Firing Juan

As you may have heard, NPR fired longtime journalist Juan Williams over comments he made about Muslims and terrorism on the Fox Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor." Read about it here.

The offending remarks:

"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 a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they're identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

Do Williams' remarks (spoken honestly, I think) verge on intolerance? Yes. Do they amount to a firing offense? That is the question. Conservatives are all atwitter, calling his firing an example of out-of-control political-correctness. For once, they’re probably right. Having followed Williams' reporting on civil rights and minorities for years, I'm convinced he's no bigot. His curiously calorie-free commentaries on NPR and Fox are another story, and have given me pause often. But Williams is a political pundit paid for his opinions. And in this case I think NPR set the bar too high.

That said, I largely agree with Matthew Ygelsias’ assessment:

“Like Jon Chait I don’t like the idea of hair-trigger firings of people who step in it while making on-the-fly comments. At the same time, I’m against non-interesting non-insightful political commentary. And I’m very much against the idea, all-too-prevalent today, that certain kinds of punditry perches should be treated like tenured professorships from which people can only be let go for some kind of egregious misconduct. So while I wish this series of events hadn’t gone down in this way, I can hardly say I’ll miss Williams once he’s gone from NPR.”

I won’t particularly miss him on NPR either. Williams is very much a part of the Washington Convention Wisdom Machine. Hopefully, this turn of events will free his inner historian, and allow a return to investigative journalism, an area in which he excels. Two of his books, “Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years” and “Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary” are nothing less than brilliant.

++++++++
UPDATE: Per the Washington Post, "Fox News on Thursday awarded Williams a new multiyear contract worth nearly $2 million that will expand his role on the cable news channel and its Web site." I didn't think this story was going to get any stranger, until it did. Wow.