Stop the insanity! This whole Imus brouhaha has spiralled out of control. Jon Corzine is in critical condition, with multiple fractures sustained because of a car accident, which happened while he was on his way to facilitate the meeting between Don Imus and the Rutgers women's basketball team. Now, Rutgers is getting inundated with hate mail from Imus fans (who only prove that how inflamatory hate speech is).

Last night, on "Anderson Cooper 360", he had on Jason Whitlock and Amy Homes, two African-American commentators. Of all the people who've weighed in during the last few days (and i include Oprah Winfrey in this), Jason Whitlock is the only person who has been "sensible". Of course, what Imus said was reprehensible... but...

Somehow i am reminded of "American Idol": it's as if there's not supposed to be any criticism, any adverse comments. You've got to expect something, and with sports, you've got to expect dumb jock comments.

I don't know, maybe i'm wrong and not being sensitive enough.

Yesterday, went to see "The Short Life of Jose Antonio Guttierrez", a German documentary about the first "American" casualty in Iraq. It turns out that he wasn't an American at all, but an immigrant from Guatemala who was a "green card" recruit. I've been seeing a lot of documentaries about Iraq, this was reasonably well-done, but what was really stunning was the footage of things like the funeral, the coffin, etc. On yesterday's "The View", Rose McGowan mentioned that this was the only war in which the press has not been allowed to show anything: everything has to be vetted by the Defense Department, and there are strict prohibitions to showing anything relating to the deaths in Iraq, the funerals, the handicaps....

And of course this administration is the only one in history which actually bills those people who have been wounded in Iraq: every single soldier who has come back wounded has found bills for the equipment, the uniforms, etc. which might have been "destroyed" in the encounter. This is an example of how ruthless, how "business-like", how totally unconcerned this administration is to actual human suffering. This war is simply a business proposition, and wounded soldiers are supposed to pay back the government for surviving in less-than-perfect conditions.

And then there's the scandals of the VA hospitals.

But to see footage of an actual funeral (as in "The Short Life of Jose Antonio Gutierrez") was heart-breaking.

My question remains: why isn't George Bush accountable for anything? Why isn't Dick Cheney accountable for anything?