Obama in 2007: Fire Don Imus

Sen. Barack Obama addresses controversy over his pastor in Philadelphia speech today

Even as Barack Obama tries to focus his campaign away from racially charged remarks by his former pastor, the Democrat senator could become haunted by his call last year to fire radio host Don Imus, who had referred to women on the Rutgers basketball team as "nappy-headed hos."

"I understand MSNBC has suspended Mr. Imus," Obama told ABC News in a story dated April 11, 2007, "but 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. And I would hope that NBC ends up having that same attitude."

"He didn't just cross the line," Obama said. "He fed into some of the worst stereotypes that my two young daughters are having to deal with today in America. The notions that as young African-American women – who I hope will be athletes – that that somehow makes them less beautiful or less important. It was a degrading comment. It's one that I'm not interested in supporting."

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Though every major presidential candidate decried the racist remarks, ABC noted Obama was the first one to say Imus should lose his job for them.

Obama said he appeared on Imus' show two years earlier, but would never again be a guest.

"What we've been seeing around this country is this constant ratcheting up of a coarsening of the culture that all of have to think about," Obama said.

"Insults, humor that degrades women, humor that is based in racism and racial stereotypes isn't fun," the senator told the network.

"And the notion that somehow it's cute or amusing, or a useful diversion, I think, is something that all of us have to recognize is just not the case. We all have First Amendment rights. And I am a constitutional lawyer and strongly believe in free speech, but as a culture, we really have to do some soul-searching to think about what kind of toxic information are we feeding our kids," he concluded.

Obama gave a similar interview on MSNBC, where he repeated his concerns.

In a crucial speech today designed to quench a firestorm on his pastor's inflammatory racial views, Obama set his campaign for the White House in the context of a "long march" toward completing a task left undone by America's founding fathers – to ensure liberty and equality for all citizens, regardless of color.

The Declaration of Independence, Obama said, according to prepared remarks, "was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished."

"It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least 20 more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations," Obama said.

The answer to the slavery question, the Illinois senator said, "was already embedded within our Constitution … yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States."

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