Don Imus is famous for two things – having a face that looks like a nightmarish scarecrow made from dried salted beef and racism.

It wasn't so long ago that Don Imus was hauled from his long-running radio show in shame because he decided to tell his entire audience that a particular black female basketball team were a bunch of 'nappy-headed hos'. Although it cost him his job, this incident enlightened Don Imus to the plight of people of colour, and he vowed never to be racist again.

Unless you define 'racist' as 'appearing to imply that black people are inherently criminal', that is, in which case Don Imus might have just dropped himself in the crapper again. Will Don Imus lose yet another radio show? It doesn't matter, because so long as birds are still eating seeds from farmers' fields, Don Imus will never be fully unemployed.

If we could give celebrities one piece of advice, it'd be to think carefully before opening their mouths. Actually, thinking about it the one piece of advice we'd give Shane Ritchie is 'go and work in a shop or something', but for everyone else the thinking carefully thing holds up.

All too often celebrity careers are undone by a thoughtlessly insensitive slip of the tongue – Dog The Bounty Hunter was undone by racism, Isaiah Washington was undone by homophobia and Jerry Lewis was undone by something about illiterate faggots. But Don Imus is the daddy of being uncomfortably outspoken in public.

After the big 'nappy-headed ho' outcry got him turfed out into the radio wilderness, leaving him with nothing to do but shop for outlandishly-sized cowboy hats on eBay and claw at the barnacles that have been embedded in his face for upwards of 12 decades, Don Imus had to really search his soul. It didn't take particularly long – we hear it's not that big – but when Imus was offered a new job, he was quick to publicly explain his regret over the incident.

And Don Imus was never racist again. The end.

Unless Don Imus was being racist on his radio show yesterday, which he may well could have been. Yesterday morning Don Imus and his sportscaster Warner Wolf were discussing black American football player Adam Jones, a man who doesn't want to be known by his 'Pacman' nickname any more because it reminds people that he's been arrested a number of times in the past. And that's when things got messy.

As the New York Times reports:

Mr. Imus asked, “What color is he?” “He’s African-American,” Mr. Wolf responded. “Well, there you go,” Mr. Imus said. “Now we know.”

Interesting that Warner Wolf answered Imus' question by saying "He's African-American" rather than going with the more logical answer of screaming "Lalalalalala" into the microphone, launching himself across the desk and clamping Don Imus' mouth shut with packing tape before anything too racially-questionable squeaked out of it.

Anyway, Don Imus has tasted the sour side of people hating you because you seem a bit racist, so this time he isn't going down without a fight. in an email to the New York Times, Imus wrote:

“I meant he was being picked on because he’s black.” He added that the veteran black comedian and activist Dick Gregory would be a guest on his show on Tuesday, to discuss the death of George Carlin. “We’ll see what he thinks,” Mr. Imus wrote. “I mean … come on!”

Perhaps his frank, head-on confrontation of the incident will mean Don Imus will be allowed to keep his radio show – that remains to be seen – but it probably spells curtains for his forthcoming TV clips show Black People Do The Funniest Things (Because They're Genetically Inferior To Me, Don Imus).

When Dog The Bounty Hunter was taped calling his son's black girlfriend a 'nigger', the global shock was palpable – not just because of the hateful language but because most people assumed that Dog The Bounty Hunter was black himself.

It's true. OK, admittedly Dog The Bounty Hunter is a 15-foot-tall, bleach-blonde mulleted redneck who makes his living shooting minor criminals in the face with bear mace and very obviously has white skin, so it might be a stretch to see Dog as black, but that's how Dog The Bounty Hunter described himself in his first post-scandal TV interview. But it's OK, because Dog The Bounty Hunter has learnt that he isn't actually black – which is good because if he was then he'd hate himself and have to spray mace at his own eyes, then manhandle himself a bit while shouting 'bra' into his own face over and over again. And that'd just be weird. 

Like Rambo or Jesus Christ, Dog The Bounty Hunter was a hero to many. If the public ever thought that someone in their street was harbouring a wanted criminal then they could call Dog The Bounty Hunter and let him – along with his wife – shout abuse at them, chase them down an alley, spray a form of tear gas at them and take them back to prison, so long as there was some kind of financial reward in it for him.

But now Dog The Bounty Hunter is learning what it feels like to be chased, with the mace of public judgement and the butch squat wife of political correctness. Ever since a tape of Dog The Bounty Hunter calling his son's girlfriend a 'nigger' hit the internet, Dog's prospects have gone from bad to worse. First A&E halted production of Dog The Bounty Hunter and then, after advertisers distanced themselves from Dog, the station dropped him altogether.

People are currently talking about Dog The Bounty Hunter in the same way they'd talk about Don Imus or Michael Richards or that woman from Radio 2 who can only see black people at night if they open their mouths. But Dog The Bounty Hunter knows in his heart that his is a completely different situation. Dog The Bounty Hunter, you see, would never call someone a 'nigger' in anger because Dog The Bounty Hunter thinks that he's black.

In his first interview since the 'nigger' tape made the internet, Dog The Bounty Hunter appeared on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes show to tell the world why he thought he was black and how he now realises that he was probably mistaken in retrospect:

"There's a special connection that I thought I had between me and black America. And I used to say, 'I'm black, too.' In other words, my whole life I've been called a half-breed, a convict, king of the trailer trash, this and that… so when I stood there and said, 'I kind of know what you feel like, because I've been there, too,' that I felt that I could embrace and like, as brothers… say the word. I now learned I'm not black at all, and I never did it out of hate. This sounds so stupid. I always did it out of love. Other white guys would be like, 'Boy, who does Dog think he is? Dog can say that.' And black guys would be with me and walk with me and respect me. So, I went too far with that."

Even though this line is markedly different to when Dog The Bounty Hunter told his son that "If Lyssa was dating a nigger we'd all say 'fuck you' and you know that," it seems as though Dog The Bounty Hunter is genuinely remorseful for the recorded telephone conversation, and not just because he might not be allowed to strut about on TV like a human Biker Mouse From Mars any more either. Maybe education and time will be the rehabilitation that Dog The Bounty Hunter needs to heal himself and those around him.

Just so long as he's not allowed on TV any more. Seriously, that show was cack.