The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Dogs Differ on Whether Halloween Costumes Embarrass Experts–Now That Would Be News
“Experts Differ on Whether Halloween Costumes Embarrass Dogs”–headline, Houston Chronicle, Oct. 20
Public Radio vs. the Public
National Public Radio has fired Juan Williams. the New York Times reports:
The move came after Mr. Williams, who is also a Fox News political analyst, appeared on the “The O’Reilly Factor” on Monday. On the show, the host, Bill O’Reilly, asked him to respond to the notion that the United States was facing a “Muslim dilemma.” Mr. O’Reilly said, “The cold truth is that in the world today jihad, aided and abetted by some Muslim nations, is the biggest threat on the planet.”
Mr. Williams said he concurred with Mr. O’Reilly.
He continued: “I mean, look, Bill, 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.”
Mr. Williams also made reference to the Pakistani immigrant who pleaded guilty this month to trying to plant a car bomb in Times Square. “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,” Mr. Williams said.
NPR’s action was in compliance with a demand issued by the Council on American-Islamic Relations:
“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,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad. “Such irresponsible and inflammatory comments would not be tolerated if they targeted any other racial, ethnic or religious minority, and they should not pass without action by NPR.”
Awad, whose group earlier this month bestowed a “lifetime achievement award” on Jew-hating ex-journalist Helen Thomas, grossly mischaracterizes Williams’s statement. The ex-NPR man said nothing about who “can legitimately be viewed as security threats.” He merely expressed his own feelings, saying that Muslim passengers make him nervous.
As Jeffrey Goldberg, a liberal blogger for The Atlantic, points out, “the vast majority of people who fly in this country” feel the same way. Goldberg argues convincingly that the focus on traditional Muslim garb is irrational, since Islamic supremacists, “for obvious tactical reasons,” typically dress “in a manner meant to help them blend in with surroundings” when carrying out terrorist attacks. “But is he wrong to worry about Islamist terrorism?” Goldberg asks. “Of course not.”
NPR’s press release on the firing claims that Williams’s “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,” but offers no explanation of what those standards and practices are.
For a clue, let’s examine another Williams quote. On “Fox News Sunday” Aug. 22, as we noted the following day, Williams said the following in a discussion of poll results showing that large numbers of Americans doubt President Obama’s claim to be Christian:
I think that this is a malevolent effort by people who are his critics to make him out to be the “other” in American life–that he’s not “really an American,” he’s some sort of Manchurian candidate. . . . I think it’s the same people who say, you know, “This guy’s a socialist.” I think it’s now about a third of Americans who–and overwhelmingly Republicans–who say he wasn’t born in the country. People who want to say that he favors whites over blacks [sic] in terms of what the Justice Department is doing with the New Black Panther Party, it’s about reparations for slavery. I think these are people who are uncomfortable with a black president, or uncomfortable with his policies. They don’t like Barack Obama.
This was considerably more objectionable than Williams’s Monday comment. In the earlier case he was attacking ordinary Americans, baselessly accusing them of racism because they have doubts about the president or are uncomfortable with his policies.
To be clear, we do not think NPR (or Fox) should have fired Williams for that comment either. Indeed, the question never even occurred to us until he actually was sacked for the remark that drew CAIR’s ire. Objectionable statements have their place in democratic debate, and Williams was expressing a point of view that ought to be exposed and rebutted, not suppressed.
But it is highly revealing that a hostile expression of prejudice against ordinary Americans is apparently consistent with whatever standards and practices supposedly govern NPR. On the other hand a pained expression of a prejudice shared by ordinary Americans and rooted in the reality of war, we are told, violates those ineffable standards and is a firing offense.
National Public Radio appears to be an institution that operates in opposition to, rather than service of, the public.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.
