The Imus Fallout: Who Can Say What?

When Don Imus used a racial slur against a college basketball team, it was clear he crossed a line. What's unclear is, Where's the line, and who can cross it?

Spencer Platt / Getty

Radio show host Don Imus waits for the Rev. Al Sharpton's radio show to begin, on which Imus talked about complaints that he made racially charged comments in a recent broadcast April 9, 2007 in New York City.

Say this for Don Imus: the man knows how to turn an economical phrase. When the radio shock jock described the Rutgers women's basketball team, on the April 4 Imus in the Morning, as "nappy-headed hos," he packed so many layers of offense into the statement that it was like a perfect little diamond of insult. There was a racial element, a gender element and even a class element (the joke implied that the Scarlet Knights were thuggish and ghetto compared with the Tennessee Lady Vols).

Imus was a famous, rich, old white man...

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