Juan Williams was clearly trying to defend Muslims on the O'Rielly show. For that reason his firing was poorly timed, if not a bad idea all together. As one of the token liberals on Fox, he has provided more than the minimal of balance to the Obama slander fest. He has defended Obama against many absurd attacks on that network. In the wake of the Gates incident and Glenn Beck calling Obama a racist, he was a voice of reason. A rare ethnic minority moderate liberal voice amongst majority middle America conservatives. I appreciate his role on that network even if he is not as progressive as the rest of us. For the most part I am shocked Fox even lets him speak, since he is more willing to confront them than most other token liberals, who seem too shy away from conflict at nearly every opportunity.
On O'Rielly he was doing just that. Talking down the crazies from their extreme positions and trying to get them to moderate their views. Williams was doing his best to bring people over to our point of view. We should defend him, as should Muslims Americans for whom he lost his job in the defense of.
He discussed his emotional response to seeing someone dressed like the media inspired caricature of militant extremist. Saying how one feels about seeing a person from a group who has been made out to be the boogey-man is nothing new. Comedians frequently play with these notions that relate to our subconscious fears. Those fears almost always induced by negative portrayals of certain archetypes in the media.
It can be the black man in urban attire or the bald headed tattooed white man who looks like he just got out on parole from lock-up on MSNBC. These characters are those in threatening roles of movies and TV shows. The news media uses their editorial powers to reinforce our fears by playing stories that reflect them. Constructing this nexus between our make believe villains and real ones seems to benefit both industries. It sadly comes at the expense of a objective sense of reality.
Because of media influence, we have a disproportionate fear of the day's villain. The media simultaneously feeds fear targets as entertainment and by News Topics. Juan Williams like most of us is a victim media distortion. Almost all of us who have been subject to a corrupted data stream and our reptilian brains respond in place of our higher ideals for fleeting moments when we encounter the fear targets.
From Tomorrow's Washington Post Editorial
"The O'Reilly Factor" Monday night. Those comments, the federally supported radio network said in a statement, "were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR." What was Mr. Williams's sin? He admitted, with apparent chagrin, that he has engaged in a kind of racial profiling in the years since the Sept. 11 attacks: "When I get on the 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." Mr. Williams then alluded to a declaration of war against America by convicted Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, and added: "I don't think there's any way to get away from these facts."
In making this confession, Mr. Williams undoubtedly spoke for many Americans who are wrestling with similar feelings. His words could be offensive to some, if construed as an endorsement of negative stereotyping. But the full broadcast makes clear that Mr. Williams intended the opposite. To be sure, he struggled to get his point across, because host Bill O'Reilly kept interrupting him. But Mr. Williams did manage to observe that "we don't want in America, people to have their rights violated to be attacked on the street because they heard a rhetoric from Bill O'Reilly and they act crazy.
His honest admission was not that of a bigot. It is a common admission and NPR was not justified in firing him for it. Especially since he went on to state how he discounts such impulses and maintains his regard for the people who he has been encouraged to fear. Admitting he has these impulses creates the opportunity to reach those who reject the sanctimonious approach. People would feel free to acknowledge these fears and learn to ignore them rather than pretend they never had them or hate themselves for ever having them in the first place.