Comments | astroprisoner: Juan Williams and NPR

astroprisoner

Juan Williams and NPR

Oct 22, 2010 20:21

I could be wrong, but I believe that if Juan Williams had said "... But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are carrying a Bible and wearing a Westboro Baptist Church t-shirt, and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Christians, I get worried. I get nervous" then he would still be at ( Read more... )

Comments 5

evilegg October 23 2010, 00:35:57 UTC

I love you.
The line I keep hearing is that as a journalist he doesn't get an opinion and that's the justification for letting him go. I don't like that NPR didn't allow even a micro second for public response.

kilimonr8p October 23 2010, 04:11:23 UTC

Are you one of those guys that imagines that the White Christian majority is actually somehow the persecuted victims of society? How boring.

Dig this quote from Juan Williams: "Common sense becomes racism when skin color becomes a formula for figuring out who's a danger to me"

astroprisoner October 23 2010, 12:06:12 UTC

Are you one of those guys that imagines that the White Christian majority is actually somehow the persecuted victims of society?

No. White? Where did I say that the guy in the Westboro Baptist Church t-shirt was white? Why did you automatically picture a white person?

I don't know the demographics of the Westboro Baptist Church, and I really don't care to know. They're a loathsome bunch, that's why I used them as the example. To be honest, I'm not even sure I'd consider them "Christian," but that's just my opinion.

We do agree that they're a loathsome bunch, don't we?

"Common sense becomes racism when skin color becomes a formula for figuring out who's a danger to me"

He's right. Now let's take a look at his actual words again: "I mean, look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But 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 ( ... )

Yeah... carbonelle October 24 2010, 04:46:04 UTC

So.. on the one hand we have the automatic assumtion that Christians are white and Muslims are non-white.

On the other hand there's the knowledge that Christians and Muslims come in a wide variety of skin colors. (Though as far as I know there are no Amerindian muslims, though I know a few tribal Christians locally. But I digress)

Now for my money, I'm no bigot, but when I get on a plane and see some shmuck in a Che T-shirt, and I think about people first and foremost identifying themselves as commie revolutionaries, I get worried. Then I get torqued off, because the idiots should know better by now.

If I had to pick one of these to call "racist," it wouldn't really be hard....

Re: Yeah... merloaded October 24 2010, 20:23:41 UTC

Sometimes its not safe to open your mouth in front of anyone, anymore. This would not be the first time (and surely won't be the last) that someone got fired for expressing an opinion.