I think that this whole situation with Juan Williams being fired by National Public Radio has caused some (not all, but some) liberals to be mugged by reality. It has opened their eyes and now they can see.
How can you possibly claim to be tolerant if you fire a guy for honestly speaking his mind and saying that he sometimes feels fear if he sees Muslims getting on a plane with him.
How can you possibly claim to watch out for minorities when you FIRE the only Black reporter at NPR just because he spoke his mind? Williams didn’t lie. He did not bend the truth. All he did was tell his innermost feelings about terrorism, and how the 9/11 attacks have made him feel.
How can you fire Williams and still claim to be open-minded?
You can not, and you are not being tolerant, or looking out for minorities. The AGENDA is the most important thing. More important than any silly little Black man and any fears that he might have over sitting on a plane with Muslims.
“Let’s talk about racism, let’s talk about terrorism, we need a dialogue”, the progressives are fond of saying. Yet, when Juan Williams tries to do just that, he is clubbed in the knees and taken down. Relegated to the likes of the evil Fox News, nevermore to be seen on traditional mainstream media.
What REALLY did Juan say..?? Juan didn’t say that he hates Muslims, or that he fears Muslims being near him, everywhere. He said that the image of outward looking Muslims on a plane with him, gives him fear.
You have got to take color and race out of the equation, (which is hard to do for democrats who are obsessed with race and skin color). Everyone has been walking down a city street, and had a group of scary looking people coming towards you. This group of people are loud, rowdy, and clearly up to no good. It doesn’t matter what color their skin is, they could be Mexican, or Black, or White looking Italians; it doesn’t freaking matter what race they are. The fact that these people are in a “gang”, and they are causing problems, puts fear in your heart until you have passed them by, safely.
This situation with Juan Williams is the same thing: because radicals, who believe in Islam, and dress like Muslims, keep attacking America and blowing shit up; this causes folks like Juan Williams (and myself) to fear people who dress like the terrorists, because they might blow shit up.
You shouldn’t be mad at Juan Williams, you should be mad at the radicals who dress like Muslims, blow shit up in the name of Allah and kill people, and are giving other Muslims a bad name. The radical members of Islam are who you should be mad at, not Williams for being honest.
For the liberal / progressive; let me put this another way: if you went to an Arab country, I am sure that you would find Muslims who fear the American soldier (because the American soldier is blowing shit up.) However, not all American soldiers ARE blowing shit up. Some US soldiers are there for the rebuilding of the country and the feeding of the people. Wouldn’t it be racist for Muslims to fear ALL of the American soldiers..?? (Aaah haaa, my liberal friend, you have just been mugged by reality.)
The sad truth is that Juan Williams has been fighting for liberal causes on Fox News for YEARS. Williams, by himself, has been surrounded by 3 or 4 conservatives at a time; trying to debate the relevance of some liberal program, all the while being outnumbered by conservatives on Fox.
Juan Williams has probably done MORE to promote liberal causes than NPR, Media Matters, and Move On- combined. Because Williams doesn’t “preach to the choir”, safely talking only to people who share his ideology, he goes directly into enemy territory: Fox News.
It should also be noted that Fox News, to my knowledge, has never shut down Juan Williams, for anything that he has said.
NPR’s response to this debacle, is: “Hey, well, it is too bad that this happened during our fund raising event. We need your money to keep quality programming on the air, so send in those donations. However, we cannot have some silly little man claim that he fears Muslims. We MUST think about journalistic integrity. Why, Muslims are the best bunch of people ever, far better than those evil Christians who caused the Spanish Inquisition (about a thousand years ago). So what if a few buildings got knocked down by Muslims and some people died, or the fact that the underwear bomber, or the shoe bomber, or the Times Square bomber, or the USS Cole bomber, or the US Embassy bombers, were all Muslims. That doesn’t mean a thing.”
Yep, that’s public radio. All dressed up in “politically correct” clothes, with no place to go.
I am going to let my fellow conservative colleagues talk about the other NPR reporters and the comments that they may have made in the past, who were NOT fired by NPR. I, personally, do not listen to NPR. I have tried, but listening to NPR reminds me of listening to someone trying to read the assembly instructions to an entertainment center purchased from IKEA. (“Take pin C and place it into hole B, using a slight turning motion. Then take bracket F and use screws marked L and attach bracket F to plank R as shown.”)
However, I do want to talk about the actions of a past- “respected journalist”, and the hypocrisy of the “tolerant” liberal.
If you asked someone today who is the most trusted man in the news business, they may give you a blank-stare, then reply: “I dunno, maybe Jerry Springer.”
But if you asked that question 30 years ago, the answer would be “Walter Cronkite.”
I do not want to condemn Walter Cronkite here; anyone who reaches the pinnacle of their game should be commended.
However, Cronkite was far from being a “non-bias journalist.” In fact, Cronkite was very, very bias.
Cronkite didn’t just report the news, Cronkite helped shape the news; and we are finding more on that today.
It has been said that without President JFK and Walter Cronkite, we never would have made it to the moon. JFK’s contribution goes without saying; however, Cronkite was there reporting for CBS all of the events that went into the building of the American space program. JFK set the moon mission up and Cronkite got Americans interested in it.
I do not think that we can condemn Cronkite for showing a bias in favor of the space program. Hey, we were all into it.
It is when we dive into the reporting on the Vietnam War that the lines between “reporting” and “shaping” the news become cloudy. Documents have surfaced which allegedly show how Cronkite not only reported on anti-war protests, Cronkite showed the protesters HOW to preform their rallies, what to say, which democrat politicians to get in touch with, and what time CBS News would be there, so the anti-war protesters could put their “best face on” for the cameras.
This is a photo-grab of one such document, allegedly showing Cronkite directing a war protest rally, (the protesters name has been removed.)
This is when many hippies realized that they too, could shape the news. This is when many hippies went into journalism to “change the world.” I speak about this connection between 1960's hippies and the “revolution by way of the pen” in my editorial on “The freedom hippies”, which you can find on “Angry Republic Radio”, at this LINK. (Since you are veiwing this editorial on The Angry Republic's News site, just look to the right for the radio player.)
Cronkite directing an anti-war protest rally? Folks, this is not reporting the news.
The funny thing is, this is exactly what liberals claim that Fox News does today: stage Tea Party rallies and then report on them. BUT, this has all been done before, about 40 years ago; by liberals, CBS News, the democrats, and Walter Cronkite.
So, for NPR to fire Juan Williams because: “NPR needs to uphold journalistic standards” is laughable. THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A NON-BIAS REPORTER, EVER.
(Did I just say that..??)
I have never found a non-bias reporter. As Benjamin Franklin once said: “There is freedom of the press, as long as you own the printing press.”
Let’s face it, even what you DO NOT report, shows a bias. All news stories are important to- someone. Yet, when you are putting together your newspaper, or your TV show, you MUST choose which stories to cover, because you do not have room for all of them. You must “guess” what stories that you think people will be interested in. In dong so, you are showing a bias.
Bias has been there, always. We could go back to the Roman Empire; to the days when “scribes” wrote out each book by hand, because there was no printing press. These scribes didn’t always copy each book, word for word; and were known to do a little “re-writing” of history themselves. Since many of the books about the Roman Empire were written a hundreds years after the empire fell, written by people from nations whom the Roman Empire had conquered earlier, these books do not always show the Roman Empire in a good light. Even today, we are still trying to figure out what was real, and what was fiction, from the Roman Empire.
So I get a little pissed off when I hear liberals talking about protecting their journalistic integrity. There never has been any, and we would be better off if people would just admit this. TELL ME WHO YOU ARE AND WHAT YOU STAND FOR, don’t lie to me and claim that you have no bias; when clearly you do.
Just be honest, that is all we ask.
Which is what Juan Williams was doing.
And he was fired by the “tolerant” people at public radio.
Written by AR Babonie for The Angry Republic
