Fire NPR

Mike Gonzalez / October 21, 2010

National Public Radio’s dismissal of Juan Williams is a powerful indictment of NPR’s practices and corporate culture. Small wonder voices are once again calling for the federal government to defund NPR—which gets 16% of its budget from tax payers. The Heritage Foundation has long called for such defunding.

A veteran journalist, Williams is a liberal with whom I disagree more often than not. His integrity, his bravery, his refusal to be intimidated by peer pressure cannot be doubted, however. He has written thoughtful books on the civil rights movement and also dared speak to the African-American community about how dysfunctional family structures and devaluation of education and morality can produce and perpetuate crime and poverty. His commitment to improving opportunities for minorities even led him to agree to narrate a Heritage Foundation documentary on the demise of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program.

He was fired last night because of comments he made on the Bill O’Reilly show on Fox News. He told O’Reilly on Monday’s show how he feels when he’s on a plane:

I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they’re identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.

But Williams was obviously saying one must get beyond one’s very reasonable fears, as he also said:

If you said Timothy McVeigh, the Atlanta bomber, these people who are protesting against homosexuality at military funerals, very obnoxious, you don’t say first and foremost, we got a problem with Christians. That’s crazy. (more…)