MSNBC Straw Poll: Imus Firing Wrong

Those online straw polls aren’t any sort of scientific survey of opinion, but neither are they useless. While “scientific polls” are usually heavily laced with respondents who could care less about the issue and simply concoct a plausible sounding answer, online polls sample people who are attentive enough to visit a particular website, and care enough to vote.

Which is why we were at least a little surprised to find an online poll about the Imus firing on MSNBC and, after clicking through to look at the results, seeing at a large majority of respondents oppose firing the shock-jock.

What could these people be thinking? We don’t believe that ¾ of Americans are racist. Perhaps people are tired of political correctness, and failed to distinguish between the merely politically incorrect and the genuinely vile. Maybe people think it’s unfair for key elites, who for so long tolerated Imus’ antics (and even valued the opportunity to be on his show) to suddenly turn against him.

Perhaps they don’t see Imus as any worse than many black rappers and hip-hop “artists” -- whose language has the implicit but clear approval of both black elites and white-run mega corporations.

Perhaps they note that bigots like Rosie O’Donnell and Bill Maher say vile things about Christians and Republicans, and don’t really think that blacks should have more protection than any other group.

We sympathize with each and every one of these reasons.

Still, when we had to vote to see the results, we voted that Imus should have been fired.

But we are looking forward to casting the same vote for O’Donnell and Maher.