I've said for years that I wasn't going to give to NPR until they canned Juan Williams and Cokie Roberts, two wastes of airspace who routinely parrot conventional wisdom (leavened with the weekly GOP talking points) and call it “analysis”.
Well, we're 50% there: NPR Ends Juan Williams' Contract After Muslim Remarks.
One more to go.
Uncle Juan is finally gone! Hooray!
I agree about Williams in general. However, isn’t this particular instance similar to that Dept of AG employee who got fired for making a statement which was used as a debate device and taken out of context? (Ok, I know Breitbart, the biggest fraud of all time, totally manipulated that video but the idea is that it’s 1 statement out of a whole speech/conversation used to discredit someone.)
The DoA employee used her own history to explain how she has learned discrimination is never acceptable despite her initial comment about her feelings concerning not helping the white farmer. Similarly, Williams was debating Bill’O the Clown and arguing against Islamophobia. In doing so, he admitted that he does get nervous when he sees what he considers to be Muslims on airplanes. But his point, as the video seems to flesh out, is that we all may somewhat feel this way but can’t let it characterize people. It was an honest statement that occurred during an open conversation, with a much loonier individual, and he momentarily appealed to that person to make his point.
Opinions about Williams in general aside, what do you think about the increasingly chilled speech we are seeing in the media? The singling out of 1 statement as a soundbite is nothing new, but now, we’ve added ignorance to the point that person is actually trying to make, and they just get fired and that’s it?
I had not noticed “increasingly chilled speech … in the media”. It’s been a pretty well-behaved puppy for a long time.
The left remains marginalized; the right is somewhat more unleashed than say a decade ago.
PS. I think Williams’s problem was repeat violation of long-standing NPR policies. I don’t think we can see this as a free-speech issue at all but rather someone who insisted on moonlighting (lucratively) in a way inconsistent with his employment contract.
But doesn’t the employer lose at least some of the right to object when what Juan has been doing, he has been doing for 10 years!? He didn’t just make an appearance on another network and say something foolish, he did exactly what he’s BEEN doing without objection. NPR, if they objected, lost the right to cancel his contract long ago.
Not to mention, that in context, this was about the most harmless statement this side of “I like kitties.” Personally, I think it was a really stupid thing to do. All it will accomplish is put a bigger target on NPR and make many voters that much angrier. Juan said nothing wrong in its context.
What I wonder, and I just don’t know, is how tangled NPR actually is in government and whether such an action COULD be argued to be government-related enough to really make it a 1st amendment issue. NPR at least puts it self out as being public, which implies government, but is it? I don’t know. There is no doubt a suit in this either way that will be paid out of more of our tax dollars, so really, we’re all winners here…
I definitely don
Greenwald says:
“I’ve said for years that I wasn’t going to give to NPR until they canned Juan Williams and Cokie Roberts”
And I won’t give a dime to UM Law until they dismiss certain law professors who don’t share my political views.
Hey, it’s your money. Just don’t hold your breath. (Note that my claim was not just political bias but lazy reporting; yours is that some tenured professors have opinions you don’t like…which is sort of the point of their existence, if you ask me.)
Williams was not fired for “lazy reporting.” He was fired because he leans right, which is unacceptable for Nancy Pelosi Radio. Don’t pretend NPR wasn’t waiting for an excuse to fire him…probably in part to get your progressive pledge dollars. I used to be ambivalent about tax dollars going to fund NPR, now I am in favor of cutting it off.
As for UM Law, there are particular professors who if I named you would likely censor the post. Let’s just say certain UM Law professors have been accused of doing things far more politically incorrect than Williams, and I think you know exactly who I am talking about. That professor is still around and is numero uno why UM Law will never see a dime from me.
This item by Ta-nehisi Coates is worth a look: The High-Tech Lynching Of Juan Williams.