The Juan Williams Affair

NPR fired analyst Juan Williams for remarking

But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

Given the fact that Muslims shouting "God is great" in Arabic flew three airliners full of fuel and passengers into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and crashing a fourth into a field in Pennsylvania, people who make a point of ostentatious Muslim appearance on planes we fly in should make us worried or nervous.  It may also be good to remind ourselves that that day - 9/11 - was neither the first or the last attack by Islamofascists.

Matt Welch points out that the MSM - of which NPR is leading member - is really not in a position to lecture anyone on journalistic integrity. It's not that Williams, among others, has said far worse things about middle Americans, the Tea Partiers, Conservatives and Republicans.

Williams' firing is a clarifying moment in media mores. You can be Islamophobic, in the form of refusing to run the most innocuous imaginable political cartoons out of a broad-brush fear of Muslims, but you can't admit it, even when the fear is expressed as a personal feeling and not a group description, winnowed down to the very specific and nightmare-exhuming act of riding on an airplane, and uttered in a context of otherwise repudiating collective guilt and overbroad fearmongering.

Meanwhile at NPR, someone who does not do grace under pressure easily, accused Williams of being mentally ill: NPR CEO: Williams' Views Should Stay Between Himself And 'His Psychiatrist'

We are not persuaded by such a "nuanced" argument.

To make up for the pain of his loss of position on NPR, FOX's Roger Ailes offered Williams a $2 million two year contract.

I find myself disagreeing with Williams more often than not, but his abrupt firing from NPR for statements that are less controversial or biased than those regularly broadcast by that network force me to choose between his lone voice of Liberalism and THAT REPULSIVE COLLECTION OF SNIDE FUCKWIT URBAN HIPSTER TWATS at NPR.  I'm with Williams.