I love outrage. Being hot under the collar is what fuels most of the rubbish that appears in these blogs. Give me a good scandal involving Karl Rove, Glenn Beck or pretty much anyone named Cheney and I'm off to the races. I've even been known to malign the occasional Democrat albeit not too often. Nevertheless, despite the pushing and prodding from friends and readers (mostly the same folks) it has been difficult to generate much righteous indignation over the firing last week of Juan Williams by NPR.
For the benefit of anyone who decided to pass on the latest media dust-up, Juan Williams is a news analyst and commentator who was working for NPR and Fox News. His gig at NPR was his real job but as a black man with a sharp tongue and a less-than-liberal persona he was the darling of the Foxies like Chris Wallace, Tucker Carlson and Bill O'Reilly. African Americans who agree with the Fox crowd are as rare as schools actually attended by Christine O'Donnell. Anyway, the NPR crowd apparently hated Williams' cashing checks from Fox. The powers at NPR had repeatedly told Juan to keep his opinions to himself, especially the less liberal ones.
When Williams appeared on Bill O'Reilly's show last week and allowed that Muslims in religious attire make him nervous on airplanes, Vivian Schiller, head of NPR had heard enough. She told Williams to pack up his herringbone jacket with the patches on the elbows and his Meerschaum pipe and get out. She might have accused him of being off the reservation but one must consider the sensitivity of Native Americans.
Predictably, the wing-nut right was in full-throated rage by nightfall. Many were roaring about First Amendment rights of free speech heedless of the fact that the First Amendment only applies to government censorship. No matter. Why let facts urinate on a perfectly good bonfire? Fox was, of course, stunned and chagrined (or maybe chagrined then stunned). After all, hadn't poor Juan only expressed publicly what we all think? Should political correctness trump truth? Don't women in burkas and men in long beards and dresses make you rethink your trip to Duluth?
To the justifiably vexed I submit...Oh grow up! NPR had been hunting Juan Williams head for years. They didn't love his opinions (actually they didn't love that he has opinions) and they hated that he was consorting with Murdoch's Minions of Malice. NPR claims to be completely neutral and bias free. We may suspect that they lean ever so slightly to port but evidence is difficult to locate. (Ever since Alex Keaton's father, we assume NPR is a bunch of hippies masquerading as newspeople.) Because no NPR on-air employees are schlepping to MSNBC at night, few Liberal parallels are likely to surface. NPR has apologized to Williams (actually they apologized to everyone but Williams) but no one believes them and, oh yeah, he's still out.
Fox, never slow to make lemonade, has offered Williams a two million dollar contract to show up at the studio every day and trash NPR. They probably could have gotten him to do that for free. Anyway, Fox's largess prevents us from having to carry "FREE JUAN WILLIAMS" signs in front of NPR's headquarters. We can all be happy that Williams is the first on-air personality signed at Fox in two years that isn't running for President in 2012. Williams should be very happy at Fox. His contract includes 1) freedom to express his opinions, 2) four weeks vacation and, 3) no mandatory flights to anywhere in the Middle East. Also he never has to share an elevator with Dinesh D'Souza.
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