So, criticizing Islam as a belief would be okay…just don’t make a comment about their garb? Keep on spinning…
Yes. And you passed the allegation along wholesale, complete with the loaded wording.
Proof NPR knows more about journalistic objectivity than you do. 
You’re still falling for Beck’s bullshit. Soros is not NPR’s sugar daddy. A lot of information about NPR’s finances is available on its website if you’re interested. In fiscal 2009, NPR had $152 million in revenue. $49 million of that came from grants. Please explain to me how Soros just bought off NPR with a gift equal to about 1 percent of its annual revenue.
Here’s a list of people and groups who donated at least $1 million to NPR in fiscal 2008:
Angie’s List
General Motors Corporation
Lumber Liquidators
Northwestern Mutual Foundation
Novo Nordisk
Progressive Casualty Insurance
Company
Prudential Financial
State Farm Mutual Automobile
Insurance Company
CITGO Petroleum Corporation
CSX Corporation
Feeding America
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Kashi Company
MasterCard
National Association of Realtors
Netflix
Overture Films
Pabst Brewing Company
PBS
Raymond James Financial Services
Travel Guard
Universal Pictures
Visa
Warner Home Video
Institute for Supply Management
Intel Corporation
Johnson Controls
Lindamood-Bell Learning Systems
MGM
Paramount Home Entertainment
Paramount Pictures
Philips Healthcare
POM Wonderful
REI
Scotts Miracle-Gro Company
U.S. Bank
Vestas Wind Systems
Walden University
Yahoo!
I can’t prove it categorically. On the other hand, I can support my opinion with evidence. I haven’t seen any of that from you so far.
No, it isn’t.
He said
What class of people make him nervous? Muslims. People he thinks are Muslims, people who he thinks are dressed like Muslims. What qualifiers did he place on this? None. Any and all Muslims make him nervous, specifically when he’s one a plane. He didn’t say ‘Shifty looking Muslims’ or ‘Muslims with suspicious bulges in their robes’ or even ‘Muslims wearing black turbans’. He said ‘Muslims’.
Now, how is this not a general statement about Muslims?
And fundamentalist/traditionalist Muslims are dangerous. It’s still bigotry to say it, because not all people who believe in the Rapture are idiots who the world would be better off without, and not all fundamentalist Muslims are dangerous.
You guys are analysing the wrong parts of the statement. The explicit admission of bigotry in the quote is the phrase: “Look, I’m not a bigot, but…”
I’m ***not ***saying categorically that they influenced it. You ***are ***saying categorically that they didn’t. That’s the difference between us - I have an open mind about such things.
I gave it something of a disclaimer when I said
That’s hardly ‘passing along the allegation wholesale’ - I’m looking for evidence to the contrary in fact.
More info on why he was whacked
Cite? 
Do you agree that Beck’s Soros claim (and your assertion that he is NPR’s “sugar daddy”) has been debunked based on the financial data I just showed you?
No: the class of people who make him nervous are Muslims who deliberately dress in a way to advertise their religion. This is a subclass of Muslims.
And, interestingly, if you drew a Venn Diagram of this subclass of Muslims, and the subclass of Muslims who are trying to blow up your airplane, there would be zero overlap. The person dressed in Muslim garb on your airplane presents far less danger to you than the person dressed as a nun, or as a vacationer, or as a businessman. Any of the latter three would be excellent disguises for a Muslim terrorist planning on blowing up your plane, but the Muslim garb would be a terrible costume.
And even acknowledging the truth of that doesn’t undercut it in a “never match wits with a Sicilian” manner: no terrorist would think, “I’ll wear Muslim garb, because everyone knows no terrorist would wear Muslim garb!” Terrorists know that, even though fearing people in Muslim garb is completely dumbshit, plenty of people do it anyway. Because plenty of people are completely dumbshit. If you wear Muslim garb, people like Juan Williams are going to be watching you like a hawk, and your evil plot will be much harder to complete.
So his bigotry is against people who are clearly not terrorists. It’s an understandable emotional reaction, due to the cultural priming we’ve gotten over the last 20 years or so, but any halfway decent person should recognize that it’s irrational. I didn’t see any such recognition in his quote.
As for Codrescu, it helps me to imagine an equivalent: imagine a Chinese official sneeringly hoping that Tibetan Buddhists would go ahead and achieve Nirvana and disappear. It’d be hinky. However, it’s true that millennialists in our society are a pretty pernicious influence on politics: this is a statement about a specific trend, no different from saying that Trotskyites are a pernicious influence or saying that Black Panthers are a pernicious influence. It’s not remotely bigoted to suggest that a particular set of beliefs makes a society worse, as long as you’re focusing on a real set of beliefs and representing it accurately.
Oh? And how does he tell the difference?
They’re the ones wearing burqas?
If Soros’ gift were inconsequential in size, then you’d have a point. Is $1m out of $150m budget unconsequential? Does Soros have influence in liberal circles, where he could certainly nudge donors in NPRs direction?
I don’t know, but I certainly wouldn’t turn my nose up at it if I were NPR. I’d also want more of his largesse.
It’s about 1 percent of their yearly revenue. And that’s $152 million without a penny from Soros, by the way. So apparently they can raise about the same amount of money without him. On top of about $150 million in annual revenue, they also have an endowment of about $250 million. A big chunk of which came from Ray Kroc’s widow, which is to say NPR has far more money from McDonald’s than it’s ever going to get from George Soros. So please tell me again why $1.8 million buys him tons of influence and why they are sooo desperate to suckle at his teat.
Maybe we’re having a problem with definitions here: when you say you’re open minded, do you’re not going to change your mind no matter what the facts are? That’s not usually what open minded means.
So anyone wearing Muslim garb is automatically doing it cuz they’re deliberately flaunting that they’re Muslim, and not cuz, say, they forgot to do laundry that week?
Islam is not a race.
And let’s face it, governments all over the globe are not spending billions of dollars on security and intelligence efforts in an effort to protect themselves from being blown up by white, blond, fifteen-year-old cheerleaders from Nebraska.
There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of Islamic terrorists in countries all over the earth trying to find successful ways to kill as many innocent people as possible and a person would not only be ridiculous but stupid not to feel some degree of trepidation when finding themselves traveling with members of the religion that gave birth to that ideology, especially on an airplane.
We’re all waiting for the next big strike and we all know there are plenty of Muslims out there trying to make it happen. Wariness when it comes to Muslims, while in a perfect world not desirable, is not only understandable but necessary as it heightens awareness and makes people more vigilant to signs of danger which may be afoot.
NPR’s firing of Williams is just another example of what is becoming to my mind one of the greatest threats that liberalism poses, which is to the ability of people to think for themselves and to express their own views freely. Whether it’s conservative speakers being shouted down on college campuses, NPR firing Williams, dingbats walking off The View, or pile-ons on the Straight Dope, it’s becoming more and more apparent that to the left, dissenting or opposing views (or even views that inadvertently stray from the party line, such as Williams’) are simply not to be tolerated.
I’m saying that if the $1.8m is earmarked for reporters, then I’m guessing that NPR (which most reasonable poeple believe leans left anyway) will accede to Soros’ wishes and have them toe the line.
You really don’t understand that? You honestly feel that there’s NO CHANCE of that happening, oh Open-minded Moderator?
On another note, I see that the very left wing Washington Post has come out against the firing.
So as I said at the beginning of this thread, it’s just another Shriley Sherrod incident. How sad that the Political Correctness brigade of the SDMB can’t see that.
It is not bigoted to do either one of those things. What is bigoted is to make assumptions about them based on thir clothes.
Actually NPR only gets about 10 percent of its funding from the Feds. Heh. Deal with it, righty. The Feds can’t do 'em in by defunding them.
How did they dress?
If the government has so much control over NPR, then why doesn’t it take conservative slants under Republican administrations?