A Liberal Who Got Mugged

Frank Rizzo, the two term mayor of Philadelphia, once said that "a conservative is a liberal who got mugged the night before". Juan Williams got mugged by his own kind this past week.

Williams, a longtime correspondent and news analyst for National Public Radio, was unceremoniously fired by NPR subsequent to an appearance on The O'Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel, in which he revealed that he sometimes gets nervous when he sees Muslims getting on an airplane dressed in full Muslim garb in the wake of the attacks of 9/11.

The network terminated him, they say, because he violated their journalistic standards with his comments. It should also be noted that Williams' dismissal followed complaints by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Williams' firing was an act of cowardice and hypocrisy. NPR has a history of intolerance and imbalance when it comes to journalistic ethics. NPR personalities have for years leveled some very non-politically correct opinions, and some of these personalities are correspondents, not analysts. One shining example that comes to mind was the remark by Nina Totenberg, NPR's legal affairs correspondent, who in 1995 on an appearance on PBS's "Inside Washington" said that if there was "retributive justice" in the world, former North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms would "get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it."

NPR has been trying to get rid of Williams for years. It stuck in their craw that he is also a Fox News contributor. They want no affiliation with the Fox News organization, and have even put pressure on Mara Liasson, an NPR political correspondent, over her appearances on "Special Report" and "Fox News Sunday".

It will certainly be interesting to see how the Williams matter will play out with relation to Liasson's continued affiliation with Fox.

As for Williams, he has landed on his feet. He has been given a lucrative contract extension with Fox, as well as an expanded role with that network.

And he has learned the hard way that the left can be vicious when they eat their own. He said he used to think that the right was the intolerant side. Now he knows better. And while it is unlikely that this ugly mugging of an honest, decent man who doesn't have a bigoted bone in his body will turn him into a conservative, it will probably give him a clearer look into how the left operates with regard to their agenda and an open dialogue on the issues.

Just remember that the most evil totalitarian governments in history have been hard left. Four that come to mind without any thought at all:

#4: Khmer Rouge
#3: NAZI Germany
#2: Soviet Union
#1: Communist China

The intolerance of the left has no bounds, as can be seen in the actions, words, and writings of the black panthers and Bill Ayres and the like.

Mark

This pity party for Juan Williams needs to wrap up.

I'm the first person to say it -- Williams seems like a genuinely nice guy to have as a neighbor, a party guest, or someone to chat with at the kids' soccer game. But professionally speaking, he's nothing more than an affirmative action success story. He parrots the liberal lines, no matter how painfully obvious it is that the lines are crap. This "mugging" isn't going to teach him a damn thing. And when all is said and done, he's coming out of this fine and dandy thanks to Fox -- and thanks to the very people he's helped malign for decades.

So really. The wailing and gnashing of teeth by FReepers should stop now. JMHO

“an honest, decent man” ... who made his living by calling anyone who disagreed with him a ‘’bigot’’

Could be, but each time I’ve seen him on FOX he’s appeared to be a reasonable man who happens to be liberal. I very very rarely agreed with him but I never got the impression that he considered his opponents to be bigots. Makes me wonder why NPR chose to make a martyr out of someone who could garner so much sympathy across the board. Bad decision, NPR. Bad, NPR!!

You should see what liberal columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson has to say about this on the opinion page of the LA Daily News:

“Former NPR analyst Juan Williams should been canned at NPR for his silly, bigoted crack about Muslims making him nervous. But NPR, if it had the ounce of integrity and fairness that it incessantly brags about, should have dumped Williams a long time ago for his equally great offense: his two decade con job as a liberal, civil rights expert and supporter.

Williams sold himself as a man that backed, even championed, the civil rights struggles of the past and that his sworn mission was to accurately and instructively chronicle that struggle.

But Williams was a fraud. That was more than apparent in the clashes that I had with him on Fox when he instantly assumed the attack dog role and jumped all over any criticism made of some of the dumbest inanities from black conservatives. That was a consistent pattern with Williams. Front himself off as a moderate, thoughtful, and balanced commentator And then quickly transform himself into a raving take-no-prisoner right-leaning commentator on Fox bashing Obama, civil rights leaders and shilling the GOP line on race.

Williams couldn’t have gotten away with this con job without the complicity of NPR officials who certainly were not clueless about William’s two-faced con. Williams, though, served a purpose for NPR. The network has sweated for years under scrutiny by the conservative hit pack that’s had the network squarely in its sights for any hint of a “liberal bias.”

NPR needed Williams far more than he needed them. He was their perfect cover. That is until he became a liability. The hard truth though is that Williams’ phony liberal front was and should have been a liability from the start. The pity is it took an outrageous, bigoted crack by him for NPR to do what it should have done a long time ago.”

Hutchinson like Williams is an African-American. Hutchinson’s bio is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Ofari_Hutchinson

Just another example of what happens to an African-American if they are considered uppity by the progressive left and what happens if it’s perceived by the left that the African-American, woman, Hispanic or gay isn’t towing the party line and has strayed from the plantation.

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