Imus, Shaq, and who really cares

More media followup Tuesday to the stuff that Don Imus and Shaquille O'Neal did to put themselves all over the sports-talk radio and ESPN "SportsCenter":

==Drew Sharpe, the Detroit Free press columnist, said it during ESPN "Outside The Lines" panel discussion on what to make of the comments by Imus and O'Neal:

"The problem I think has to do with a lot of us in the media ... We're giving them this type of attention here. Did anyone even know Imus was still on the radio? Do you have any interest in what Shaquille O'Neal has to say right now? His team got eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. Why should we care about him? . . . They're doing this deliberately because they know it's our media culture, the way that it is right now, we're gonna jump on it."

=="Outside The Lines" also mentioned a poll it was conducting at ESPN SportsNation asking for voters' reaction to the Imus and O'Neal stories.
As of Tuesday night, 52 percent of the more than 73,000 voters said they "were not offended by either." Only 14 percent they were "offended by both."

==It was also interesting to note the scroll during Tuesday's ESPN2 programming all day that updated Imus' explanation for his comments about Adam "Pacman" Jones. It finished with the line:

"Imus is unlikely to be disciplined according to radio station WABC-AM, which is not affiliated with ABC or ESPN."

Nice way of covering your corporate rear ends -- distance yourself ASAP. During other reports during the day on ESPN "SportsCenter," the anchor was specific to say that WABC was owned by Citadel Broadcasting.