Listing: 5:30 to 10:00. WFAN. Dead Air.

It has been over a month since WFAN in New York suspended morning broadcasts, and I'll have to admit, the days aren't the same. I suppose technically those broadcasts weren't suspended; it's just that they became unbearably hideous. But whatever spin you'd like to attach to it is fine with me. The fact is, the absence of Don Imus (fired by CBS) has critically diminished the quality of that radio station and others which broadcast Imus in the Morning.

I do not wish to be an apologist for Don Imus, and I have never confused him with Gandhi or Mother Teresa. There were times when he became embarrassingly abusive to his staff and his listeners—times he said things that were at best inappropriate. But the measure of a man ought to be taken on his whole life's work, not just three seconds worth of a questionable attempt at humor which, had it not been for a number of publicity hounds with nothing better to do, might have passed unnoticed. The measure of Don Imus must be taken in his fight against SIDS, his attempts to obtain decent care for our veterans, his ranch in New Mexico on which kids with cancer are treated like...well, like kids. His denouncers, beating their breasts over insensitive comments and imagined insults, had little time to note the man's humanitarian efforts, mainly because (1) they didn't know about them and (2) they never listened to him. They certainly never heard his "nappy headed hos" comment until it took on a life of its own, removed from the context of a morning radio show where it might have been absorbed and forgotten. (Yes, hos. I refuse to spell it ho's—it's plural, not possessive!)

And so as Ann Coulter continues to berate people publicly for their sexual orientation (of which, fortunately, she has none), Rush Limbaugh perseveres in his efforts to equate honest criticism with treason, and altruist and all-round good guy R. Kelly drips wisdom like "Ima b pimpin/I dont be slippin/When it come down to these hoez," Don Imus is held up as an example to the rest of us and removed to a place where he can no longer offend us.

Hoez?