NPR Takes Another Shot At Juan Williams;
BTW, Guys, Get Ready: Starting Next Year You Will Officially Join the Free-Market Capitalist System!

The chief executive drops an insult, calling Williams crazy for thinking that Muslims might be a worry on airplanes.

NPR’s chief executive is defending the firing of news analyst Juan Williams after his comments on the Fox News Channel about Muslims and says Williams veered from journalistic ethics several times before.

Williams told Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly he gets nervous when he sees people in Muslim garb on an airplane. NPR CEO Vivian Schiller said Thursday at the Atlanta Press Club that controversial opinions should not come from NPR reporters or news analysts.

Schiller also said whatever feelings Williams has about Muslims should be between him and “his psychiatrist or his publicist.”

Controversial opinions should not be aired? Controversial according to whom? Doctrinaire PC left-liberals, right?

But "Teabaggers" is okay?

Of course CAIR pushed the firing:

Before Williams was fired, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said such commentary from a journalist about other racial, ethnic or religious minority groups would not be tolerated.

“NPR should address the fact that one of its news analysts seems to believe that all airline passengers who are perceived to be Muslim can legitimately be viewed as security threats,” CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said.

I think it's time to give CAIR back a bit of what it dishes out -- let's start firing any Muslim who voices a "controversial" opinion from their day-jobs. I think we could find a few voicing "controversial" opinions in their off-hours.

We'll see how they like these rules then.

And on NPR: It's time. And we will have the Congress. Dan Rieh writes "A Failed Mission Should Not Be Funded," citing NPR's own laugh-giggle mission statement, expressing its devotion to diversity and unpopular views, as a good reason to defund it.

Mike Huckabee agrees.

"NPR has discredited itself as a forum for free speech and a protection of the First Amendment rights of all and has solidified itself as the purveyor of politically correct pabulum and protector of views that lean left," Huckabee said in a statement provided to CNN.

Williams told Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on Monday that he gets "worried" and "nervous" on flights when he sees people wearing "Muslim garb." NPR terminated Williams' contract on Wednesday evening.

Huckabee said he "will no longer accept interview requests from NPR as long as they are going to practice a form of censorship, and since NPR is funded with public funds, it is a form of censorship."

"It is time for the taxpayers to start making cuts to federal spending, and I encourage the new Congress to start with NPR," he said.

You tell 'em, Mike.

And I don't even want to hear from the conservatives who like NPR. Yeah, once in a while, I'm in the car with an NPR listener, and yeah, it can be a good, tony sort of radio show. But you can't be conservative and continue to claim that the government should be in the business of paying for your hobbies and entertainment. If we can't even agree that NPR should be defunded, then what can be defunded?

It's time. The parts of NPR that work will be picked up by commercial radio. Or subscriber radio, maybe XM Sirius.

It's time to get the government out of the business of leftist propaganda.

Period.

More: They were looking to fire him for being on Fox in the first place.

Mr. Williams’s contributions on Fox raised eyebrows at NPR in the past. In February 2009, NPR said it had asked that he stop being identified on “The O’Reilly Factor” as a “senior correspondent for NPR,” even though that title was accurate.

Alicia C. Shepard, the NPR ombudswoman, said at the time that Mr. Williams was a “lightning rod” for the public radio organization in part because he “tends to speak one way on NPR and another on Fox.”

Ms. Shepard said she had received 378 listener e-mails in 2008 listing complaints and frustrations about Mr. Williams.

Ah. So you're saying he spoke conservatively on Fox, or at least moderately?

And how did he speak on NPR, praytell?

Isn't this the real issue -- NPR's insistence that it gets to be by liberals, for liberals, but funded by everyone?

Get fucking George Soros to fund this happyland for liberals. He has the money.

We're out. Period.

One more thing: At Slate, Saletan said the left is doing to Williams what the right did with Sherrod -- truncating his comments to cut off the part where he rescues himself with some feel-goodery.

He's right, but his argument concedes far too much -- Williams shouldn't be fired for making utterly noncontroversial statements about Muslims being more worrisome on airplanes than Lutherans even if he hadn't "saved" himself with the feel-goodery.

This is NPR. I fucking pay for it. If it's devoted to unconventional and unpopular ideas and diversity -- then let's have some, at long fucking last.

NPR is a perfect liberal bubble-- supported by taxpayers against their will, designed explicitly to be offensive or condescending to 90% of those taxpayers who are involuntarily funding it, arrogant and nasty and entitled about this state of affairs, and relentlessly hypocritical. NPR is a left-liberal's idea of "diversity" -- a taxpayer-extorted fantasyland showcasing diverse opinons all the way from the center left to the hard left.

Fuck them all, make them earn their $450,000 per year pay.

posted by Ace at 02:51 PM

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