don’t buy it (pun inevitable). What money? This conclusion is based entirely on the premise that the Big Sponsors were going to lose Big Money if they didn’t placate…whom, exactly? Black America? Female America? Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson? How, precisely, was this Great Retribution supposed to happen? Thirty million blacks stop buying GM cars? A hundred million Greatly Offended stop getting Ditech mortgages? All because Jesse and Al say so? Does anyone, anywhere really think that there would be any substantial “ramifications’ to any big company sponsoring Don Imus? The’ve all sponsored him with no problem throughout his history of stupid and offensive behavior. What really changed for them? Nothing. Nothing but Talking Heads talking about it, the same way they talked about an Electoral College deadlock the last time the Rev’n Jackson ran for president—another looming likelihood that warranted the airtime it received at the time. This decision was not about money. It was about cowardice and legless guilt among the poofy elites in boardrooms and PR offices. No great fortunes would have been lost in disregarding the Oafs of Offensery. We are now sure that money, at least to this particular tribe of Philistines, is NOT everything. Just as Hollywood’s refusal to recognize the big dollar achievements of The Passion of the Christ or the Fox News Channel shows, these folks really are just about fear. And the other side can smell it. Hence Jesse’s continual shakedowns of various businesses, and the agreement by educrats to keep dumbing down school curriculums on the home front, and the desperate cry for surrender to the terrorists in the bigger world. The fact is it is all puff and bluster. If one organization would call the bluff of these race hooligans, show that they really cannot produce any consequences from behind their wizard’s curtains, they would scurry away back under the wall molding and under the refrigerator like other harmless bugs who look kinda menacing until you realize that you can kill them with your sneaker. If Don Imus had stayed on the air, NOTHING would have happened to him, the network, or the sponsors. There is no indication otherwise.

So, don’t despair Sinister Cynics. The mindless terror you promote sometimes beats even the Not So Mighty Dollar, at least when it comes to crushing old white guys who have been on your side quite a bit. Hooray! And some think it’s just the Fundies who champ for the end of the world.