I’ve just learned that Imus has just been fired from CBS. That means no more Imus on TV or radio.

For now, at least, he’s a retired 66-year-old crank.

This is not a cause for celebration, or even lamentation. But it is a cause for reflection, about race in America and personal responsibility.

Personally, I’ve got mixed feelings about the whole thing. Clearly, the controversy goes deeper than the stupid, bigoted remarks of one popular shock-jock, who happened to dress up his crude locker-room-performance art with legitimate interviews with journalists, authors and politicians. In fact, some people defended him on the grounds that he provided an important forum for those kinds of people.

The truth is, however, he did nothing of the sort. MSNBC TV and the FAN radio station provided the forum. But they took a lucrative gamble by packaging it with Imus’s peculiar brand of mostly witless humor, as a means of appealing to the lowest common denominator. I’ve listened and watched Imus on and off for years, and I’ve often been amazed by what an egotistical A-hole he is. He bragged about his charitable efforts—his New Mexico ranch for sick kids, autism, hospitalized vets, etc.—to such a shameless extent that he began to rival the obnoxiousness of Jerry Lewis.

Imus’s good work to help others, however, earned him a pass as an unabashed egotist. What it didn’t do was give him license to inflict pain, not even as an “equal opportunity offender,” as some have called him. That doesn’t wash when those who are being offended are innocent. The Rutgers women’s basketball team were innnocents. As potential targets of satire, they weren’t on a par with Al Sharpton, or Jesse Jackson, or even Gwen Ifill, the excellent black journalist, who Imus once witlessly referred to as a “cleaning lady.” As Ifill said in her own op-ed piece in the New York Times this week, Imus’s mean remark was hurtful but she’s a big girl and can take it.

The Rutgers women were civilians. Imus crossed the line of cruelty when he called them “nappy headed ho’s.”

Before he got canned today and yesterday, Imus apologized a thousand times, but they were resentful apologies. He slipped into self pity and began to blame the messenger. Please go away, I-Man. You’re a bore and a boor.

In my view, people are correct up to a point when they raise the issue about the racist, misongynist lyrics in rap and hip-hop music. Why aren’t those so-called artists held accountable as Imus was? This morning I heard Robert Johnson, the founder of the Black Entertainment Network say that was comparing apples and oranges because hip-hop is an art form and the artists are merely expressing, uh, art. I thinks it’s junk, but that’s not important.

What is important is that the Imus wan’t a political pundit or a journalist. Like the hip-hop artists, he was nothing but a performer, too, albeit, not a very good one. The difference was that he was a MAINSTREAM performer while hip-hop performers are, indeed, different: They’re self-styled outlaws trolling the UNDERGROUND precincts of the culture.

But what causes problems in our society and culture is that the stuff that hangs out on the edge, on the fringe of entertainment, invariably gets pushed into the mainstream because it’s considered hip and cool. That certainly holds true with the hip-hop culture which permeates the lives of not only black kids but can from time to time show up in the manners and behavior every white, middle-class kid in America.

And make no mistake, the so-called “black community” has not been passive on this issue, as the recent efforts to ban the ‘N-word” from common youth parlance can attest. What’s more, hip-hop artists have also been called on the carpet for their lyrics. Just ask the members of 2 Live Crew about the legal problems they encountered with one of their albums, “Nasty As They Wannabe.”

But here again, a difference. They sold even more albums as a result. Until hip hop and the sexist garbage it spews is no longer considered cool, there will always be an Imus somewhere shooting himself in the foot.

In the final analyis, Imus’s stupid behavior was an example of the continuous coarsening of the culture, and the assumption that anything goes.

He should’ve known better, but he didn’t. And now, he’s paying the price.

The Friends of Westchester County Parks are giving the first ever “Green Space” Award to Donald Trump because of his contribution of 436 acres of undedeveloped land overlapping Yorktown and Putnam Valley.

This is a good thing that Trump has done. But from time to time I’ve teased the TV billionaire because he managed to get a sign on the Taconic heralding the Donald J. Trump State Park, which, as of now, is utterly inaccessible. That sign is like a free advertisement for the Trump brand.

So be it.

But here’s another thought. While Trump is generously giving back some of the land he’s gobbled up, maybe he can also give up some of the air he’s taken with those skyscrapers in New Rochelle and White Plains. Call it The Air Space Award.

We’ll be hyper local on my “High Noon” radio program tomorrow on WVOX. The topic will be on the 100th anniversary of the Town of Mamaroneck Fire Department. This is a subject near and dear to my heart since I grew up down the street from the town firehouse.
The show airs at 12 noon. Tune in at 1460 AM or listen in by logging on to www.wvox.com.

Also, my commentary on RNN TV tomorow at 6 p.m. will be about the incident last Sunday at New Roc City in New Rochelle. That’s Channel 19 in most towns,

I’m not going to write a column on Imus’s stupid comment about the Rutgers women’s baskeball team because by the time it gets into the paper (on Thursday) the thing will be talked to death and no one will care anymore. In fact, it already HAS BEEN talked to death.

So in lieu of print, I’ll put a couple cents worth into this blog. First, as most people know who listen to Imus, the guy has been shooting himself in the foot like this for years. When he’s been called on it, he always apologizes the same way. He says it was idiotic thing to say, that’s he a just a moron and that victims of his remarks shouldn’t take him seriously, etc.
And then he goes and does it again.

But this time, the “bad-boy” excuse didn’t work. He got caught in his own trap and couldn’t get out. Then he dug himself a deeper hole by going on his program and saying defensively that he isn’t a racist and to prove he isn’t a racistrecalled the time he helped a black boy with sickle cell anemia at his ranch for sick children. Then he had columnist Tom Oliphant, a frequent guest, come on the air to lend support. Oliphant at one point said that Imus’s sensitivity to blacks was evidenced by the way he he conducted an interview some time ago with Bill Russell, a former basketball player and a Hall of Famer. What the heck!

Imus’s credentials in the field of charity are wonderful and Oliphant is a smart guy, but there was more than a patronizing hint of the limousine liberal in both of them. You know the old line, “Some of my best friends are black.”
Because that’s essentially what Imus is, a liberal, who plays the part of a “good ol’ boy” with a cowboy hat. So he plays to two constituencies, the media liberals who come on his show like Oliphant, Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich and countless others and a large slice of his listeners who love redneck, racist comments such as calling the Rutgers team, “nappy-headed ho’s.”

Imus tries to have it both ways.

By doing so, he gives middle-aged white guys a bad name. But he’s not the only one doing it. This is a corrosive, cultural disease. Hurtful humor appeals to the lowest common denominator, and the suits that run the big media conglomerates know it. Crap sells.

It is across the board—it’s sexual, racial and ethnic. And it’s not just middle-aged white guys who engage in this type of humor. People from all walks of life are doing their “bits” to coursen the culture. Turn on the TV at any hour and you’ll hear any kind of hurtful, shocking stuff from both black and white comedians. Women, who sometimes hide behind the warped defense of get-even-with-men feminism are in on it, too.

There’s another aspect to this, which should serve as a lesson to many who enjoy positions of authority. And that is the lesson of power and hubris.

From his popular podium, Imus wields a great deal of power. When people get too much power, they can easily get drunk on it. They lose sight of other people’s feelings. They begin to think they are invincible, that nothing can stop them, even whey they violate the rules. They think they’re above everyone else.
You see it government and the corporate world where executives steal or carry on extra-marital affairs. Sooner or later, they always cross the line and get caught.

Imus is a sad case. His shtick is nothing more than a form of locker room banter, the kind of nonsense young idiots engage in every day. In trying to be hip, he only looks like a crusty old bigot, which I don’t think he is—the bigot part, I mean.

The fact that he goes to Al Sharpton to seek redemption is bizarre. Twenty years ago, Sharpton clung to a hoax that a black teenager, Tawana Brawley had been raped by white men, among them a district attorney in Poughkeepsie. It was a false story that ruined lives, but Sharpton never apologized.

This doesn’t let Imus off the hook, though. He deserves to be punished.

I’m not sure what this means, but there’s a video on YouTube that really cracks me up.

I guess it’s some kind of commentary on “Yonkers”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqDkxtIUGIg. Anyway, you look at it there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

Perhaps it’s a reflection of the frustration that comes with living in the fourth largest city in the state, with all its political shenangians. Or, maybe it indicates the attitude of those who live elsewhere, the snobby “Outsiders,” who have little patience with the problems which continually torment the City of Hills.

It could be that the woman in the video is a symbol of the city’s less than beautiful downtown. And the angry man…what is he supposed to represent? Is he angry taxpayer or a backbiting pol? Or, maybe the whole thing is just a statement about domestic violence.

All I know is that it made me laugh.

Arthur “Mike” Doran, the retired Yonkers city judge who is running for mayor, lost an eye in a childhood injury and so is easily recognized by an eye-patch he wears.
Appearing recently on my “High Noon” radio program, the 65-year-old Doran revealed on how he lost the eye during a family vacation with his eight siblings and mother.
The setting was a remote spot in upstate New York where there was no phone and the nearest farmhouse was a quarter of a mile away. He was five years old at the time.
“I was fooling around with a knife, playing mumbly peg,” Doran said. “I was throwing the knife into a linoleum floor and it snapped back and caught me the wrong way.”
He was eventually taken to a hospital in Albany. Doctors tried to save the injured eye, but after a couple of years of treatment decided to remove it.
“I don’t know what I put my mother through,” Doran said. “My God.”

Westchester County Executive Andy Spano must be closely related to Tom Suozzi.

Either that, or it’s just a coincidence. OR, Andy is stealing Tom’s lines. Here’s what I mean:

When Suozzi, the Nassau County executive ran for the Democratic nomination for governor, he frequently quoted his grandfather (or father, I don’t remember which), who said, “Watch the hands; don’t listen to the mouth.” I heard Suozzi give that line twice, the first time at the Kemper Memorial in Mamaroneck.

Funny thing, Spano used the same line in his State of the County Address last week, and attributed the saying to his grandfather.
All I know is that Suozzi quoted the saying first and unlike Spano, he said it in Italian before translating it into English.

Strange.

Check out RNN-TV on Channel 19 today.
Yours truly will be doing another special commentary—this one on Indian Point. My piece airs at 6 p.m.

Also, write this one down. Tomorrow, my guest on the “High Noon” radio interview program will be former Yonkers City Judge Arthur C. Doran. Jr., a Democrat who announced his intention to run for mayor. He may face a primary challenge from City Councilman Dennis Robertson who is also a mayoral candidate.
“High Noon” airs at 12 p.m., on WVOX, 1460-AM. If you’re out of the listening area, you can hear the show live by logging onto www.wvox.com

For 10 million bucks, you could probably buy North Dakota but here in good old Westchester that’s the top price for one of developer Lou Cappelli’s high-rise apartments.

You read that right—10 million.
Those expensive digs are apparently going to be available at The Residences at The Ritz-Carlton, Westchester in downtown White Plains. But don’t worry if you don’t have that kind of cash. You can get something at the low, low price of $800,000.
The 44-story residential tower offers the “indulgent luxury” of a five-star hotel, complete with concierge, valet parking, pools and fitness center, according to one advertisement I’ve read.
The same ad says, “A building with any other name is just a building with any other name.” OK, Lou…but for crying out loud, it’s still WHITE PLAINS!!!

By now it should be obvious that Sunday’s column in The Journal News and Lohud.com was an April Fool’s Day prank. The story about a 100-foot, prehistoric sea monster was total bunk!

If you read the column all the way to end, you would’ve seen the words, “April Fools” printed upside down. Even with that, at least a couple of readers believed the story was real, and one guy called to tell me he thought I may have been hoaxed.

Here are some of the give-way clues:—I quote a fisherman by the name of “Bull” Gwano. Spelled correctly, that’s “guano” which is the waste left behind by bats. So, bull guano… Get it?—The author of a phony book I mentioned was named “Namsier.” That’s “Reisman” spelled backwards.—A boater is named “Martin Brody,” after the character played by Roy Scheider in “Jaws.” Not unlike the movie character, my Brody says, “I’m gonna need a bigger boat.”—A much tougher clue was a scientist who I called “Dr. Myles Gordon.” There was a guy named Myles Gordon who was a part-time reporter for this newspaper.