What Is In A Title
Wouldn’t someone without a specific title be just as convincing?
MSNBC carries the AP story with the standard “conservative’ appeal for victimhood – Williams: NPR ‘looking for a reason to get rid of me’.
Unfortunately for Mr. Williams claim, NPR didn’t need to look because he provided it:
… Opinions Williams expressed on Fox News over the years had strained his relationship with NPR to the point that the public radio network asked him to stop using its name when he appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s show.
The bottom-line, NPR told him to stop identifying himself as ‘NPR news analyst Juan Williams’ when he appeared on Fox News, but he continued to do it. By doing it, he was associating his personal views with NPR.
This isn’t about free speech, nor was it a “first offense”. Juan Williams was told by an employer to stop doing something that was affecting that employer, and he continued the behavior. When you work in the media, it is not conducive to your career when you annoy the people who pay the bills.
I don’t remember all of the defenders of Mr. Williams rushing to defend school teachers who work in bars or strip clubs to make ends meet when they get fired.
A note to Senator DeMint – the government doesn’t fund NPR, you dillweed.
15 comments
…I need to remind myself to look up how much money public radio in South Carolina gets from the federal government, because that is where the real pain of a total cut-off of funding will be felt. On the other hand, I suspect it won’t matter to the Honorable Gentleman from South Carolina because, by lumping PBS into his little diatribe, he’s merely expressing a long-held dream of wingers everywhere of cutting all forms of public broadcasting off at the knees…
Actually, Jack, they have pretty much done it already under the Hedgemony, so it won’t be much of a hit.
It’s amazing. DeMint and the Repubs couldn’t be bothered to do anything for the millions of Americans already out of work and out of benefits, but they want to throw a hissy fit when one individual gets fired after repeatedly violating the ethics policy of the corporation he works for.
Williams had already been reprimanded earlier for his sexism, so it is not as if he had an unblemished work record.
Williams lost a job, yes, but he isn’t unemployed. He kept his “second” job…and even got a raise.
I’m sure lots of Americans would love to be in his position.
To Williams, I would quote the VEEP….”quit whining.”
That’s one of the really annoying things about these whackoes, they whine about everything. You feel like doing something to them that would legitimize the whining, like pouring fire ants in their underwear drawer.
I know too many good people who have lost jobs after decades of dedication that really helped their corporations succeed, and they were cast aside for H1B “slave” labor. This was Williams’s own fault by continuing to antagonize his bosses after he had been warned.
In past elections, if I recall correctly, the Right was furious when there was any complaint about an employer’s firing an employee for, say, a bumper sticker on a car. Employment was of course at the discretion of the employer; it was just fine to fire someone for a John Kerry bumper sticker. But hey, IOKIYAR (my spelling checker suggests SUKIYAKI for that one) and the wingnuts are horrified that poor, put-upon Juan was fired for comments that were not so much political as religious discrimination.
Actually, he was fired for being identified as an NPR news analyst on the show, more than anything else, but the nature of being a “news analyst” makes his practice of pronouncing personal opinions in public a problem for the credibility of NPR. They can’t maintain the fiction of his being an “unbiased analyst” when he has publicly proclaimed his biases. He was systematically undermining his credibility for the position he held.
I’ve made the point before that I would have been worthless as a Soviet analyst if I hated the Soviets. My job was to understand them, not judge them. My bosses understood my point, although a number of non-analysts thought it meant I was a pinko. Iraq is a prime example of what happens when analysis is colored by personal feelings, and the same thing is part of the perception of Iran.
Very difficult to report any facts when all you know is fiction. 😉
A couple lead pipes to the kneecaps would give him reason to complain. There is something to be said for the *old ways*! 😈
I enjoyed dealing with the Soviets (most of them anyway, there were exceptions. They had their own breed of weirdo * wing-nuts* too). I was once involved (in a minor capacity) in helping one of the sane Soviet’s deal with a troublesome Soviet extremist. Worked out very good for us all. 😉 Was very handy to have a senior official *owe us one*. Of course, it was far easier and simpler in many ways for us to deal with the Soviet’s during the 70’s & 80’s than the USA. We were on the other side of the World for a start, and in spite of Vietnam, hadn’t yet become a major US southern hemisphere base (that began late 80’s, about the time I decided to get out. Was getting too hard to tell who the crazies were.) The Soviet’s I’d known got out too, and opened Restaurants and Club’s around. 😆 Made a *killing*! I’d certainly never said they were stupid. 😀 😉 The Soviets had a strong presence here because we both had a common interest. China. Worked out well for us both! 🙂 The USA of course loved to think they were here to get US secrets, and whined constantly that we didn’t understand that the Soviet’s were *The Enemy!* In all truth and honesty, the USA was rarely even mentioned during my time in Canberra (except in terms like: “I wish those bloody yanks would piss off and stop making everything so bloody hard!”. 😉 Sorry to burst the US ego bubble… but, it wasn’t all about the USA! 😆 I dunno why exactly… but IMHO, the USA works REALLY hard to make themselves a target! *shrug*
China was always the threat for the Soviets, ever since Stalin died. Mao was a bit miffed when Khrushchev failed to acknowledge his seniority in the global communist world, and the Chinese saw the empty land in Siberia as an obvious area for their “development”.
When the neocons took control of the top level at the CIA, reality was lost. Nixon sort of understood about China, but the CIA kept pushing the wrong buttons and drawing the wrong conclusions. The people at the bottom knew what was going on, but you couldn’t get the truth through the filter at the top.
Khrushchev had to be removed because he was a “true believer” in the inevitability of a Communist triumph, and didn’t have the skill to deal with the facts on the ground.
There were deals cut that prevented actions by surrogates. like East Germany, from creating major problems, but most of that was very low level and generally handed off to the UK for the actual contacts. The CIA overall was too obviously out of place in Europe to be useful. At conferences you received no points for the CIA in the “Spot the Spy” game, it just wasn’t much of a challenge.
Call me a pinko, David. C’mon, call me a pinko. Do it! Do it! CALL ME A PINKO!!1!
What childishness, David. Like so many conservatives, you don’t lack intelligence so much as you lack maturity. Wait, no… as I read what you wrote, I have to wonder about the intelligence as well…
David sounds just like all the Xtians that just can’t wrap their little heads around the concept that promoting religion while acting as a private citizen is different than doing the same while acting in an official capacity.
Besides, the vast majority of workers in the U.S. are “employed at will” and can be fired without cause at any time. Why the hell should Juan Williams be such a special flower?
Analogy
“can’t wrap their little heads around the concept” — also known as willful ignorance or deliberately being obtuse (see Internet troll). I rest my case.
Juan Williams from 1986: “Common sense becomes racism when skin color becomes a formula for figuring out who’s a danger to me.”
Duffy, you are so stupid and willfully ignorant (as paintedjaguar correctly points out) that it is extremely difficult to think down to your level! Here’s a few facts for you. You should be proud that Europeans (such as you purport to be) have murdered far more innocents the past century than all Muslims. Juan Cole put this together:
Link to the post and the PDF here:
On Juan Williams’ Firing for Islamophobia and how Most European Terrorism is by European Separatists
This of course assumes you know how to read English. You have proven you have zero comprehension. However, perhaps a fact or two may seep past your rampant stupidity and ignorant phobia. We do indeed live in hope (well, people like you do, at any rate)! 😈
BTW… Hitler was a God-fearing Christian, backed by the Church (until they did as they usually do, left the sinking ship when it got too hot for them)!
What a moron. *shaking head*
Of course, Williams is the typical wingnut hypocrite. 🙂 Again from Cole:
Williams supported Imus Firing, Censoring of Rap Music
I have yet to meet a GOP or GOP supporter that wasn’t also a complete hypocrite. Must be in their oath or something. 😉 😛
Hmmm. I haven’t posted any of my vast store of quotations for awhile. 😉 This is as good a place as any. 😛 Possibly not relevant to the topic at hand… but relevant to the USA this century (so far anyway). 😉
Let’s see now… (I’m not sure I remember these verbatim — School was long ago! But we have Google!)
There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance.
— Ali ibn Abi-Talib (Well, that one is applicable to a certain commenter here at least) 😉 😛
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and loose both.
— Benjamin Franklin
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
— Dorn Helder Camara
Victorious warriors win first and then go to war while defeated worriors go to war first and then seek to win.
— Sun-Tsu (That’s certainly been proved true time and again).
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed me with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
— Galileo Galilei (I have come to suspect that there are actually two homo sapiens species coexisting. The ones who have and use sense, reason and intellect, and the others.) 🙂
No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned, or in any way destroyed, except by the lawful judgment of his peers.
— The Magna Carta
I have gained this by philosophy. That I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.
— Aristotle
Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
— Thoma Jefferson
Paople of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public.
— Adam Smith
There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.
— Henry Ford (Obviously, today industrialists have decided they can do away with the first and last parts of that.)
A designer knows when he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupry
And lastly, one that I didn’t learn at school (and would not have known if not for the internet)! 😉 😀
Corporation, h. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual reponsibility.
— Ambrose Bierce
Actually there are two types that look like humans: Homo sapiens, the reasoning man, and Australopithecus rupertus™, former Homo sapiens who have devolved as a result of exposure to News Corp.