Right you are, Lonesome. My point is that this is not a left/right issue. Freedom of speech is so ingrained in the American experiment that we were the first people to, specifically, encode it into our law. That means that I can say whatever I want and, conversely, I am responsible for my words. Unless my words are, immediately, dangerous (physical threat,shouting, "FIRE!" in a theatre) they must be tolerated. Sometimes, that's a little hard to do. There is a lot of scary stuff being said and a lot more stupid stuff, too.
I wonder how many Don Imus fans think he should be fired. I suspect most, if not all, the protesters were non supporters of the show.
I understand why the black community was upset. Hell, I'm a Jew. You wanna tell a Jew joke, it had better be funny. And you had better not be Mel Gibson.