NY Times: Don Imus Firing has not Changed Shock Radio

Predictably the Don Imus scandal has not changed the amount of vulgarity on radio. There is too much money to be made from hate. In fact, the whole Imus scandal missed the point. What we have here is a media run amok. They have not changed a thing. It was all about dealing with the scandal and then moving on until they get caught again. There are plenty of shock jocks out there. Imus will just be replaced some other foul-mouthed jerk on another station. Its like killing al Qaeda leaders in Iraq, they are just replaced by someone just as evil. The media isn't going to turn away from the big profits gained from a dumbed downed America that loves its hate and vulgarity:

And yet, in the weeks after his firing, the nation’s AM and FM airwaves have continued to crackle with the kind of crude remarks, off-color bits and unfiltered rage that might well run afoul of the standards that Mr. Imus was said by his employers, and critics, to have violated.

Nothing goes unsaid on what is supposed to be the public airwaves:

The part of the radio spectrum where Mr. Di Paolo holds forth each day — shows in which commentary and entertainment fuse, sometimes under the rubric of a morning or afternoon “zoo” — remains as arguably and insidiously untamed in the days after Mr. Imus’s collapse as it was before, based on a New York Times screening of nearly 250 hours of shock-talk radio broadcast over the last week.

Gay men and lesbians, and women and Muslims, among others, were frequent targets of ridicule; coarse, sexually explicit banter, particularly descriptions of anal and oral sex, proliferated, much of it reminiscent of the routines that once drew Howard Stern heavy penalties; and meanness appeared to be a job prerequisite, whether a host was belittling someone who called in or the unwitting subject of a prank call.