Juan Williams Fired from NPR

Vivian Schiller has to put out another apology:

 

Who has said that?

Do you think Juan is a bigot?

Just like Shirley Sherrod, Juan discussed his feelings, but he also put them in context. He never advocated any kind of discrimination.

 

I think a lot of things that horrify my therapist when I say them out loud.

 

I Hate Muslims is big business:

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20101024/NEWS01/10240374/The+price+of+fear

 

Bottom line, though. If you are going to work for NPR and be a regular guest on Fox News shows, you are either going to be goaded into agreeing or disagreeing with the Fox folks and piss off your bosses one way or another.

 

The fact that NPR doesn't go out of their way to sell hate and fear probably has a good deal to do with it.

 

Coates:


The point here isn't that Williams endorses hate crimes--he does not. The point is that prejudice, by its very nature, makes broad leaps in logic. Prejudice is not wrong because it is uncivil, impolite or unsympathetic. It is wrong because it is weak thinking. In the case of Williams, it means believing that a terrorist would be so stupid as to board a plane dressed in a dishdasha and clutching the Koran. In the case of Sodi, it meant that all swarthy looking people with turbans are the same.

Finally, it must be said--in the broader context--that Juan Williams isn't simply Shirley Sherrod. Juan Williams' father, to my knowledge, was not murdered by anti-American Islamic radicals. Juan Williams did not grow up watching his mother face down the Al'Qaeda on the front porch. Juan Williams did not have his entire life absorbed by the fight against Islamic terror. Juan Williams makes a career amicably discussing bigotry with bigots. Shirley Sherrod made a career, and a life, of confronting bigotry--perhaps most admirably, her own.

This all leads me to this post, in which Andrew looks at Williams' convincing rebuke of those who would justify prejudice with crime stats. I was struck by Williams' impeccable reasoning and sober style--so much so that I had difficulty reconciling it with the pundit who has been reduced to denouncing Michelle Obama as "Stokely Carmichael in a dress."

And then I thought of the old sage Frederick Douglass. "A man is worked on by what he works on," said Douglas. "He may carve out his circumstance, but his circumstances will carve him out as well."

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/10/the-hi-tech-lynching-of-juan-williams/65075/

 

You did, Sparky. Several times. If not explicitly, certainly implicitly.

 

And those were my complete thoughts on the matter?