Cranky Rednecks and Leftist Bigots

It seems there's going to be some race-related controversy every day throughout the campaign.

The latest racial dust-up involves Don Imus, who deployed racial stereotypes when discussing football star Adam “Pacman” Jones' recent run-ins with the law.

Ed Morrissey, who represents the solid center of the conservative blogosphere, offers his reflections:

Al Sharpton may get another chance to distract everyone from the massive IRS investigation into his personal and professional finances by seizing on another Don Imus eruption. This morning, Imus discussed the case of Adam “Pac-Man” Jones, the NFL player that sat out 2007 with disciplinary suspensions and has been arrested a half-dozen times since being drafted the previous year. While Imus’ news announcer talks about Jones’ desire to drop his nickname — it’s too “negative” now — Imus startled him with a question:

Imus: “What color is he?”

A: “He’s African American.”

Imus: “Well there you go… now we know.”

This may not be quite as overt as “nappy-headed ho’s”, but in listening to the clip, you can almost hear the smirk on Imus’ face as he replied to the answer. Put that together with the preceding “What do you expect at a nightclub?” sequence, and it looks like WABC may find out how it felt to be CBS Radio and MS-NBC in the prior controversy. Imus has not learned much since, it appears.

And what was Imus supposed to "learn"? Perhaps to be careful about making racial slurs.

What's interesting is that Imus seem mostly like a cranky old redneck, and he and his listeners might just be consigned to the margins of the political spectrum, except that whenever something like this erupts, it becomes a major public issue. Recall that Imus is back on the air after making derogatory statements about young black women athletes, and now he's involved in another uproar.

So here it goes: Radical lefties, like TRex, cry foul:

Let’s start with Don Imus. Anyone who followed his egregious missteps in the wake of Nappy-Headed-Ho-Gate knew that these were old Cowboy Don’s true colors. From calling Gwen Ifill “The Cleaning Lady” to the notorious remarks that got him axed from MSNBC and temporarily banned from the radio, Don Imus has always been one gaffe away from getting permanently consigned to the dustbin of no-longer-relevant media personalities.

But note the hypocrisy: TRex spews some of the most vicious anti-Semitism around the leftosophere.

So what we have is cranky rednecks and leftist bigots, and none of it's okay.

I don't think Imus' remarks this time around were that egregious, but he's taking the heat nevertheless for his apparent pattern of racial insensitivity, and the left's propensity to exploit it.

Photo Credit: "Imus Says He's Defending, Not Offending 'Pacman' Jones."