JUAN WILLIAMS FIRED BY NPR
BACK STORY
OCTOBER 21, 2010. Juan Williams, whom I personally find to be an annoying defender of the Left—but whom conservatives generally like as “a good guy”—gets himself canned by National Public Radio.
Why? He told FOX’s Bill O’Reilly he’d become nervous and worried if he boarded a plane and saw a Muslim in garb getting on the same plane. Zang! Juan is out at NPR.
“…remarks inconsistent with our policy of blah-blah…”
So I started thinking about NPR. Haven’t listened to it in many years. Hated All Things Considered and other smarmy precious shows there.
Remind me again? Why does NPR exist on tax money? Why is the government permitted to fund a radio network?
The government believes all other radio is deficient and the public deserves to hear “serious programming?” Is that it?
And therefore, the government (taxpayer) will solve this problem and pick up the tab?
Following that logic, why doesn’t the federal government move into publishing novels, producing feature films, offering men a superior brand of condom?
How about government newspapers? That industry is dying. Don’t we need another sober daily paper distributed out of Washington to the masses? PBS does a nightly television newscast. How would government publishing a newspaper be any different?
I’ve been, in my day, to a number of sketchy dentists. Let’s have the government train and turn out Federal Dentists.
Anyway, NPR, the network who fired Juan Williams, was founded in 1970 by a 1967 law, the Public Broadcasting Act. When Lyndon Johnson signed the Bill he remarked:
“It [the Bill] announces to the world that our Nation wants more than just material wealth; our Nation wants more than a ‘chicken in every pot’. We in America have an appetite for excellence, too. While we work every day to produce new goods and to create new wealth, we want most of all to enrich man’s spirit. That is the purpose of this act…It will give a wider and, I think, stronger voice to educational radio and television by providing new funds for broadcast facilities. It will launch a major study of television’s use in the Nation’s classrooms and their potential use throughout the world. Finally — and most important — it builds a new institution: the Corporation for Public Broadcasting”.
My, my. Most importantly it builds a CORPORATION. A government corporation. Now THAT has to be illegal. And apparently I was right. The president and Congress decided the USA had had enough of shoddy programming, and it was time to step into the breach and provide enrichment to the spirit—and make the citizens pay for it.
I mean, lions chasing antelopes around on the plains of Africa, this year’s remembrance of Doo-Wop, some guy with long hair and a smile that would melt a Twinkie as he plays a violin in the Roman Coliseum—I’m dying for that kind of uplifting.
And a few times a year, NPR and PBS can reach into the pockets of viewers for contributions. What beats that?
To round off this story nicely, the CEO of NPR, Vivian Schiller, released a statement after Juan was fired. She claimed he wasn’t kicked out because he voiced an opinion about a Muslim on a plane, but because it’s NPR policy not to allow their news analysts to state personal opinions of any kind on any media at any time. Such utterances would undermine their credibility as analysts.
Really? Juan has been working double time as a FOX TV panelist since 1997, and has offered literally thousands of opinions on various issues. NPR could have canned him easily, but they didn’t—until he wandered into politically incorrect territory yesterday.
For example, here’s something Juan said on FOX in 2009 that didn’t get him fired:
“Michelle Obama, you know, she’s got this Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress thing going. If she starts talking…her instinct is to start with this blame America, you know, I’m the victim. If that stuff starts coming out, people will go bananas and she’ll go from being the new Jackie O to being something of an albatross.”
So let’s see. What’s the difference between Juan skewering the president’s wife and claiming he’d be nervous if he got on a plane with a Muslim in garb?
I believe we can peer into the fog and see a few priorities on the scale of taboos vis-à-vis the American Left.
It also tells us something about why American feminist groups aren’t going all out in condemnation of women being stoned, beaten, and raped, girls being subjected to clitoral mutilation, and daughters being killed by their families for marrying non-Muslims.
JON RAPPOPORT
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