Reply #29: With all due respect, I have to disagree again.

[americanstranger]

Sharp may be getting his fair share of publicity out of this whole episode, I'll grant you that. But he is not what caused Imus to be dropped from MSNBC.

Much has been made about the fact that Limbaugh and Beck and Hannity and O'Reilly and Savage say worse things, and they're still on the radio spewing hate (it should be pointed out that as of this moment, Imus is too - although that may be subject to change). Now... why do you think all of these other hate-mongers are on the air while Imus is getting lambasted?

It's actually very simple. It's because their advertisers are not seeing a downside to buying spots on those shows.

In Imus' case, GM pulled its advertising, as did Geico and American Express. MSNBC looked at that and saw potential losses of millions of dollars a year, and acted exactly the way you'd expect a corporation to act. They cut their losses in order to preserve their bottom line.

Think of how many petitions have been signed, how many protests have been waged, how much outrage has been directed towards Limbaugh over the years. Yet he remains untouchable, and it's only because advertisers (with few exceptions) have seen no good reason to pull ads from his show. In the wake of the Imus episode, this may be subject to change. One can only hope.

But the fact of the matter is this - if GM or Geico or AmEx decided that this whole thing was no big deal, Imus would still be doing the MSNBC show today. That they saw a threat to their bottom line is the real reason that Imus got shown the door.

- as