Before Imus was axed from CBS Radio and the MSNBC TV simulcast for calling the New Jersey university basketball team "nappy-headed hos", referencing tattoos and curly hair, the presidential frontrunners were vigorously pursued for comment.

Democratic party hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and the Republican party's John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani all weighed in? with mixed messages and results.

As an African-American, Obama perhaps inevitably came off the worst. Clinton's rival for the Democratic nomination naturally expects support from the black vote but - learning from the mistakes of one-time presidential hopeful Jesse Jackson - doesn't want to alienate white voters either. As the story grew, Obama commented after five days and, when he did, his measured response was regarded by some as tepid or, at worse, faltering.

"The comments were divisive, hurtful, and offensive to Americans of all backgrounds, " Obama said Monday, but refrained from saying whether he should be fired. Two days later, over one week after Imus's jibe, Obama responded to criticism of his initial response by telling ABC News: "I would also say that there's nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group."

Clinton, too, took her time to respond, saying Imus's racially charged comments amounted to "small-minded bigotry and coarse sexism".

Interestingly, both Republican frontrunners, Giuliani and McCain, accepted Imus's apology. Using George W Bush biblical prose, McCain said he believes in redemption, while Giuliani took his usual hands-on approach, telephoning the DJ and reporting that Imus knows he made a mistake.

But the real pressure to silence the $10m a year DJ was not from politicians but from heavyweight advertisers. MSNBC and CBS tried to weather the storm and keep their respective 358,000- and 477,000-strong viewers, but several companies withdrew their financial support, including General Motors, GlaxoSmithKline and American Express.

Money, one might say, spoke louder than the words of Clinton or Obama.

The political sideshow reveals that race relations in the US are as fractured and complex as ever. Stevie Wonder sings of being a "nappy-headed" boy, a phrase that is anything but nostalgic when co-opted as a slur by a white man. A portentous note to whoever wins in 2008 from Rutgers player Matee Ajavon (who also appeared on Oprah): "We grew up in a world where racism exists, " she said, "and there's nothing we can do to change that." Quentin Fottrell in LA