Missed the forum last night? Here are the highlights from the three who matter most on their opinion about the top issue, gay marriage:

Hillary Clinton (see more highlights here):

Barack Obama (see more highlights here):

John Edwards (see more highlights here):

I am sick and tired of people saying “this is about free speech and Don Imus has the same rights as any other American” etc. WRONG. It’s about money. Once the advertisers leave, you are toast.

David Carr wrote a great piece in The New York Times yesterday with his list of reasons why it was inevitable that Imus would be fired. And I couldn’t agree more:

OLD MEETS NEW Mr. Imus is an old-school radio guy caught in a very modern media paradigm. When he started 30 years ago, if he made the same kind of remark, it would have floated off into the ether — the Federal Communications Commission, if it received complaints, might have taken notice, but few others.

But radio is now visible — Mr. Imus’s show was simulcast on MSNBC, and more to the point, it is downloadable. By Friday, reporters and advocates could click up the remark on the Media Matters for America Web site, and later YouTube, and see a vicious racial insult that delighted him visibly as it rolled off his tongue. The ether now has a memory.

The media equation: Flying solo past the point of no return [The New York Times]