How Uncivil

It took the wholesale slaughter of Virginia Tech students by a deranged gunman to kick the Don Imus story off the daily news bleed. Mr. Imus, you will recall, caused an uproar by referring to a college women's basketball team as "nappy-headed ho's." Mr. Imus apologized (sort of), admitted his speech was hurtful and wrong (kind of), and then got fired from his radio and tv gig. As many of us in the liberal community pointed out, the Imus comment was certainly not that rare a happening, especially on conservative talk radio.

Evidence of that was provided in an article in yesterday's Sacramento Bee.

A Los Angeles charter school that serves mostly Hispanic students has filed a lawsuit against a radio station and its morning talk show personality claiming the host made racially motivated, slanderous remarks that resulted in security risks.

In court papers filed Tuesday, Academia Semillas Del Pueblo administrators allege Doug McIntyre, the host of "McIntyre in the Morning" on KABC-AM, is guilty of civil rights violations for inciting others to harm the kindergarten through eighth grade school and its students, as well as slander.

McIntyre created a "racist fury against Latino school children, teachers, administrators and staff at the school" that led to a bomb threat and ongoing security risks, the lawsuit said.

The language purportedly used by Mr. McIntyre is rather stunning.

According to the court filing, McIntyre last summer said, among other statements, that the job of Marcos Aguilar, the school's co-director, was to "keep his school, his madrasa school, open so they can train the next generation of Aztec revolutionaries. Again, I want to make sure that we emphasize this: This school should close."

The lawsuit also quotes McIntyre as allegedly saying: "Aztecs butchered and ate Spanish invaders. I wonder if they're teaching that at ASDP." [Emphasis added]

While the language wasn't as directly racist and sexist as that used by Mr. Imus, it doesn't take much explication to unpack the slur against the primarily Latino students at this elementary school contained in Mr. McIntyre's comments. Linking kids to cannibalistic revolutionaries and their school to a madrasa is fairly clear.

If the mainstream media took a serious look at all the instances of this kind of behavior, it just might discover that there are more serious threats to civil discourse than the use of the vulgar term for copulation frequently used by liberal bloggers.