NPR's Dancing for the muslims Gets Big Reaction
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Right declares war on NPR
By KEACH HAGEY | 10/21/10
politico.com
NPR’s decision to fire Juan Williams over comments he made about Muslims on Fox News has prompted calls on the right for Congress to remove its funding and concern on the left that NPR may have just handed its critics a powerful weapon for painting the broadcaster as liberal.
The biggest names in conservative politics — including Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin, both paid Fox News contributors like Williams — rushed to his defense after he said he gets “nervous” when he sees people in Muslim dress boarding an airplane.
Williams discussed the circumstances of his firing for the first time Thursday, saying he was fired over the phone without being given a chance to come in and make his case, despite having worked at NPR for 10 years.
In regard to his comments about Muslims on Fox’s Bill O’Reilly’s show, he was told “that crosses the line” and that there wasn’t anything he could say to change NPR executives’ minds that his statements were bigoted.
He argued that he was just making an honest statement about his emotional response, adding, “You cannot ignore what happened on 9/11.”
Williams’s firing quickly became a cause célèbre for conservatives.
Huckabee, like Palin a possible presidential candidate in 2012, urged Congress to cut NPR’s funding and announced he would no longer accept interviews on NPR.
“NPR has discredited itself as a forum for free speech and a protection of the First Amendment rights of all and has solidified itself as a purveyor of politically correct pabulum and protector of views that lean left,” he said in a statement.
"NPR defends 1st Amendment Right, but will fire u if u exercise it," Palin tweeted. "Juan Williams: u got taste of Left's hypocrisy, they screwed up firing you."
But Anna Christopher, a spokeswoman for NPR, said these calls for cutting off funding to NPR were “unfortunate” and reflect a fundamental misunderstanding about NPR’s financial structure.
“We don’t report to any congressional committee,” she said. “NPR is an independent news organization that receives no direct federal money, and less than 1 percent of our budget comes from grants that we competitively seek from government-funded organizations like the CPB [Corporation for Public Broadcasting] and the NEA [National Endowment for the Arts].”
Brent Bozell, the president of the conservative media watchdog Media Research Center, blasted NPR’s decision and said his group is “preparing letters to the appropriate House and Senate oversight committees to request an investigation.”
“Juan Williams has done nothing wrong. What he said echoes what the vast majority of Americans believe. It’s their tax dollars that fund NPR. But NPR is ignoring them. Instead, they are kowtowing to the agenda of radical anti-American groups like CAIR [Council on American-Islamic Relations] and doing the bidding of George Soros, who hates Fox News with a passion.”
Conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh said, “Political correctness is ruling the day.”
“Juan Williams is a known quantity, and now he is essentially ‘Clarence Thomased’ in a sense for voicing an opinion that is contrary to the doctrine,” said Limbaugh, referring to the conservative African-American Supreme Court justice who came under fire during his 1991 confirmation hearings.
Other critics weighed in as well. Alvin S. Felzenberg, author of “The Leaders We Deserved” and the spokesman for the 9/11 Commission, suggested that “citizens should boycott NPR’s ‘beg-a-thons’ and Congress should zero out its federal appropriation — of whatever amount it is.”
A onetime coworker of Williams suggested his firing from NPR over his comments about Muslims was justified.
“Juan, apologies as your former colleague at The Washington Post, but you crossed the line on this one,” wrote Molly Moore in POLITICO’s Arena.
“Juan’s comments were absolutely a firing offense for an impartial news organization such as NPR which — even in an age of all-opinionated-blabber-all-the-time — maintains strong objective news standards,” wrote Moore, now senior vice president of Sanderson Strategies Group, a communications firm.
But former Rep. Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.), once a regular contributor on NPR’s “All Things Considered” said the radio network had caved into political correctness.
“Firing Williams for these comments, even if they were not in sync with NPR's new sensitivities, was itself over the line: Political correctness quite easily morphs into censorship, and here NPR fell into that trap.”
Whoopi Goldberg on “The View,” whose walk-off during a segment with O’Reilly prompted the discussion that led to Williams’s firing, called NPR’s decision “ridiculous.”
“In all of our opinions, it seems, the firing of Juan was a total mistake and sends the wrong message, and NPR — get yourself together, because we’ve all got to work on this together.”
And Democrats worried it would embolden NPR’s enemies.
"NPR’s overreaction has handed its government-hating detractors a chance to slap the PC label on the network, which in reality is the nation’s most robust marketplace of ideas,” said Will Marshall, president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute.
Earlier in the day, Williams declined to comment on the firing. “I better bite my tongue at this point,” he told The Washington Post Thursday morning.
But O’Reilly, host of “The O’Reilly Factor,” said Thursday on Fox News that the decision by the “left-wing” radio station was “ridiculous.”
“As Woody Allen said, this is a travesty of a mockery of a sham,” he said.
“I’m calling immediately — and we’re going to make a big deal out of this on 'The Factor' — for the immediate suspension of every taxpayer dollar going into the National Public Radio outfit,” he added. “We’re going to get legislation. We’re going to freeze it down, so they don’t get any more money. This is outrageous.”
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