You want to bend over for Fox News pimp Roger Ailes, fine. Just don’t try to give NPR a handjob while you’re assuming the position.
Juan Williams got the ax from NPR on Wednesday and the only question I have regarding the matter is, “Why did it take so long?” This wasn’t the first instance in which Williams farted higher than his ass, as NPR chief exec Vivian Schiller noted in an e-mail to affiliates, and his outrage — particularly given that Ailes promptly offered him a new three-year contract pegged at nearly $2 million — makes me laugh out loud.
In an essay on FoxNews.com, Williams says:
“This is an outrageous violation of journalistic standards and ethics by management that has no use for a diversity of opinion, ideas or a diversity of staff (I was the only black male on the air). This is evidence of one-party rule and one sided thinking at NPR that leads to enforced ideology, speech and writing. It leads to people, especially journalists, being sent to the gulag for raising the wrong questions and displaying independence of thought.”
Ho, ho. A $2 million gulag. Send me there pronto. I can talk out of my ass as well as Williams can.
Mad Blog Media 
For $2,000,000.00, I could be a Fox talking head. How hard could it be? Just make sure I refer to America’s Christian only God (the one who likes rich people more than poor people), wear a stars and stripes lapel pin, cry at the site of bald eagles, sing Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to Be An American” in the bathroom stall (’cause the tile makes my enthusiam sound even more enthusiastic), remember to flirt with the random blonde bubblehead on the set, remember to say “That’s just Un-American” at least twice a day, and lump Pelosi, Reid, Clinton, and Obama into the same “out to destroy America” aluminum beanie conspiracy every time the word Democrat is used.
I don’t even have to critically think even once. Yep, I could do that.
I rarely watch Faux News (and I’m not the only one based on their ratings) but wondered why they’d have a black NPR guy on their shows except to bolster their “fair and balanced” BS. What would have happened if Williams had said he feels fear when he sees black people, rather than Muslims in traditional garb? NPR should have told him “us or them” at the start rather than wait for the inevitable excrement to hit the fan. If he’ll whore himself out to Murdoch for $2 million, who am I to care? But Faux News doesn’t deserve a shred of the credibility a reporter gets from working for NPR’s paltry wages countering the corporate spin excreted daily by most “news” networks!
All due respect Patrick, but I don’t think you’re able to talk out of your ass better’n Williams. Might be wrong, but I don’t think so…
David — Hey, mine’s bigger. Goes without saying it should make more noise.
My significant other, a long time NPR listener and former college teacher of rhetoric and literature, thinks this was long overdue. And not exactly being a paleface herself, she thinks Juan Williams’ plea that he was “the only black male on the air” was so much whining bullshit.
Meena has spent many a plane flight through India sharing that little aluminum tube with plenty of people in traditional Muslim garb. IF Juan Williams can’t see farther than his own prejudices, then what good is he on NPR? I expect higher standards. Pull your head outa your ass, Mr. Williams. The view is so much better.
Thank you for writing this Patrick. The local PR guy was defending Williams this morning during an impromptu call-in on the subject. It was ridiculous. Callers were outraged that Williams was fired. Were these people outraged when Rick Sanchez was fired? Of course, the host didn’t manage to ask that question of the callers or comment on that recent episode. The segment was over before I could get on the phone (I was looking for the 800 number!).
Williams ravings sound like a man in need of some serious counseling, psychotherapy or as Woody Allen’s character suggested to his screen-wife, Diane Keaton in “Manhattan Murder Mystery”, a routine adjustment delivered by a polo mallet to the side of the head.
It has been years since i actively listened to NPR and I can’t say that I am too surprised by any of this.
Mr. Williams and his buddy in awful broadcasting, Tavis Smiley (I swear every time I hear that name I think “Guy Smiley”) should not be on the air at all. They made listening to NPR very difficult. Not because of their topics or background but because they were just hard to listen to. Sort of like listening to Jerry Coleman call a baseball game after Vin Scully.
What if he had said “When I see someone getting on a plane wearing a t-shirt with anti abortion slogans I get nervous”? Or insert any religiuos extreamist. I get nervous when I see cars with fundementalist Christian bumper strickers parked outside the gun shop. And I am a Christian, just not a nutty one.
The bottom line is that self-censorship is sometimes a virtue, not a vice. Sure, we all think some things best left to Far Side comix. But we control what comes out of our mouths. Usually. This towelhead got on a plane in Chicago once with a pregnant Muslim couple and sure, it did occur to me to wonder if that was really a baby in the oven or ten pounds of Semtex. Ok, mea culpa. I didn’t go running to security, though.
The notion of prejudice is an important one and needs discussion. Wearing a t-shirt showing an abortion provider centered on a set of crosshairs is a pretty direct statement of political violence. Wearing a yarmulke or kaffeyeh or other traditional garb is just that-traditional garb. But we have come to equate traditional Muslim garb to violence just as we once came to equate young black males to violence and that’s all just too bad.
iirc, the 9-11 crew were not in middle east dress when they went through logan’s security – i think they looked more irish, which is why logan did such a good job. btw, as indonesia has the largest muslim population, what is juan’s profile for that group? his comment reads like stories from the past about subways in nyc at 2 am and “dwb” in new jersey and delaware.