Ho-Ho-Ho For Shaq and Imus

Shaq dunked and crunked 'em. Imus hoed and then tried to say whoa to 'em.

So some are upset 'cause Shaquille O'Neal poohed Kobe and threw in a few crunk words in a rap session. So some are upset 'cause Don Imus still is streaming his Alzheimer's and hopes to get a reality show on HGTV where he can say "Ho, Ho, Ho" and get away with it.

If a rap session is an artistic performance protected by some sort of artistic free speech, so is a radio show.

As a sports fan, you want Shaq to call out Kobe because, fact is, Kobe ain't won nothin' without "The Diesel."

It's true, and any weenie sports reporter who thinks Shaq's rap was bad form is a reporter who thinks every athletic contest is decided by a box score. The outrage over Shaq's rap is only because it was Shaq vs. Kobe. When hasn't rap been about violence, guns, murder, and that "N" word rappers can say but we can't?

Oh, Imus can't say the "N" word, either, but he probably thinks the "N" word equals "Nyquil." The AARP's candidate for "Former Famous Person We Would Prefer Not To Be Mentioned In History as One of Our Previous-But-Not-Currently Cultural Heroes" (or "Former Cultural Hos," if you want the shorthand) gets on the radio and hopes he can raise his radio ratings by weighing in on the Adam "Formerly known as Pacman Making It Rain" Jones' arrest record.

Imus, he of the "nappy-headed hos" comment, then pretends he was commenting about the fact black men are more likely to be arrested than white men. (No comment from Imus about the arrest records of nappy-headed hos.)

Imus and Shaq are the same people. They are aging, once-famous, past-their-prime superstars.

The difference? Shaq was telling the truth and rapping about something he knows about. If Imus cared about the disparity among arrest records between black and white men, why wasn't he "rapping" about it decades ago?