Pawn takes queen?

"If the Left Takes Imus, We'll Take Rosie" is the sinister headline of an essay on the blog of Tom "Six Million and One" DeLay. Several months ago Rosie O'Donnell did a tasteless imitation of pidgin Chinese on The View, for which she was slapped down by New York City Councilman John Liu, the Al Sharpton of all things Asian, among others. The right simply won't stand for that kind of racism, and O'Donnell is in the crosshairs. She was there already for being, well, you know, the noisy lesbian (as distinct from Ellen DeGeneres, the friendly lesbian who isn't fat), but now the gloves come off. Thus spake the Hammer, or whoever writes his blog.

Well, Tom, the left didn't take Imus. I asked around the left, and nobody wanted him. What happened was, corporations like General Electric threw him away, just as they throw away any worker they no longer have a use for. They laid him off. They downsized him. They outsourced his job to Mike and the Mad Dog. Phrase it any way you want. More than a few free-speech lefties of the kind you despise came to his defense, but he's just too toxic to sell office supplies and toilet cleanser right now.

When you say "we'll take Rosie," you may not be aware of the sexual overtones. (When you compared your legal troubles to the position of the Jews under Nazism, I got the impression that nuance is not a weapon in your arsenal.) To take someone -- it's hard not to hear that sorriest of locker-room cliches, "All a lesbian needs to straighten her out is a good fuck from a man." How exactly will you take Rosie O'Donnell? Your efforts so far to get her fired from The View have been less successful than the judges' efforts to get Sanjaya off American Idol. People like her. They like that Donald Trump doesn't like her. The ratings are good, the sponsors are happy, and she hasn't repeated her gaffe with the Chinese accent. She learns from her mistakes. Don Imus never did, and apparently never will.

So, Tom, are you watching a lot of daytime television?