I would like to reply to the article “Imus firing for corporations, not in public interest”. Now while I have never seen the man’s show, I am quite outraged by the sort of reaction Imus gets and people who say much worse things do not get though I agree it was wrong for Imus to target the Rutgers team in that manner and glad he apologized for it.

There have been worse comments than Imus’. Such as calling 9/11 victims “Little Eichmann” by Ward Churchill. He’s still on the professorship and gets taxpayer money on his pay roll from the very “technocrats” in the government he hates. There is Cindy Sheehan who blamed Israel for terrorism, called terrorist insurgency in Iraq “freedom fighters”, recently labeled President Bush as a “terrorist”, traveled to Venezuela and took a photo with Hugo Chavez along with stating other controversial statements. Rosie O’Donnell promoting 9/11 conspiracy theories and not admitting she lied about the recent British-Iran hostage crisis. Then there is Barack Obama who has recently compared Imus’ comments to the horrible Virginia Tech massacre. Doesn’t this deserve questioning of Obama running for the 2008 Democratic ticket if Imus deserved to get canned for his comments?

Here’s another odd foe Imus certainly has- Condoleezza Rice who has condemned Imus’ comments but has routinely been labeled as being “not black enough” by the likes of Harry Belafonte who also freely traveled to Cuba and called Bush a “terrorist”. Imus also has an odd ally as well- John Kerry who states that the firing of Imus was too harsh, and he himself has made his own controversial statements in the pass, yet he is still admired by the public as much as Belafonte, Sheehan and even radicals who support Churchill.

But because of Imus’ making that statement on his radio show, he gets canned for it when others who have made far worse statements that are more long lasting are not canned from their positions of power? If the comments by Churchill, Sheehan, O’Donnell, Obama and others count as freedom of speech does that mean it should be the same for Imus? Or does this remind me of another phrase of a book-Animal Farm: Some forms of speech are more equal than others.

Maxwell Hoffman History Major