The most obnoxious feature of Don Imus' fall-from-grace is not his groveling before Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, men so clearly qualified to be arbiters of civic decency, on the penitence junket. It's the fact that he was not fired long ago. This is the man, after all, who referred to the formidable PBS journalist Gwen Ifil as a "cleaning lady," Washington Post media critic Howie Kurtz as a "beanie-wearing Jewboy" and hired a co-host specifically for the purpose of telling, "nigger-jokes." There's many more examples of this decrepit bigot's misogyny, homophobia and racism, but really, what's the point? It's sickening that the clubby world of elite media and prominent politicians--David Remnick, Tim Russert, John Kerry, David Gregory, John McCain et al.--has regularly prostrated itself on Imus's show for so many years, sucking up to the I(gnoramus)-man as if he conferred some sort of hipster cred for dreary beltway-types with sense-of-humor issues and a desperate desire to be liked. Just watch this video with the perpetually bow-tied former Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant (who for so many agonizing years exemplified that paper's "Friends school" politics, as Marty termed it awhile ago) telling Imus, "Solidarity forever, pal." As Jason presciently noted yesterday, it will be interesting to see what sort of lame responses Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd--the truth-speaking heralds of bien pensant, right-thinking liberals everywhere--muster this week, if at all. So the question isn't whether or not Imus' corporate overlords will fire him. It's why they didn't years ago. --James Kirchick