(With apologies, I'm slowing ramping back up the blogging in multiple locations right now. So, a tentative "I'm back" is probably in order.)

I am fascinated that a lot of the media discussion around the Don Imus disaster has focused on either the power and ferocity of the 24-hour news cycle or the presence of bad language similar to that of Imus and his producers in hip-hop lyrics. It's interesting because it largely misses the point. In fact, it misses a bunch of points.

First, as is well-documented, I've got a real thing about the old free speech. I'm a huge fan of it. I would proverbially join Voltaire in disapproving of what Imus said but defending to the death his right to say it. And civil libertarians crying crocodile tears for Imus right now have argued convincingly that we will lose opportunities to have discussions like this one if we make it impossible for buffoons to make off-color remarks on nationally-broadcast radio and television shows. I don't think there'll be any problems on that front. Frankly, Imus wasn't doomed by a bloodthirsty attack on his right to speak freely. He was doomed by the right of advertisers to take their money elsewhere. No advertisers means no platform. The effect may have been to deprive Mr. Imus of his show, but it he is as free as the rest of us to go to public parks and speak his mind, write letters to the editor, hand out leaflets and brochures, publish a website to defend himself and more.

Another factor ironically contributing to Imus' downfall was the bear-attack* phenomenon. Gwen Ifill among others has mentioned that all the people who go on the show were running as fast as they can from their own Imus problems. America's media and political universe is not populated by the bold and the risk-taking. This is not new information. When it became clear that Imus was going to go down, it was hard to hear from the noisome sawing of wood on the trunk-end of the Imus limb. His former friends are now just hoping he falls far and fast enough that the collateral damage is limited.

But the main area I've noticed receiving little attention in the Imus debacle is the role of sport. Everything Don Imus and his producers and booth-mates said was despicable, racist, sexist and clearly the product of the unfortunate but classic bully-culture of many white males of a certain age threatened by women and black people. But how did this wave of bad acts converge on the Rutgers womens basketball team?

Distressingly, there wouldn't have been much of an outcry if Imus and his gang had called an NFL squad a bunch of thugs or an NBA team a crime syndicate. Why? Because Americans act like they own sports teams. In the same way we take credit for their victories and call them by their first name, we heap abuse on them when we don't like their performance one day, we call into radio shows to slam them, we colorfully call for their ouster as the starting quarterback/regular rotation pitcher/power forward. We act like we OWN them.

This is not a defense of Imus, but he and his little band of trolls (all of whom say loathesome things routinely) were in that space when they started down the disgusting road on the Rutgers team. This is a morning radio show; you pick something to mock and you roll on it, like a dog, milking it for everything you can. But you do this to the powerful, the famous, the politically connected. Just ask Senator Clinton or former Vice-President Gore.

Normally, our athletes fit into this. Average salaries for male pro players of almost every stripe are outlandish. Despite fitful attempts by the NCAA to control matters on this front, even the male elite college basketball and football teams are afforded near-star status by adulating boosters and the ephemeral possibility that they will soon become pro superstars. The salaries and adoration and endorsement contracts and limousines and rock-star parties and routine run-ins with the law are all treated by the average person as part of the bargain. "Of course I get to blow off steam screaming for Drew Bledsoe's head on a platter! He made $6 million last year." Women's teams are something entirely different.

The Rutgers womens basketball team which has demonstrated such poise amid this embarrassing media circus can hardly afford to be modest. Women's professional basketball hasn't quite produced any superstars who broke out of the sport's realm, though the WNBA remains a fairly solid business proposition. The Rutgers women went to the top of the NCAA tournament (where they fell under Imus' jaundiced eye) mostly a squad of juniors, sophomores and freshmen, so no-one .) By contrast, most reports put Imus' salary at $10 million.

And that's where the most unjust piece of this injustice comes into play. For $10 million a year, Imus gets to spew his vitriol, and gets to be, in a strange way, the exhaust valve for all the backhand bigots and racists who listen and come onto his show with a benevolent smile and the belief that their getting away with something. And for mostly nothing but a love of basketball, the women of the Rutgers basketball team -- a concert pianist and an aspiring teacher from Liberia and on and on -- get to be treated like they've got their million dollar salaries and Bentleys and top-round draft picks awaiting them when they get home, so they don't feel bad about being called "nappy-headed hos" by three white guys earning millions for bullying strangers from the safety of a sound-proof booth. That's why a lot of media people noticed this particular Imus-stench more than the others. There isn't any way for Imus to take back the things he and his sidekicks said. And unlike when Imus and his pals call Senator Barack Obama a "young colored fella," there isn't anything material and meaningless that we can use to take away our guilt.

*"If the two of us are walking in the woods and we're attacked by a bear, I don't need to run faster than the bear; I just need to run faster than you."