Outrage over NPR's firing of Juan Williams

[thesummerqueen]

Two things, sweet pea -

1) Liberals were not to blame for the housing crisis. People on BOTH sides were. Maybe that's not what you meant, but it sure sounded like it in context - rampant housing speculation and overgenerous bank lending as well as several other factors made a bubble that grew and grew and grew until it burst. I left the housing industry just as it happened.

2) I really don't know if NPR still receives taxpayer money, but once an organization is entirely privately funded they are dependent on that money and therefore subject to the whims of the people who hold the purse strings. So if they were privately funded already, and the purseholders had an objection to Williams, NPR would necessarily have to fire him. I work for a privately owned company, and if I were to do something that reached the public eye, my boss and the president/owner of the company have every right to fire me should they not agree with the actions. This isn't a double standard. It's really a simple matter - you want your brand to appear a certain way in order to capture a specific market and an organization or company can and will exercise their right to hire or fire anyone they feel will be beneficial or detrimental to their purpose.

Now, I have to say, I've been reading most of this conversation while at work and therefore haven't been able to watch the videos (yay for pokey software updates!) but I did skim through several articles - yes he was taken out of context, but much like some of the other conversations swirling around here, NPR was probably afraid that no one would listen to the rest of the statement anyway. Irrational reactions without thinking through all the possible meanings of the full statement are quite common. We're very rough on our fellow man - again I state the idea that Christianity especially promotes: if you think something, you're already sinning - you may as well have committed the crime. This is pervasive in this country's collective voice of blame, and it's not fair. Suppose you were raised to be racist, and you realized you were wrong. Because you had been raised that way, you still have irrational fears and thoughts, but you keep them to yourself or even take the step further and purposely try to reach out to other races and bridge the gap. Maybe eventually you will get over those thoughts, maybe not, but people seem to think that it's easy as a snap to quit thinking one way and suddenly turn to another...and my question to the entire nation would be: if Juan Williams had those fears but never acted on them, is he technically still wrong? Most people never get to that point though, is what I'm getting at. They hear that he has the irrational fears and jump all over him. NPR knows this - they need to know their audience after all - and I suspect this was an over-zealous act of self-protection.