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):

The Human Rights Campaign and MTV Network’s Logo channel will be hosting a Democratic debate Thursday, August 9 at 9pm to discuss LGBT issues. The hot topic? Gay marriage, duh. This debate is historic, so it would be a good idea to watch it. If you don’t have Logo or are a poor college student without cable, you can watch online. My guess is that one or two of the candidates will fall flat on their face tonight, except for Hillary, who will come out on top as usual. FactCheck.org has a great overview of the issues involved with the gay marriage debate.

Confirmed:
Hillary Clinton
John Edwards
Mike Gravel
Dennis Kucinich
Barack Obama
Bill Richardson

Yet another reason why Imus simply deserved it:

It’s a good question, deserving a “blunt” answer, said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. Blacks and whites have an ugly, 388-year history in this country, beginning when “the first shackled African slaves arrived at Jamestown.” Given that history, a 67-year-old white disc jockey in a cowboy hat cannot call a young black woman a “nappy-headed ho,” even if black rappers use those same despicable words. Yes, there’s a double standard, and white guys shouldn’t bother whining about it. “Last time I checked, guys, you still ran most of the world.”

If I hear one more person trying to defend Imus, I’ll throw every cultural studies, critical studies, and sociology book at them, until they’re bleeding profusely and unsure why they have over 40k in college debt…..oh wait that’s me…..never mind. And, btw, if you don’t read The Week now, I suggest you start.

I used to subscribe to and read The Economist (kinda like Times or Newsweek but with more real news), but The Week actually has, ummm…..news. The best way to explain how The Week works is as if you had the best (non-biased AND Liberal) articles (or the TRUTH, for lack of a better term) from every news source out there aggregated via RSS (syndication) feed into a print version……and viola!………The Week is born. It’s green this week, but Lexus will realize they wasted their money. Oops! Should have taken me shopping instead…

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]