The debate about whether the punishment truly fits in the crime in the case of a now former shock jock who has raised more than $100 million for childrens charities and the subsidiary argument about exactly who gets to sit in judgement on whom is likely to go on for awhile but there is certainly one thing we can all agree on: the way Imus handled the media feeding frenzy was a public relations disaster.

From the moment the story escalated from a clumsy attempt at ghetto humor into a total media circus, the Imus affair is a text-book-worthy example of how not to do damage control in the current incendiary, 24×7 mashup of old media and social media.

The classic way of dealing with this kind of firestorm is what I call the "starve the beast" method:

1. Issue a written apology accepting total responsibility and offer a full and unconditional apology to anyone who could possibly have been offended.

2. Announce a plan of rehabilitation. Americans will forgive almost anything if they think you've learned your lesson and become a better person. Worked for George W. Bush.

3. Disappear as quickly as possible. Do not go within a five miles of a microphone or television camera until everyone calms down.

4. Call all of your friends and allies and tell them that under no circumstances are they to give comments to the press or appear on cable talk shows. Refer journalists to the web site about your charities and good deeds.

5. Call all your enemies and tell them you will destroy them when you're back on top if they comment or appear on cable shows and say bad things about you. This is a step that has worked beautifully for the Clintons over the years.

6. After the news cycle has moved safely on in a couple of weeks, reappear somewhere-the Oprah show would have been ideal-and admit that you did a very bad thing and that you've learned your lesson for real this time and will never do it again. In Imus' case, that probably would have meant replacing producer Bernard McGuirk with a person of color (It works beautifully for Howard Stern) and establishing a scholarship fund for black female athletes.

The 'starve the beast method' works because sensational stories need fresh meat every day to stay alive. With endless hours to fill, cable TV is an especially hungry medium that constantly needs "new developments" to keep a story going. Those talking heads need new tidbits to chew on. Viewers have short attention spans. If there is nothing to eat in one part of the woods, the beast will quickly move on to another.

Remember when Vice President Dick Cheney shot a friend in the face while hunting on a Saturday, leaked the news to a small town newspaper on Sunday, and refused to say another word about it...ever? The story had completely disappeared by Tuesday. This is Hall of Fame crisis management stuff.

Sure, the blogosphere kept on hammering on Cheney for awhile but-as much as we would like to think otherwise-bloggers and YouTubers cannot keep a big story going without the complicity of the mainstream media. There have been a few cases where bloggers have been able to force the MSM to come back to a story that wasn't fully covered the first time through-see George Allen- but the relationship is still largely parasitic. Starving the mainstream beast starves the blogosphere, too.

Imus did everything wrong by feeding the beast at every turn. He apologized but instead of just doing it once and refusing to discuss it anymore or simply disappearing, he kept on apologizing. Each apology attacted more attention, more talking heads, more analysis, more coverage. He tried to reason with Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, two con men who happen to be exceptionally talented and lethal PR pros with a vested interest in keeping the story alive. He offended many in his fan base who thought he was apologizing too much and to the wrong people. MSNBC threw a big log on the fire by firing him. CBS quickly followed suit.

By Thursday of last week, the media beast had become an insatiable monster, its jaws so firmly locked into the Imus apology session with the Rutgers women's team that it couldn't even be diverted by the news that a major injustice had been set straight in the Duke lacrosse players case or that the governor of New Jersey was lying bleeding and near death on the turnpike because he had been in a big hurry to cash in on the Imus moment. The crucial question in the universe, according to the big silly Anderson Cooper, was "will the team forgive him?" And they wonder why sensible people have stopped watching news shows and reading newspapers.

Imus' biggest mistake was trying to reason with the beast and to stand up and take his licks like a responsible person. After 30 years of on-the-edge talking I suspect that he thought to take any other approach would be hypocritical. He failed to realize that the more blood and flesh the media beast consumes, the hungrier it gets. It won't stop until there is absolutely nothing left on the plate. Starving the beast may be the coward's way out, but sometimes it is the only way to survive a PR diaster.