The Global Marketer

Here we go again: Somebody says or does something exceedingly stupid and because of it his job is on the line.

Here we go again too stating that for reasons of personal and professional accountability it’s time for him to go.

The perpetrator du jour is none other than the grandaddy of all radio shockjocks, Don Imus of the nationally syndicated WFAN/MSNBC radio/cableTV ”Imus in the Morning” show in New York.

For the too-stupid-to-repeat idiocy that got him in hot water and a report on what’s already an ongoing melodrama with his career at the center, go to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17999196/?GT1=9246.

The issue has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with putting an end to using the public airwaves to insult, offend and ridicule large swathes of the audiences they purport to serve.

“I’m a good person who said some bad things,” indeed. Give me a break, Imus. Three weeks from now you’ll be back at it, laughing up your sarcastic sleeve, flipping critics the proverbial bird.

“I’m so ashamed by what I said that I just don’t want to show my face,” would make a better point.

It’s time for marketers whose advertising budgets bankroll the stations and networks that broadcast such sleaze to consider the consequences if and whenever those who take offense let their feelings be known in the marketplace.

Asked today what she might want to fill Imus’s empty spot with during the offender’s two-week slap-on-the-wrist hiatus that begins next Monday, team captain Essence Carson had this quick-witted response: ”Highlights of the Rutgers Women’s Basketball Team’s 2007 season?”…

…for which we’d enthusiastically tune in – especially with the prospect of Imus live-narrating the play-by-play. Wouldn’t THAT be the perfect finale for a long and happy show-biz career?