Today, Juan Williams, a NPR senior news analyst, was fired after saying that "seeing people in Muslim-style dress on airplanes sometimes makes him 'nervous.'" The right is predictably howling with rage about the persecution of conservatives. Bill O'Reilly and Newt Gingrich have both apparently called for NPR's funding to be cut as a result. (This particular remedy wouldn't happen to have anything do to with the knowledge that NPR tends to be the only really liberal part of the "liberal media," would it?) Mike Huckabee will now refuse NPR's interview requests.
In a way, this firing is refreshing to see. Lately, media figures have only been getting fired when they express positions the right-wing thinks are out of bounds. Thus we have Rick Sanchez fired for saying Jews control the media, Helen Thomas fired for saying Jews in Israel should go back to Poland, etc., Octavia Nasr fired for "expressing admiration for a late Lebanese cleric considered an inspiration for the Hezbollah militant movement"(empahsis added). (Incidentally, "Fadlallah was a revered figure to a large chunk of the world, and was quite mainstream even in parts of the West."), and Dr. Laura fired for a racist rant (even conservatives will grant that the n-word is out of bounds.) A Christian Science Monitor article adds Don Imus to the list - I didn't because things changed after the 2008 elections. It's still explicit white racism against black people anyway, like Dr. Laura, so it doesn't really change the point. What's different here is that the firing is because he's racist against Muslims, and unlike being anti-Semitic against Jews, this is part of the Right's actual political agenda!
This is nice to see because, without even taking a stand on when media figures should be allowed to apologize or be fired, there should simply not be the gross disparity we've been seeing, keeping in mind that Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck and Eric Erickson are among the many huge racists who are still employed. It seems that the rule still is that if you make your money by being racist, if people expect it, then it's fine. If not, then you're out. This rule is a problem, but at least the latter half can be applied even-handedly.
This is also not the first time Williams has gotten in trouble, so the howls of conservative persecution are even more disingenuous than usual. Williams also said, soon after President Obama's inauguration, that Michelle Obama was Stokely Carmichael in a dress. As Steve Benen pointed out the comment was "not only baseless and cheap, [but] also gratuitous."NPR changed Williams' title from "staff correspondent to "national analyst" at the time.
