NBC stops half-way with Imus

NBC has announced a two-week suspension of Don Imus, radio talk-show host and cable TV personality, for racist on-air comments made in reference to a women's college basketball team. This action appears to be NBC's reluctant compromise measure taken after the Rev. Al Sharpton and other African-American leaders had called for his dismissal.

If Imus had been an employee of World Peace Herald, he would have been fired more quickly than the time it took Rev. Sharpton to reach for a microphone. NBC should have done no less. Now it needs to reconsider its decision to stop with a two-week suspension, and fire Don Imus.

Imus made a career out of being a "shock jock," which is another way of saying that he was an iconoclast and a breaker of taboos. It also means that he has a long track record of inflammatory references, including calling an African-American journalist on The New York Times staff a "quota hire."

Because this most recent controversy follows a series of such incidents, his apology lacks credibility and should not be accepted as a resolution of the issue. He does not seem to realize that the damage he caused goes beyond the members of the basketball team he referenced, and goes even beyond the African-American community. He demeaned all Americans.

No longer a shock jock, he is just an old-and-grouchy jock who lacks the minimum level of discipline or sense of responsibility to be trusted with the position he has held in America's public discourse.

Let's take his microphone away now, before he hurts someone else.