Should Imus be kept off the air?

Throughout the brouhaha over Imus' racist and sexist comments I've had mixed feelings about how to best deal with the problem. And I do not doubt for one minute that there is a problem. But it seems to me the question still is how best to respond to it creatively.

I am more and more convinced that Imus is merely the symptom and not the problem. The problem is that if there was not a substantial group of mostly white men out there who identify with Imus and find his racist and sexist comments funny, he wouldn't be on the air in the first place. By keeping him off the air all we do is turn him the bozo into a $10 million-a-year victim. The question is how can we educate his audience so that they turn him off. If that happened Imus and all those like him who exploit racism and sexism would disappear overnight.

Here's one view of the situation:

"As speculation mounts that Don Imus will return to the airwaves after his ouster in April for racist and sexist remarks, the National Association of Black Journalists, the first organization to call for his removal three months ago, says no way."

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who spearheaded the campaign to remove Imus from the airwaves has a different take now:

"'My position is that we never called for him to be permanently barred from being on the air. We’ll see when he comes back, and if he comes back, what are the boundaries and what is the understanding. We’ll be monitoring the situation, but we wanted him to pay for being a repeat abuser, and he paid. We never said we didn’t want him to make a living,' according to Mike Boyle, writing on Wednesday in Radio & Records."

Here's another viewpoint on what should be done with Imus.

It, nevertheless, seems to me that turning Imus into a martyr is counterproductive to changing people's consciousness so that they kick him to the curb, where he and his ilk belong.