The Vega's last Imus post and Karl Rove's "delete" key

Really. The last one. I promise.

It was inevitable that Imus was going to be fired once the advertisers began fleeing in droves. And he and his crew of jackasses deserved it. I do think that CBS could have waited another day, given that he was in the midst of a fundraising drive* for various children's charities including SIDS and his ranch. Waiting another 18 hours to let him finish the drive, for which he raises a lot of money, wouldn't have made much of a difference.

Meanwhile, I do believe that reports of his demise are more than premature. They're silly.

Bowing to a national outcry and internal protest, CBS Radio said yesterday it would end Don Imus's morning program "immediately," possibly bringing the sometimes inflammatory broadcaster's four-decade career to a swift and ignominious end.

A broadcaster that annually brings in revenues of tens of millions of dollars isn't going to be looking for work for long. I predict that well before the all-star game XM or Serius (or both) will announce the new and improved "Imus in the Morning."

And, just to wrap things up, this may be the looniest exchanges on the subject I've yet seen.

DAVID GREGORY: And Mike, I think I speak for both of us, we are both, as the audience may know, frequent guests on the Imus program. You have known him and been on the program even longer than I have. And this is a difficult time, not just because of the hurt that he has inflicted and what he said, as he tries to deal with it, but for all of us who are on the program and certainly don’t want to be associated with this kind of thing that he’s done, as all of this plays out.

So, first, your reaction to this as we go forward.

BARNICLE: David, you’re right, it is a difficult thing to endure, it’s a difficult thing to hear for any of us, no matter whether you’re on the program or not. I’ve known Don a long time. I can tell you, as he has indicated several times today and last week, he is a good man, he is not a racist. I mean, it sounds pitiful to have to say something like that, but he’s a good man.

[...]

BARNICLE: Oh, David, he absolutely gets it. He, more than any of us, more than you, more than Gene, more than myself, more than a lot of people realizes that word are weapons, that the hurt that these words inflicted are deep, lasting, historical in some sense. The historical pain is resurrected here. He certainly understands that. He also knows that something the two of you just alluded to, this is not over, that we live in a nation, given the power of the Internet and bloggers, that we are a nation of 300 million newspaper columnists today and everyone will weigh in on this, from coast to coast. And at some point, some blogger in Pocatello, Idaho, carries somewhat equal weight to, like, George Will.

That’s the country and the culture we’re a part of. He gets all of that.

[...]

FINEMAN: To answer your earlier question about whether Imus gets it, I think he does get it. But he said what he said, and there will be consequences for what he said. And NBC made it clear tonight what those consequences are. And I think NBC is hoping, as I do, when I spoke with Imus this morning on the radio, that he uses this as what I call the teachable moment, that he learn from this. And as I think he said at one point this morning when I was talking to him, he said, I need to grow up, at least a little. And that’s a humorous way of saying the obvious truth here, that he does. He’s 66 years old. People learn.

I think the form of humor that he was using is not only risky but has probably outlived its usefulness.[! --- ed] I think times have changed, things have changed.

But in any era, at any time, to say what he said about those women was, as I think Steve Capus of NBC News said tonight, just reprehensible and outrageous and completely unacceptable in any framework. [nice save...ed]

[...]

GREGORY: Craig Crawford, is it time for Imus to go?

CRAIG CRAWFORD, “CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY,” MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Not at all. I don‘t see how that helps anything. I would say this man—you know, in my experience on the show—I‘ve done it nearly 70 times in the last three years—this—his heart is as big as his mouth, and the mouth gets him in trouble, as it has now.

[...]

GREGORY: But Craig, you feel a little bit differently here. You think that people are overblowing this, that he‘s apologized, that we should move on.

CRAWFORD: I think in the context of this show—I know, as you know say, that much of it is serious commentary. And when they do the sports, as they were doing here, that‘s where you see more to the comedy elements, some of the skits they do. It‘s not just racial. We see jokes about Catholics, about Jewish people, gays, I mean, and my argument would be that when you stifle that kind of speech, when you stifle it, you‘re not dealing with the sentiment behind it. And to actually say someone should be fired for making jokes about this kind of stuff doesn‘t really get us down the road toward discussing what‘s behind it and how—how...

I don't know if Imus "gets it." But these guys certainly don't. I'm especially amazed by David Gregory's claim that for those "who appear on the program" but don't want to be associated with this sort of thing, these are tough, tough times, man. I didn't know David Gregory was such a hypocrite. If you appeared ont he show, Davey, you were associated with what spewed out of the great, decent man's mouth. Even Ana Marie Cox understands that. And for Barnicle to rhapsodize on the good man that is Imus is pretty damn funny. Barnicle wouldn't know a good man if he'd plagiarized from him.

Ok. Now, let's get back to focusing on the guy who really should be swinging in the wind: Karl Rove.

Mr. Waxman, meanwhile, spent Thursday pushing the committee to release the e-mail. According to the congressman’s account of Thursday’s meeting with Mr. Kelner, the R.N.C. lawyer, as well as an interview with a Republican official familiar with the committee’s e-mail practices, the committee has a large cache of communications from White House officials. But there are none before 2005, when the committee “began to treat Mr. Rove’s e-mails in a special fashion,” Mr. Waxman wrote.

The committee appears to have changed its e-mail retention policies twice, possibly in response to the investigation by a special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, into the leak of the name of a C.I.A. officer. When that inquiry began, in early 2004, the committee’s practice was to purge all e-mail from its servers after 30 days.

But in August of that year, according to the Republican official, the committee decided that e-mail sent by White House officials would be kept on the server. Still, the change did not prevent White House officials from manually deleting their e-mail, and some, including Mr. Rove, apparently did. So in 2005, the committee took steps to prevent Mr. Rove from doing so.

“Mr. Kelner did not provide many details about why this special policy was adopted for Mr. Rove,” Mr. Waxman wrote. “But he did indicate that one factor was the presence of investigative or discovery requests or other legal concerns.”

Now why would a busy, busy man like Karl Rove take the trouble to delete his "sent" emails?

* This is being covered in The Guardian?