The Chris Moeller Archives

I am Juan Williams

National Public Radio and Fox News commentator Juan Williams has been fired by NPR for uttering a politically-charged personal admission on television Monday night.


First, the comments Juan Williams made Monday on Bill O'Reilly:

"I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. 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. Now, I remember also that when the Times Square bomber was at court, I think this was just last week. He said the war with Muslims, America's war is just beginning, first drop of blood. I don't think there's any way to get away from these facts."

NPR's response:

"Tonight we gave Juan Williams notice that we are terminating his contract as a Senior News Analyst for NPR News. Juan has been a valuable contributor to NPR and public radio for many years and we did not make this decision lightly or without regret. However, his remarks on The O’Reilly Factor this past Monday were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a News Analyst with NPR. We regret these circumstances and thank Juan Williams for his many years of service to NPR and public radio."


Now normally this type of media firing doesn't bug me. Like Don Imus, Juan Williams has had a long career as a high-profile public commentator; like Imus, he's been well-compensated; and like Imus, the allotment of airtime already afforded him on national television and radio at the moment of his infraction far exceeds what his professional credentials have warranted. He's an insider, and he's been inside for a long time, so I'm not staying up late tonight worried about what's next for him in his career. But this firestorm is ridiculous.

Part of what Williams said was indeed a fact. Faisal Shahzad pled guilty to the Times Square plot recently, and in so doing, announced to the court, "Brace yourself, because the war with Muslims has just begun. Consider me only a first droplet of the flood that will follow me." Like all other religions, Islam has proven itself to be a remarkably violent one. A less-civilized blogger might even argue that it has proven itself of late to be one of the more violent of its company.

Both Christianity, the dominant religion of our country, and Islam have among its practitioners people who see the central conflict of our planet now as a holy battle between Christians and Muslims. I don't know how Juan Williams categorizes himself on religion and reason, but the rest of us are certainly justified, I would argue, to view anybody who chooses to align themselves, first and foremost, with such violent cults as at least slightly unsteady. We are talking about belief systems, after all, that loudly advertise the fallen state of humanity and a belief in a grand and greater deathly reward. Fundamentally, our concern then, I think-- if I can speak for all of the heathens and infidels-- is that the belief systems have been established as ones of carrots and sticks, and the promises in death are great.

And this is what I'm saying. Not Williams. Juan Williams didn't come anywhere close to saying something like this. He was just confessing to what goes through his mind in certain public scenarios. In fact, his comments are virtually identical in spirit to ones Jesse Jackson made years ago in regards to race and public safety, except that Jackson said it about his own demographic group. Those comments of both Williams and Jackson are admissions of internalized prejudice, not an endorsement of bigotry. Williams proceeded to argue too that Muslims did not attack us on 9/11, and that it was "extremists" instead, but somebody at NPR must have cut the tape. Radio editing is hard. I know.

I guess one could argue that my statements take that next step towards prejudice, but to paraphrase Bill Maher, they can't be because I'm not "prejudging." The tenants of these faiths are extensively documented and widely publicized, and I find them wildly inconsistent with science and reason. This makes me at least a little scared of anybody who shuns reason for superstition.

The biblical concept of stone throwing applies here. I'd love to be able to watch how individual NPR executives deal with similar real-life situations. So there are never any extra hands over the wallet in any public situation, or clenched purses, or extended glances at individuals at the airport based on appearance? Williams admits he experiences these moments, and he doesn't excuse himself. But maybe it's just him.

The written statement from NPR requires more explanation. That's why I tracked down the full public statement for print. There's an awful lot missing there. What are the specific "editorial standards and practices" of NPR with which Williams' comments are inconsistent? How exactly did he "undermine.. his credibility" as an "analyst"? Are we to take from the news release that NPR has now judged Williams to be a bigot? I'm picking up a little of that. The CEO of NPR, Vivian Schiller, said after Monday that Williams should have kept his feelings about Muslims between himself and "his psychiatrist or his publicist." She's already apologized publicly to Williams for that insulting statement, but he's still fired, only one of the two of them has 'fessed publicly to his all-too-human prejudices, and NPR, for the moment, looks exactly like what its conservative critics accuse it of being-- ideologically imbalanced and intolerant of dissent.

Should Juan Williams chill out more in airports? Yes. Should he have lost his job over this? Absolutely not. This is what happens when actual human expressions get muffled by political theater.

posted by CM @ 9:15 PM