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We are a few weeks past the sacking of radio shock jock Don Imus, and most Americans think he got what he deserved. A new study by the Pew Research Center reports that a majority of both black and white Americans believe Imus’s punishment–the cancellation of his “Imus in the Morning” show on CBS Radio and MSNBC–was “about right.”

The rules about using sexist and racist language just changed, and 66-year-old Imus–who built a 40 year career on deploying offending language with his men’s club of sidekicks–discovered this a little too late.

In case you missed it, back on April 4, at 6:14 a.m., Imus was talking live on the phone with Sid Rosenberg, a personality for a sports talk radio station in Miami. In studio with Imus (sometimes called I-Man by his associates) was his producer and sidekick, Bernard McGuirk.

IMUS: So I watched the basketball game last night between–a little bit of Rutgers and Tennessee–the women’s final.

ROSENBERG: Yeh, Tennessee won last night. Seventh championship for Pat Summit, I-Man. They beat Rutgers by 13 points.

IMUS: That’s some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and…

McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos.

IMUS: That’s some nappy-headed hos there. [Chuckling] I’m gonna tell you that now. Man, that’s some–ooh. And, uh, the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know. So, like–kinda like–I don’t know.

The comments might have floated off into the ether, with little complaint. But the watchdog organization Media Matters for America had taped the MSNBC clip, which they posted along with a transcript to their web site while alerting the press.

By the next day, viewers and MSNBC employees who had seen the clip began to complain. Imus made an initial explanation, saying he made “some idiot comment meant to be amusing,” and added, “I don’t understand what the problem is, really.”

What Imus hadn’t counted on is the replay of his comment by hundreds of thousands of viewers on YouTube and the Media Matters website. Mr. Imus, welcome to the new world of media watchdogs and the Internet.

At this realization, Imus deepened his contrition: “It was completely inappropriate, and we can understand why people were offended. Our characterization was thoughtless and stupid, so, and we’re sorry.”

But, for Imus it was too late, as citizen outrage trickled up to Imus’s corporate enablers. Within a few days, General Motors, American Express, Staples, Procter & Gamble, and others withdrew sponsorship of Imus’s show, and MSNBC and CBS Radio–which originally just suspended Imus for two weeks–fired him. (McGuirk is now gone, too.)

Don’t feel sorry for Imus. Plying the borders of sexist and racist humor was the nature his act. In fact, Sid Rosenberg, the sportscaster on the telephone when Imus uttered his now-infamous phrase used to be an in-studio member of the “Imus in the Morning” show. But Rosenberg was fired in 2005 when he made a comment about singer Kylie Minogue’s battle with breast cancer that was apparently even too offensive for Imus’s show.

So Imus clearly knew that shock jocks can sometimes step over the line and get fired for their offensiveness. He also knew that people may forgive, but more importantly, they forget. Rosenberg revived his career at a Miami station, and Imus again welcomed Rosenberg back to his show.

Previous apologies by shock jocks, their media corporations, and their sponsors left African American journalist Gwen Ifill (once described by Imus as the “cleaning lady” covering the White House) doubting their sincerity. “My concern about Mr. Imus and a lot of people . . . is not that people are sorry they say these things; they’re sorry that someone catches them,” she said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Now, with the help of watchdog agencies, broadcasters like Imus will be caught more often, and their comments–ranging from idiotic to completely inappropriate–will remain in the collective memory of the Internet, there for us to judge them.

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