Can you tell the difference?

Lenny Bruce:

"Are there any niggers here tonight? Could you turn on the house lights, please, and could the waiters and waitresses just stop serving, just for a second? And turn off this spot. Now what did he say? "Are there any niggers here tonight?" I know there's one nigger, because I see him back there working. Let's see, there's two niggers. And between those two niggers sits a kike. And there's another kike— that's two kikes and three niggers. And there's a spic. Right? Hmm? There's another spic. Ooh, there's a wop; there's a polack; and, oh, a couple of greaseballs. And there's three lace-curtain Irish micks. And there's one, hip, thick, hunky, funky, boogie. Boogie boogie. Mm-hmm. I got three kikes here, do I hear five kikes? I got five kikes, do I hear six spics, I got six spics, do I hear seven niggers? I got seven niggers. Sold American. I pass with seven niggers, six spics, five micks, four kikes, three guineas, and one wop. Well, I was just trying to make a point, and that is that it's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness. Dig: if President Kennedy would just go on television, and say, "I would like to introduce you to all the niggers in my cabinet," and if he'd just say "nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger" to every nigger he saw, "boogie boogie boogie boogie boogie," "nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger" 'til nigger didn't mean anything anymore, then you could never make some six-year-old black kid cry because somebody called him a nigger at school."

Don Imus:

"That's some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and --"

McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos.

IMUS: That's some nappy-headed hos there. I'm gonna tell you that now, man, that's some -- woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like -- kinda like -- I don't know.

Hmmm. Where do we go with this? Is there a line, and when is it crossed? Lenny used humor to deflate hatred, and to take the power to cause pain out of words. And Imus---well, he uses words to hurt. Is this an issue of free speech? Well, sure, and as Rev. Al Sharpton said, the people who are hurt by Imus' stupid comments have as much right to their free speech to say "Enough is enough!"

People like Imus do have the right to free speech, but they also have a responsibility to accept the consequences when what they say causes other people to take action. I really think Imus said his words in such a frighteningly off-handed way (he does have a long history of such language) that he thought he had no responsibility, and that no one would call him on it. He was wrong.