Liberal NPR fired liberal reporter Juan Williams after he admitted on O’Reilly Factor to feeling nervous when sharing a plane with passengers dressed in Muslim garb. Williams also told O’Reilly it’s important to combat prejudice against Muslims, but that sentiment didn’t protect him. Honest man, out!
Some liberals, including Jesse Jackson, have joined conservatives in blasting NPR for the precipitous dismissal.
Various commentators have also been saying, “Hey, I never did like NPR’s smug condescending liberalism, so why are my tax dollars funding it?”
There are many reasons government shouldn’t be funding broadcasting — the unfairness of forcing us to pay people to noxiously condescend to us is surely one of them.
Some hate to admit that National Public Radio is what it is. For example, Politico.com scribe James Hohmann, relaying Jackson’s support for Williams, adds: “NPR CEO Vivian Schiller apologized for saying Williams should keep his views about Muslims between himself and ‘his psychiatrist or his publicist,’ but her remarks fed into the narrative that NPR is liberal, smug and condescending.”
Hohmann’s reluctance to state that Schiller’s remarks support that unflattering view of NPR, rather than merely “feed into the narrative” about it, is but a pretense at objectivity. Should another damning bit of evidence come up — for example, another NPR broadcast — would that, too, constitute just another incidental detail to be “fed into the narrative”?
No, Politico, let’s instead accept the obvious conclusion warranted by the abundant evidence.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.