The Lynching of Juan Williams
I guess Juan got too uppity for his white bosses at NPR. He was fired today for comments regarding his personal feelings about seeing Muslims board a plane. “”But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they’re identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous,” Williams said. That pushed NPR CEO Vivian Schiller to state at a news conference that Williams should have kept his feelings about Muslims “between himself and his psychiatrist or his publicist.”
She later apologized, saying, “Well it is that time of the month. You know how cranky we girls get with our Monthly Visitor and all.” Well, she didn’t really say that, but that’s the kind of crassness the head of a publicly-funded news network showed by saying what she said about firing Williams. Maybe she’s a Scientologist who let slip her beliefs about psychiatry. Or maybe she’s just an ass.
I disagree with Juan Williams on most issues: his strident and consistent defense of the Obama administration as well as all causes liberal and sundry. But I respect Williams as a thoughtful and insightful opponent, and am happy to see Fox News expand his presence there.
National white-Power Radio or National Politically-Correct radio – the terms blend. All I know is that I’ve already taken it off the radio dial in our cars because if I want mindless group think, I can always tune in to Radio Pyongyang on the shortwave, and hear stories about Kim Jong-il making 18 holes in one in a single afternoon of golf.
102210 Update:
Looks like Judenrat billionaire George Soros may have played a role in the firing. It’s no surprise that Soros would return to his totalitarian roots by turning NPR into a propaganda organ for a moneyed elite; as a man ages he often returns to the memories of his childhood. Too bad for us that Soros’s nostalgia is rooted in the 3rd Reich which didn’t tolerate a diversity of opinion.
Michael Barone mentions that lack of diversity at NPR in his piece supporting Williams. As a long-time NPR listener I’ve often been amazed at how slanted the coverage was and how little effort was taken to present contrary opinions. As I have written before such slanted coverage is fine if the news organization doesn’t take public funding and admits its bias. Unbiased news is a post-modern fiction in the United States in Europe. Pick up a newspaper in the 3rd World in one of the few countries that has a free-ish press and it will have a particular point of view. That’s the way it was here before newspapers experienced a wave of consolidation starting in the 1970’s.
NPR liked to portray itself as “public” and representing the diversity of Americans. But the only opinions it offered were those of the upper middle class white liberals. Everything is skewed to that demographic. And that would be fine if it didn’t receive $400 million from middle class white conservatives like me.
CNN and MSNBC have a similar lack of diversity, but these outlets at least survive in the marketplace of ideas without government sponsorship (and the backing of former Nazis). Fox News has liberal commentators on all the time. I see Bob Beckel’s triple chin more than I see Ann Coulter’s “feed me” figure on the network.
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