WITCH HUNT

As predicted, now that the ludicrous Don Imus has been justifiably canned for making vile and bigoted remarks about a group of young black female basketball players, the witch hunt for cultural insensitivity is under way. That would be the witch-hunt that was called for by the odious Reverend Al "Tawana" Sharpton, back in the public pulpit once more, per usual to the benefit of nobody but himself.

("Thanks to Imus's stupidity, we are forced to pretend once again that Al Sharpton has moral capital," as Stephen Metcalf said in Slate)

Two examples of opening day of the new witch hunt from today's news:

The equally odious Tom DeLay wants Rosie O'Donnell fired because she made some jokes about George Bush and Chinese Americans.

And a terrific story in today's New York Times reports that a panel of lawyers censured Jackie Mason and Raoul Felder for writing a joke book that invokes "religious invective" and is also generally insensitive, as well as less than enthusiastic in portrayals of people such as Reverend Al. ("Praise the lard," they say of the Reverend -- in what I surmise is deemed by the censors to be an example of both "religious invective" and insensitivity toward lard-asses). The authors also are accused by the panel of lawyers of being insensitive toward the Reverend Jesse "Hymietown" Jackson and Senator Edward "Chappaquiddick" Kennedy.

“Who thought it was a good idea to make Jesse Jackson the arbiter of racial healing? That makes as much sense as Ted Kennedy being a lifeguard at a girls’ school,” the two accused insensitates crack in the book, in what strikes me as actually a pretty good joke.

Fetch the torches! Link

Oddly, little mention of gangsta rappers -- who use the word "ho" more often than Santa Claus -- in all of this commotion. (Though Senator Obama has been outspoken about rappers' ugly verbal abuse of women).

Of course, first we have to deal with that menace Jackie Mason. Ya know?

But always look on the bright side of life, as the boys on the crosses sing in "The Life of Brian."

Not to bring up the subject of odious lard-asses again, but Rush Limbaugh (surprise!) is horning in on the publicity and describing himself as a victim. "I know they're coming after me, folks," he confides on his blog, under those high-demographic ads for how to make money buying coins. The horror! The horror!

Meanwhile, the war in Iraq goes on while Reverend Al commands the cameras. At an airport last week I stood by a window and watched another military coffin wheeled by on the apron with a crowd of Marines and family members accompanying it, in the most striking state of human anguish.

--end