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‘Hey Kobe...’ June 24: Shaq is back, on the mic. The NBA center freestyles at a New York club and has some choice words for Kobe Bryant.

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There are some truths I can’t handle. So when I hear Shaq talk about Kobe tasting his ... errrrrr ... well, you know ... or Yankees slugger Jason Giambi say that during prolonged batting slumps he slips on a slump-busting thong (and apparently passes it along to his teammates), the biggest crime they commit is providing some really disturbing visuals that I can't get out of my head. Yeeeeshhh.

The more dicey territory for the outspoken is when folks who ought to know better decide to venture clumsily into insensitive racial stereotyping. Often the only way to determine what harm they have caused (or intended to cause) is to examine their public histories. That leads us to Miller and Imus, two often-controversial broadcasters, but for entirely different reasons.

Miller is known for his brutally honest commentary on golf broadcasts, but he has no history of being a racist jerk, which is probably why Mediate accepted Miller's apology and gave him a pass after Miller's awkward remarks during last week's U.S. Open that many Italian-American groups found to be offensive.

Imus, on the other hand, should get no such pass.

With a long career track record of saying stupid, mean-spirited and racially insensitive remarks in a 30-year career as a shock jock, the over-the-hill I-Man deserves no benefit of the doubt in this latest furor concerning Jones. His repeat offenses condemn Imus as a man who ought to know better, but rarely does. It was beyond laughable to hear his alibi for his latest mistake. His snide remark, he insisted, was a sarcastic attempt to criticize racial profiling by the police, which was even more laughable since we all know a serial fool like "Pacman" Jones probably deserved to be arrested every time the cops showed up.

No, what Imus did and said was sadly typical of the once significant, but now irrelevant shock jock: hurtful, insensitive and woefully out of touch. If he wasn’t already so far off the beaten media path and so completely of no consequence as a national voice, I would say his penalty for his serial ignorance should be to lose his job again. But quite frankly, until he acted the fool again, I would hazard an educated guess that most of America had already forgotten about Imus.

Once upon a time, a long while ago, we used to laugh with Imus when he was an innovative and comedic radio genius. Now, he's a sad old man who we simply laugh at like that out-of-touch crazy uncle who lives in the attic. In defending himself on his radio show Tuesday morning, Imus said he'd have to be "insane" to utter another racially insensitive remark on the air after all the mess he had previously caused.

Well there you go.

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