I sympathize with the guy. Living in a culture saturated with subtle cues that you are supposed to fear Muslims will tend to produce a subconscious fear in even the most tolerant people. The only way to combat that fear is to recognize that you have it, that it is irrational, and that you have to actively work to move past it. Driving the fear deeper into your subconscious is a dangerous strategy, and I'm afraid that NPR is encouraging this sort of self-repression with the firing of Williams.
How generous of you. I am sure that they are all waking up daily wondering whether pouhe will give them a little leeway.
Williams just picked the right minorities to mess with. If he had a similar crack using some common stereotype about Jews or Baptists or some more powerful group than Muslims then he'd be disappeared and never heard from again. Nobody at Fox News was crying about Rick Sanchez for basically saying the same type of crap.
Here is the interview in it's entirety..... <script type="text/javascript" src="http://video.foxnews.com/v/embed.js?id=4381309&w=466&h=263"></script><noscript>Watch the latest video at <a href="http://video.foxnews.com">video.foxnews.com</a></noscript>
Btw, there's no such thing as Muslim garb except a long beard. I don't blame the guy. Maybe he's already a nervous flyer and this makes him more nervous. I do think he's stupid in the way he decides who may be a terrorist and who is not. Funy vid: <object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wPEmfh3hOXc?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wPEmfh3hOXc?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>
Williams has not been a Republican but he has been moderate to conservative. He's on Fox to pretend to be the left leaning balance in their equation, but Williams stopped being left leaning long ago, and basically plays the role of Washington Generals at Fox. That being said, he was making the point that his own fear and those of others were irrational, and should be overcome. NPR shouldn't have fired him for that. In truth I never cared for him on NPR, and I'm happy he's gone. I just don't believe it was just or acceptable to be fired for what he did on Bill O's show.
NPR was looking for an excuse to get rid of Williams and anything remotely controversial would've done. This was handled pretty poorly though and it reminds me a lot of the Shirley Sherrod flap where a quote was taken out of context as justification for firing.
Geezuz, for $2 million I'll start saying mean things about muslims too. I guess that's why basso, jackie etc spend so much time doing it.
