EVERY SINGLE TALK-RADIO PROGRAM I’VE LISTENED TO over the past couple of days was talking about Imus. Seems like overkill to me, but Jonathan Martin at The Politico makes a good point:

More than anything, though, the incident strikes me as a set piece not unlike many of our recent political firestorms. In fact, it feels eerily similar to the scandal Sen. Trent Lott found himself in in 2002.

Like Imus, Lott made racially-charged, if at least more subtle, comments in a very public setting that few picked up at first. But, fueled by blog attention, the story made its way into the mainstream media. Lott, like Imus on Thursday’s show, was also initially dismissive of those who were offended and the lag between the incident and the story prompted many allies to also stick with their leader. But after the heat intensified, and the story became “a story,” Lott’s friends in the GOP went south. Just the same, MSNBC and CBS issue tsk-tsk statements on Friday, only after the AP became interested in the matter, but made no attempt to dump their star. As Rev’s Sharpton and Jackson dialed up the outrage, though, the network folks suddenly became more outraged.

I was an early Lott critic in that affair, but I have to say that nothing he said compared to Imus’s remarks — and if Trent Lott had talked about “nappy headed hos” and the like, I think it would have become a scandal a lot faster. But read the whole thing.