Freak Flag Fly

The Imus moment is not even entirely about crotchety white guys chortling about nappy-headed hos.

It’s about rich guys (crotchety and otherwise) enabling Bush to use fear and intimidation to exploit our monumental grief after 9/11.

Imus is not just taking heat for American racist attitudes. He's also soaking up some of the collective rancor that should be directed at the whole (neo)conservative Iraq rape factory: Rove, Cheney, FoxNews, MSNBC, CNN, Judith Miller, the American Enterprise Institute, and the editorial pages of the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal.

Something is seriously wrong with our public sphere, but Election '06, the Libby conviction, the marginalization of FoxNews, and the Imus moment are evidence of a corrective mechanism. Scalps are being collected as the recognition of a misbegotten Global War on Terror sets in among the American people.