Juan Williams Gets Mugged

By now everyone has heard about what happened to Juan Williams. A long-time liberal with whom I rarely agreed but usually respected, Williams was a reporter on NPR, and an analyst for Fox News. NPR fired him this week, allegedly for a perceived, politically incorrect statement he made. You can read about the "incident" that led to the firing here, but what he said doesn't really matter. The truth of the matter is that the NPR politburo was unable to deal­ with the apparent treason against left-wing dogma which Williams was committing by appearing on . . . FOX NEWS (insert Dr. Evil music here.) According to Williams, NPR has been looking to fire him for his heresy for some time. It would seem that this incident provided what they thought was a good enough pretext. I'm pretty sure they wish they could get a mulligan - not regarding the actual firing, just the machinations around it.

Not satisfied with punishing him for appearing on a network that they perceive to be the domain of right-wing neanderthals and . . . defending the views which liberals espouse . . . NPR CEO Vivian Schiller decided to support her actions with a personal attack on Williams by implying that he was mentally unbalanced (get yourself a good libel lawyer, Viv.) How typically liberal; when you can't support your argument with facts, impugn those who disagree with you with a personal attack. Even Whoopi Goldberg, the absolute battiest of the moon bats, has spoken out against NPR's treatment of Williams. The fact that this entire situation has blown up in the face of NPR only shows the arrogance, ineptitude and ignorance of the people running that cesspool of far-left bias.

The funniest part of this whole brouhaha has been seeing long-time liberals like Bob Beckel, Ellen Ratner, Susan Estrich, Pat Caddell (transcript from 10/22 Hannity show not up on Foxnews yet), and Williams himself.are now proclaiming how shocked they that the "far left" is so intolerant! Where the hell have these people been for the past twenty years? It is this is that brings me to what really is being missed by all of the commentary and analysis of this episode.

There's an old saying that a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged. For the last twenty or so years, normal, everyday Americans have lived in fear of a liberal mugging. Every time we say or do something, we have to stop and wonder if it will be used to hurt us. Will my exercising my first amendment right to freedom of speech be used against me? Be it egregiously offensive, the innocuous taken out of context, or just simply something misconstrued, will I lose my job, become unhireable or have my reputation destroyed because the left-wing establishment, including the people I mentioned in the previous paragraph, have branded me as a purveyor of "hate speech"? This is the climate of intolerance and fear in which we have been forced to endure for two decades, and now these liberals are appalled, confused and upset that the Gestapo has come and taken away not a Jew, nor a communist, nor a homosexual, nor a Slav, but one of their own.

Juan Williams has been directly mugged, and many of the usual liberal suspects have been indirectly mugged. Welcome to the club. Let's see if with their eyes finally opened, they can now perceive the utter evil in the insidious movement which they have been championing.


Bob, RI

Ceterum , exsisto quietis Iggy!

P.S. - It scares the hell out of me that Ellen Ratner and I both came up with the same literary jab (politburo) at NPR. Let's just hope it is because away from the dark side started to turn she has.
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