Kendall, Imus met with the basketball team, not the rugby team. More importantly, you said that he called them "nappy haired street whores". He did no such thing. Rather, he used a rap term that is not within his normal vocabulary in an attempt to sound black and hep. His attempts were clumsy, not unlike white blues singers from New England affecting a mumbling drawl.
There is no doubt, in my mind, that, had Imus, really, wanted to call the players harlots, he would have used a word like whores, hookers, pros or girls of the evening. This is a tempest in a teapot and does not merit all this pious wringing of hands.
Imus' firing is not a repeat of the Monday Night Football "Rush" to judgement. ABC was justified in releasing Rush because they didn't want controversy on their show (I guess when they hired him, they had, never, heard him speak). MSNBC can make no such claim. Imus has been saying dumbass stuff for years. That's why he had such a large audience. People like to listen to dumb stuff. His audience knows when he is joking. They like his crudeness. Those of us who don't go in for that kind of entertainment should continue to not listen to him. That is our right and, I believe, our moral duty. But, it is, neither, duty. responsibility nor right to limit what kind of entertainment others may enjoy.