I'VE BEEN HAVING STRANGE CONVERSATIONS all week with people, young and old, black and white, male and female and in between, about Don Imus and "nappy headed hos." I say strange because, believe it or not, there are people willing to argue passionately that there is nothing wrong or objectionable about the words "nappy headed hos" anymore than there would be in using the words, "lily white preppies" to describe a group of Penn students. I found black people, black women, who shrugged with resignation. Don't mean nuthin'. Don't mean a thing. I found white people, males mostly, who seemed to identify with a rude-mouth radio cowboy who can say things they can't and get paid $10 million a year.

There was a lot of "we" and "us" versus "they" and "them" going on in these conversations. "We" have to put up with what "they" say, but if "we" say something back "they" go ape-poop. Am I allowed to say "ape"? What I found was a universal sense of powerlessness. Whites, blacks, young, old, male, female. It all hinged on race. No one wanted to talk about language, about the meaning of words, about the power of the spoken word, about the responsibility of the person speaking them. Some people said it was unfair to hold Imus so accountable for three or four words in the context of a 20-minute radio bit about women's basketball. As if "nappy headed hos" isn't enough context. Mayor Wilson Goode once famously said that he didn't want his term as mayor to be judged by the actions of a single day. How many political careers have crashed because of a single remark? How many tens of thousands of people are in prison today for the actions of a single second?

What about freedom of speech? Some argue that Don Imus's 1st Amendment right to call a spade a spade is being denied. Bull-oney! Congress didn't fire Don Imus, CBS did. "This is about a lot more than Imus," wrote CBS president Les Moonves in a memo to employees. "He has flourished in a culture that permits a certain level of objectionable experssion that hurts and demeans a wide range of people. In taking him off the air, I believe we take an important and necessary step not just in solving a unique problem, but in changing that culture, which extends far beyond the walls of our company." Don Imus is a victim of nothing more than his big fat mouth and the free pass that his success has given him for years. And now, as Malcolm X once famously noted in November 1963, "the chickens have come home to roost."