Ah. Terrorist cooties.
You can actually get 'em just by looking like 'em.
Why does the fear have to be rational? My wife is deathly afraid of mice. The irrationality of the fear doesn’t make it any less real.
I, too, love NPR, and listen to it every day, but I disagree with the portion of your post I bolded above. Please define what you mean by it, or provide cites exhibiting it. I find that, if anything, NPR goes out of its way to remain neutral on all issues, including controversial ones, e.g., religion, politics, etc. They report the facts, with no embellishment or bias, and they report the complete picture.
I don’t know about that, but I guess it is conceivable that NPR had its eye on Williams, as it would make prudent business sense for any new organization that happens to share talent with another media outlet, but especially with FOX News.
I’ve often wondered why Williams even wanted to be a commentator on NPR based on comments he’s made on FOX News. He’s obviously more comfortable taking and espousing conservative positions than providing straight commentary. I suspect it was the perceived prestige of being an NPR commentator. If not that, then I have no idea.
Oh, I’m sure they do. FOX News needs a black face or two to provide cover for the racial insensitivities exhibited in its programming. They’re probably willing to pay somewhat handsomely for that.
Anyway, we don’t know what may have occurred behind the scenes. I wouldn’t be surprised if Williams had been spoken to about such matters in the past by NPR execs. He’s been running his ‘even though I’m black, I agree with the conservative argument in this matter’ shtick on FOX News for a while now.
Someone upthread said Juan Williams was a liberal. He’s not.
I predict Williams will ramp up the conservative rhetoric now that he has no reason remain neutral, and that’s too bad.
Jumping on a chair because you’re afraid of a mouse has very few societal effects. Being afraid of people dressed like Muslims has a lot more.
There are soldiers at Ft Hood who would disagree with you if they were still able to describe Nidal Hassan.
When Islamic extremists publicly announce their intentions to continue 9/11 type attacks who should people attribute their concerns to?
It’s natural to assume that someone from another country who assimilates their adoptive culture is NOT a terrorist. Otherwise, it would be an irrational fear.
Nidal Hassan was dressed like a soldier. By this logic, we should react with fear to all people dressed like soldiers. For that matter, there are thousands of Muslim soldiers in the US military. Should soldiers be afraid of all of them?
No, there is no logic to that statement. If you were to say that hundreds of thousand or maybe millions of people dressed like soldiers all around the globe were planning to commit terrorist acts and had actually managed to kill tens of thousands of people so far (and millions if you count genocide), then yeah, there’d be logic to saying that people should beware of people dressed like soldiers.
Soldiers have been known to kill people (and steal their hash!) from time to time.
They would take money from anyone who wants to give it, and most of their donations are corporate.
None of it affects their content, though. They are non-partisan in their content.
But the argument at hand is that it’s logical to fear people based on the way they dress. In this case, someone has actually committed a terrorist act while dressed like a soldier. If that’s not a good way to determine who is likely to commit a terrorist act, why is it then logical to fear people who are dressed like Muslims?
There are not hundreds of thousands, much less millions of Muslims planning to commit terrorist acts around the world.
Nidal Hassan was dressed as a United States soldier.
Okay, how many are there?
As Eugene V. Debs is my witness, I have no idea…none whatsoever!..what that sentence means.
Cool game! I got one! How many Americans are dead because of something a Muslim did, and how many Muslims are dead from something an American did. Since 2000, say. Whaddaya think? Thousand to one?
yes, not enough pockets to hold the ammunition he carried.
Excellent point! Our soldiers deserve uniforms with a higher ammunition capacity!
(Seriously, dude. What in the* hell* are you talking about?)
What I think is that nobody declared a war on Islam. And if you want to count bodies you’re going to have to address the Muslim-on-Muslim terrorist attacks.
what I’m talking about is Juan williams made a simple observation about the fear of Islamic extremists.
No. He made an observation about his fear of laundry.