Just 5 months after being booted off the air, radio show host Don Imus is reportedly close to signing a deal with WABC in New York, that would put him back behind the mike as early as December.   
      Imus’s career ended abruptly in April, when the shock jock referred to the Rutgers women's basketball team as ``nappy headed hos’’, an offensive and degrading remark that ignited a flame of protests that quickly grew into an inferno, when civil rights leaders and advertisers applied a chokehold on MSNBC and CBS to throw the abusive jock overboard. And so they did, despite pleas for remorse and claiming to be a good person whose comments were ``stupid and ill-conceived.''
      The controversy was used, more than the crime itself, as a convenient metaphor by social activists, educators, and a flock of op-ed columnists that race relations still had miles to go, in spite of the progress made with civil rights legislation, female athletes achieving historic milestones, and American culture embracing racial and gender diversity.
      Not everyone was so willing to drive a stake through Imus's heart. 
      Orin Starn, professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University, shared these thoughts on the dethroned radio star, `` Perhaps because the obligation to be sensitive, tolerant, and respectful has become such a part of the American zeitgeist today, I think a kind of backlash market has developed for those willing to defy conventions to say the unsayable, make the outrageous joke -- the Borat syndrome''.
       I never quite got Imus's humor; in fact I usually struggled hearing him, he seemed to mumble his words, as if he were chomping on a piece of cardboard. 
      Still, the curmudgeon host did make a handsome living for nearly 30 years, letting loose disparaging comments about public figures, and cultural icons, not just minorities; after all, that’s how shock jocks put food on their table; by making provocative statements, giving voice to unspeakable thoughts, and eliminating political correctness from their vocabulary.
      When you consider how frequently the words ``Bitches and Ho's'' in referring to women, are used by both black and whites, jocks and shock jocks, I'm still puzzled how much controversy the dimwitted statement caused.
      Aside from the passionate range of opinions fired back and forth; the storm did bring to the forefront charges, mostly from Rev Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, that minorities are pitifully underrepresented in the radio industry. And from the looks of the most recent statistics available, their charges are justified.
      According to a 2007 study by the Radio-Television News & Directors Association & Foundation (RTNDA) , the percentage of minorities in radio, dropped to 6.2 percent, a historic low; down from last year, when it stood at 6.2 percent.
The radio workforce, by comparison, stood at 14.7 percent in 1995.
      There should always be a lesson learned from any controversy; and after being greeted with headlines like ``Don Ho'' (New York Post); and `` On the air or anywhere, let's say no to 'ho' (Inside Bay Area (California), I set out on a quest to find out who coined the word ``Ho'' in reference to a whore or prostitute.
      According to the Historical Dictionary of American Slang, the term first shows up in W. King's Black Anthology (1965) on page 303: ``Most of the hip hoes [sic], around the city eat at Joe's. It shows up again in Frank Elli's 1966 novel, the ``Riot'' on page 171: ``They're always talkin about their ``white hoes'' like every white whore on the streets is hustlin for a shine.''
-Bill Lucey
billlucey@bellsouth.net