We all remember the terrible events of April 4, 2007. That was the tragic day when radio personality Don Imus referred to the Rutgers University women’s basketball team as — DEEPLY, DEEPLY OFFENSIVE CONTENT AHEAD — “nappy-headed hos.” This meanspirited remark sent shockwaves across the country and threatened to tear this great nation apart.

Fortunately, some were brave enough to mount the highest available horse and call for Imus to be fired. Among those stalwart few was ESPN.com’s Page 2 columnist Jemele Hill, who said on April 10, 2007:

If it were up to me, security would have escorted the longtime radio jock out of his CBS Radio cocoon with belongings in tow days ago. But for now, I’ll have to settle for a two-week suspension that doesn’t begin until next week. That’ll show him.

Days have passed since Imus, executive producer Bernard McGuirk and sports announcer Sid Rosenberg took turns taking cheap shots at the Rutgers women’s basketball team, but I’m still boiling because too many people continue to defend Imus behind lame free-speech arguments — remember, speech is free, but consequences are not — and the idea that black women just don’t know a good joke when they hear one.

Hill got her wish the very next day, when Imus was dropped from MSNBC, and the day after that, when he was fired from CBS Radio. A triumph for freedom! The freedom from being offended by anything, anywhere, at any time.

So, what has Hill, a true American hero, been up to since then? Oh, just insulting millions of people. According to the Boston Herald:

ESPN.com columnist Jemele Hill was suspended yesterday after sparking outrage by comparing rooting for the Boston Celtics to Adolf Hitler and nuclear war…

Yesterday, Hill amplified on her earlier apology for writing, “Rooting for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim. It’s like hoping Gorbachev would get to the blinking red button before Reagan.”

“In expressing my passion for the NBA and my hometown of Detroit I showed very poor judgment in the words I used.”

Apparently heroism affects the memory, because Hill should have remembered that all of Imus’s apologies, even those he made in the presence of Rev. Al Sharpton himself, were completely futile. That’s the new rule, the rule Hill helped create: If you’re in the public eye and you say something that offends somebody, no apology will ever be sufficient.

As a very wise person once said: Speech is free, but consequences are not.