There has been a lot of controversy over the past few days about the firing of Juan Williams after saying, "But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb, and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous." [source] This is scapegoating. There are one and a half billion Muslims in the world. Muslims follow the Quran today like Christians followed the Bible 600 years ago, and that means that women will wear headscarves. The terrorists are definitely a small minority of Muslims, and saying this shows him to be explosive and not clear-thinking. If an African-American said a similar thing about European-Americans in the 1960s because the person thought that they would be a member of the KKK, they would become inaccurate immediately because it shows an unclear method of thinking and explosiveness. If I was a news station manager I wouldn't want to have someone who is saying inflammatory things on my station because it would be giving the wrong message and I would want people with a clear head on my airwaves so that I would be 1) as accurate as possible and 2) giving non-hateful messages. Because of this, I must support NPR in their decision to have people with time slots be clear and respectful towards everyone. It once was called cultural respect.
Another thing is that NPR is being accused of bias. I disagree with this. NPR does have radio shows that appear to obviously have liberal bias to many people, like Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and it is an immensely popular radio show, but people know it is biased, and people listen to it for a good laugh at anybody political. When you listen to them they will bash any politician. Hardly liberal bias, they will poke fun at anyone, from Obama to Limbaugh. That is the only radio show on NPR that is consistently accused of having bias (for a somewhat understandable reason). They have the BBC on the air, and when they air their own news, they will interview people from pro-choice to pro-life and sometimes have a debate between the two side. This is hardly bias at all because they have interviews with not just someone who is hired to give a conservative or liberal spin on it, the people are from groups like Focus on the Family, Westboro Baptist Church, Republican Congresspeople, AND people from PFLAG, Freedom to Marry, and Democratic Congresspeople, ALL IN THE SAME HOUR, SOMETIMES THE SAME TIMESLOT! Now if that is biased, there is no neutrality. This movement applies to all other issues. The people they bring on believe strongly in their cause, are the best speakers for the movements, and are not interrupted. I disagree completely with this accusation.
These two arguments tell me that the far right is just looking for anything to bash other people on, no matter what. They need to cool their jets and start thinking before they say that someone who is saying something incredibly racist is right. That FOX is hiring him now after showing how unstable he is makes me distrust their method for hiring people.
