Juan Williams booted from NPR over controversial comment

[Pwnemon]

So, what do you guys think?

 

[Phantom]

I won't say he's wrong to fear (he has a right to), but he should not have said it on air if he valued his job.

Since Pwnemon failed to post any information.

Juan Williams
Link BBC Blog
Link

 

[Eloi]

I don't think he should be faulted for an irrational fear. We all have them.

 

[surskitty]

His job revolved around representing NPR. NPR'd apparently insisted that he not be identified as a host whenever he was on Fox; I'd say that'd count as a warning that they don't endorse a lot of what he says.

He's in the public eye anyway. Actions have consequences and if NPR is no longer comfortable with him representing them after this, that's their prerogative.


There's also a difference between being islamophobic and finding it acceptable to publicly discuss how you're islamophobic without any indication that maybe there's something wrong about that. Instead, he went on to defend his biases. That's not okay.

I don't think he should be faulted for an irrational fear. We all have them.

It's important to note that he talked about a fear of certain people who are already discriminated against. That sort of thing has major consequences, particularly given that he talked about it on a platform that is not exactly well-known for its positive handling of racial issues.

 

[Eloi]

It's important to note that he talked about a fear of certain people who are already discriminated against. That sort of thing has major consequences, particularly given that he talked about it on a platform that is not exactly well-known for its positive handling of racial issues.

He's just some random guy talking to a bunch of bigots, who is getting hurt exactly if they are already bigoted?

 

[nastypass]

He's just some random guy talking to a bunch of bigots, who is getting hurt exactly if they are already bigoted?

But that's just it, he's not just some random guy. He was representing NPR when he went on the show, and they decided those were not the sort of comments that they wanted representing them. It doesn't matter who he was talking to- if somebody says they're afraid of me just because I'm riding a plane, I am, as anyone else would, going to be very offended.

 

[Pwnemon]

I do think NPR already didn't like him. Juan himself said, "they were looking for an excuse to fire me." He was walking on thin ice already and this was the straw that broke the camel's back.

HOWEVER, had he been in good standing with NPR beforehand, this would have been a stupid move. He admitted his irrational, bigoted fear, then he spent the rest of the segment defending muslims. He's human, too. He was only being open and honest. He still was siding with the muslims. Furthermore, others have made much worse statements and retained their job, such as one commentator who hoped Sen. Jesse Halms would get AIDS and still has her job.

O'Reilly let Williams host his show last night as a gesture of goodwill; here's the part where he talks about getting fired if you want to see it.

EDIT: Walker, he didn't say that he's afraid when he sees an arab on a plane. He says he's afraid when he's on a plane and he sees somebody in their traditional muslim garb because it looks like they're putting their religion ahead of their country.

 

[Vladimir Putin's LJ]

EDIT: Walker, he didn't say that he's afraid when he sees an arab on a plane. He says he's afraid when he's on a plane and he sees somebody in their traditional muslim garb because it looks like they're putting their religion ahead of their country.

What does this even mean? I'm not being deliberately obtuse, I really don't understand what is meant by 'oh if they wear their traditional religious clothing they put their religion in front of their country' ?__?
Does he complain about Orthodox Jews on planes too?

Also that woman who said that thing about Jesse Helms and AIDS probably said it because he was a terrible person with a disgusting stance on AIDS so she most likely wanted to invoke poetic justice.

 

[Pwnemon]

What does this even mean? I'm not being deliberately obtuse, I really don't understand what is meant by 'oh if they wear their traditional religious clothing they put their religion in front of their country' ?__?
Does he complain about Orthodox Jews on planes too?

Also that woman who said that thing about Jesse Helms and AIDS probably said it because he was a terrible person with a disgusting stance on AIDS so she most likely wanted to invoke poetic justice.

If I haven't been misinformed, muslims who won't assimilate into culture are causing a huge problem in places such as France, and he doesn't want the same problem in America.

Also, Jesse Helms and I see nothing about AIDS, just that he was conservative.

 

[Minish]

Walker, he didn't say that he's afraid when he sees an arab on a plane. He says he's afraid when he's on a plane and he sees somebody in their traditional muslim garb because it looks like they're putting their religion ahead of their country.

Goddamn those nuns too, right?

 

[H-land]

Goddamn those nuns too, right?

Two years ago, when I took a ferry from Ireland to Wales with a group from school, we noticed that there was a nun on board.
When we got off of the ferry, it turns out she'd taken one of our traveling companion's bags, with all her medicine inside it! The woman whose bag was staken? She was left with the nun's bag, with just and a Bible and a habit inside.
Never trust a nun.

It really did happen, though, even though it was an honest misunderstanding and a mixup. Both bags were just this horribly lime green. It was sort of hard to tell them apart. And everything did turn out all right.

 

[Karkat Vantas]

As one of the few people in the world who actually listens to NPR, I can say that this comes as a bit of a surprise to me. They're pretty unbiased for the most part.

I think the statement was inflammatory, yeah, but firing him over it wasn't really necessary.

 

[Vladimir Putin's LJ]

If I haven't been misinformed, muslims who won't assimilate into culture are causing a huge problem in places such as France, and he doesn't want the same problem in America.

There is a problem in all of Europe with second generation arab youths being cocks. The issue is that when they arrived, the parents were just pretty happy about being away from their respective countries. The kids that are born here are just horrible because of the huge rift in punitive measures between Europe and Islamic countries, in the sense that the laws are obviously a lot more relaxed here (for good reason).
Arabic people also largely grow up in ghettoes and face a lot of discrimination because of the annoying as hell overly loud minority (all the muslims I know personally are normal), which makes them vindictive against the natives of the country and just creates a horrible spiral of shit.
There isn't really a proper way to solve this now (especially not in places like Holland where there is a huge foreign population) but tbh the problems don't really come from their being muslim. We have a lot of criminals from the new Eastern European countries (like those Poles who stabbed a kid to death for his iPod in the metro), mostly Romania and Bulgaria (and Poland) because people from poor countries generally have trouble integrating. Europe really just needs to make immigration into the EU tighter for a few years, but the way to go is definitely not banning the construction of mosques or barring muslims from getting good jobs (a la Geert Wilders), and Sarkozy's plan of sending immigrants back to their countries has a) failed and b) was always a stupid idea because the problems come from the teenagers who are born in France and thus are citizens and can't be deported.

Anyway his argument is kind of ridiculous because of course we're going to get a lot of arabic immigrants because Turkey and north Africa are really close to Europe so they all come here, in the same way Mexicans cross over to America because it's closeby. There is a 0% risk of the same influx of muslims going to America. I don't know why they'd even want to considering what's been happening over there in regards to Islamophobia.

Also, Jesse Helms and I see nothing about AIDS, just that he was conservative.

Funnily enough in Europe he'd be in the far right parties. And you didn't really make an effort:

In 1987, Helms added an amendment to the Supplemental Appropriations Act, which directed the president to use executive authority to add HIV infection to the list of excludable diseases which prevent both travel and immigration to the United States. [...] A letter-writing campaign headed by Helms ultimately convinced President Bush not to lift the ban, and left the United States the only industrialized nation in the world to prohibit travel based on HIV status. The travel ban was also responsible for the cancellation of the 1992 International AIDS Conference in Boston.

It took 22 years to lift that ban.

When Ryan White died in 1990, his mother went to Congress to speak to politicians on behalf of people with AIDS. She spoke to 23 representatives; Helms refused to speak to Jeanne White, even when she was alone with him in an elevator.

Ryan White was expelled from middle school for having AIDS, which he got from blood trasfusions because he was a hemophiliac.

Helms tried to block the refunding of the Ryan White Care Act in 1995, saying that those with AIDS were responsible for the disease, because they had contracted it because of their 'deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct', and claiming that more federal dollars were spent on AIDS than heart disease or cancer, despite this not being borne out by the Public Health Service statistics.

Helms initially fought against increasing federal financing for AIDS research and treatment, saying the disease resulted from 'unnatural' and 'disgusting' homosexual behavior. "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy," he said in 1988. In his final Senate year, he strongly supported AIDS measures in Africa, where heterosexual transmission of the disease is most common, and continued to hold the belief that the 'homosexual lifestyle' is the cause of the spread of the epidemic in America.

He did one good thing and even that is soaked in self-righteousness and bigotry:

In 2000, Bono sought out Jesse Helms to discuss increasing American aid to Africa. In Africa, AIDS is a disease that is primarily transmitted heterosexually, and Helms sympathized with Bono's description of 'the pain it is bringing to infants and children and their families'. Helms insisted that Bono involve the international community and private sector, so that relief efforts would not be paid for by 'just Americans'. Helms coauthored a bill authorizing $600 million for international AIDS relief efforts. In 2002, Helms announced that he was ashamed to have done so little during his Senate career to fight the worldwide spread of AIDS, and pledged to do more during his last few months in the Senate. Helms spoke with special appreciation of the efforts of Janet Museveni, first lady of Uganda, for her efforts to stop the spread of AIDS through a campaign based on 'biblical values and sexual purity'.

He was also a racist and an all-around terrible person but that's something else.

 

[Pwnemon]

Whoops, I didn't see that stuff, I just looked at the wikipedia link to topics list and didn't see anything about HIV/AIDS.

 

[Teh Ebil Snorlax]

Whoops, I didn't see that stuff, I just looked at the wikipedia link to topics list and didn't see anything about HIV/AIDS.

I think this speaks for itself to be honest.

 

[#1 bro]

Yeah, this is dumb. I think this dude was just sort of being "we're all thinking it, he's just saying it" and he was just expressing what he felt, don't really see why that's a big deal. I mean I'm sure that more than half of the country would agree with what he said (seeing a person dressed in full Muslim garb on a plane would make them nervous). White people seriously just need to chill out.

What is kind of unsettling is the amount of back-patting he's gotten from Republicans, as if they're saying "way to go man, people SHOULD be afraid of Muslims".

 

[Tarvos]

What VPLJ said. Considering he knows all about both Belgium/Netherlands, the two countries I reside in (well I reside in the Netherlands but visit Belgium often), he's on the money.