Posted on 10/24/2010 7:53:30 AM PDT by Paladins Prayer
If anyone should feel loved right now, it’s social commentator Juan Williams. His firing by National Public Radio (NPR) for comments he made on Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor has drawn harsh criticism from all quarters, left, right and center. And I join this defensive phalanx. Sacking a man for saying that he gets “worried” and “nervous” aboard a plane when he see people “identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims” with their traditional garb is an example of political correctness run amuck. Heck, Williams was merely giving voice to a disquiet felt by a majority of Americans.
And if any entity should feel unloved — and unlovable — it’s NPR. Not only was their action grossly unjust, but then we found out that it might have been taken in response to a complaint from the Council on American Islamic Relations. The station has also been disingenuous, claiming that the pink slip was rendered because NPR commentators “should not participate in shows ... that encourage punditry and speculation rather than fact-based analysis,” yet never applied this standard to its very own speculating, fact-bereft Mara Liasson and Nina Totenberg. To top it all off, station President and CEO Vivian Schiller struck a mercenary note, saying she was “profoundly sorry that this happened during fundraising week.” Islamist-leaning, dishonest, and greedy, NPR casts itself as the perfect villain and Williams as hapless victim. He has become just a bit of a martyr and a bit more of a hero.
But not so fast. Does it occur to anyone that Williams has been victimized by a politically correct environment that he, as a decades-long supporter of the Left, is partially responsible for creating?
(Excerpt) Read more at thenewamerican.com ...
“Why everyone is treating Williams like a hero is beyond me.”
Who’s treating him like a hero?
And Fox News is going to pay him $2 miilion and they will NEVER be able to get rid of him. Think about it. They are stuck with a Leftist mouthpiece to muck up Fox forever.
It was easy to get rid of Coombs....but.....
Still, I am enjoying all the NPR bashing..the Juan Williams canonization: not so much.
I don’t think he’s a hero, but it is amusing that he is too conservative for the wackos at NPR, and it resulted in him getting some of his own medicine. It’s also amusing that NPR is now reaping the whirlwind.
Me too. He is a commie. Just an out of favor one like Trotski.
Sorry -but to my mind, Juan was a leftist but he was consistently considerate - unlike most (nearly ALL) other leftists, he did not scream, interrupt and insult anyone and everyone who disagreed with him. His politics may not have anything in common with my own but he didn’t deserve what happened to him and, if Fox is going to have some commentators to the left, I’m glad he is one of them.
I haven’t seen many people treating him like a hero. More than that I see people who feel a little sorry for him getting treated like crap, but at the same time there’s not a sense of glee that a liberal has been hurt by political correctness because, the writer of this article aside, we’re not all so petty.
We see that the issue is far, far bigger than Williams. If it happened to, say, Whoopi Goldberg, I’d be chortling, but Williams, who’s definitely a liberal, is also a serious person, who takes these issues seriously. We have an opportunity now to have a voice of the black civil rights society speaking out against this PC speech code crap.
So I couldn’t care less if Williams escapes some of the heckling he may have coming to him, and I don’t begrudge him getting a nice new contract from FOX. He’s a liberal. FOX is bashed for being one-sided, but they’ve just hired one of the now most prominent libs to a “conservative” network—who the heck do the “balanced” CNN and MSNBC have who’s just as conservative as he is liberal?
The difference being that this liberal has been burned by other liberals, and now he has a lot more attention on him just as that’s dawning on him. That’s worth a lot more than $2 million of Fox’s money (like I care how much they spend on him).
I cannot actually recall a time when he's ever been offensive in any respect. He writes; he teaches; he discusses. And then the Fascists at NPR jump him. Still, they weren't satisfied to simply mug him, they began accusing him of being a madman.
Hey, he's deserving of defense.
They aren't. NPR and their running dog lackeys must be destroyed to the last federal dollar and tax deductible donation.
I’m sure the Sauds along with Soros can support NPR without the help of US taxpayers
Worst troll of the day.
You must not have read the article. The author calls Williams a gentleman and praises him for his civility. He also says that we have to condemn political correctness no matter who it hurts.
I’m not sure how much good it does to post articles. Many freepers don’t seem to even read them.
Money quote: “Does it occur to anyone that Williams has been victimized by a politically correct environment that he, as a decades-long supporter of the Left, is partially responsible for creating?”
I agree but many on the left never forgave him for supporting Clarence 20 years ago
Hopefully, this is a “teachable moment” for Juan.
Since many don’t want to actually read the article, I’ll post the last section.
“we should be passionate in our defense of Williams. We must uphold truth no matter who utters it and combat political correctness whenever it rears its ugly head. I just wish the Williamses of the world would come to understand who their friends really are and that leftists, like nations, generally don’t have friends — they have interests. Because history is littered with the corpses of good men who learned only too late that, to those they considered brothers in ideological arms, they were never anything but a certain useful something.”
Juan Williams is one of those old-school liberals. He’s a decent enough guy who, IMO, hasn’t yet outlived his youthful liberal ideals. At this time in his life I doubt he ever will.
But this was likely a wake up call for Juan, nonetheless. He said himself a day or so after his termination, he’d always considered the right to be the uncaring ones, yet here he was, treated so poorly by those he considered his friends. The wake up call likely won’t include an epiphany in politics, but an epiphany in exactly what the left in this country really is.
And that in itself is something to smirk about.
Who’s treating him like a hero? What was done to him is wrong, plain and simple.
ALL public broadcasting must be DEFUNDED NOW!!
If Fox News intends to stay fair and balanced, why on earth would they want to get rid of him?
I hate hearing “the other side” when I watch Fox, but I’m glad they have both sides. I do enjoy a good “duke out”.
Besides, if you don’t have someone like Fox allowing the left to spew it’s stupidity, without someone pointing it out, America would never see it.
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