There’s a Tumblr page showing Muslims in odd outfits:
Former NPR analyst Juan Williams, among other ignorant people, has an irrational fear of Muslims, and thinks you can identify them based on what they look like. Here I will post pictures of Muslims wearing all sorts of things in an attempt to refute that there is such a thing as “Muslim garb” or a Muslim look.
This ranks up their with one of your most bizarre posts.
Contrarian,
Lest I be called down should I make a typo, I won’t allude to your use of the word “their” instead of “there”. (just jesting)
But seriously, Whoopie Goldberg even defended Williams right to speak his concern. I would give him a bit of a pass here for feeling the way he does. I might unintentionally feel the same way should such a scenario present itself. I may have to get involved in some introspection to understand why I feel the way I do but it would be an honest discussion with myself.
He used the wrong forum to express his concern, IMHO. A private gathering, perhaps, but not a transmitted comment that was sure to aggravate the already poisonous conversation. He has been called down before on some egregious comments he has made so there is a history there.
Anyhow, a Fox News shill shouldn’t be positing one view on Fox and another on NPR. It only intensifies the hypocrisy. The disparity between his views on the two media (Fox and NPR) is really something to behold–and not in a complimentary way.
I was worried too much about correcting my spelling of “bizarre” that I missed the obvious. Ironic, since missing the obvious is what I try and point others to on these posts. Oh well, it’s probably a plank in my own eye situation anyway.
Sybil, I’m surprised to find out you are a regular watcher of Fox News. I watch both Fox News and MSNBC on a regular [daily] basis. I don’t tune in to NPR but I would also be surprised if Mr Williams was the only staffer to appear on other news outlets on a regular basis.
I heard Mr. Williams original comments and the regurgitation of them to ad nauseam. Some could take fault with a snippet of what he said without considering the context of what he was saying. He was defending the concept that you cannot judge people by the color of their skin or the garb of their dress. The action of NPR and those critical of Williams need only to remember the recent HUD administrator that was wrongly lambasted to see error of that methodology.
What I was calling bizarre in David’s original cut & paste is that only in America, during this p.c. era, can you get away with using the defense of Muslims to call a black man ignorant.
Despite my advancing age, Contrarian, I still know when someone is pulling my leg. For me, watching Fox News intentionally would be tantamount to waterboarding (although Shep Smith seems less of a sensationalist than the rest) but sadly, my husband is a 24/7 junkie of the “fair and balanced” (NOT) network. It has gotten to the point that if I have to start a meal and he’s sitting in his captain’s chair watching the kitchen tv, I either ask him to go in the other room to watch it or I’ll just have to wait to prepare dinner or lunch until he’s through watching Fox.
Now, Jon Stewart and Rachel are a different matter, although I don’t even watch them regularly anymore since I’m usually not home that time of evening.
I do take issue with your perception of what Williams was saying, however, and i believe you are giving him W-A-A-A-A-Y too much credit here. Bill had asked Juan if he (Bill) wasn’t correct when he said Muslims killed us on 9/11. Juan answered in the affirmative. If he would have said to Bill, “You know, saying that Muslims killed us on 9/11 is casting aspersions on a whole group of people and that would constitute stereotyping and bigotry”.
But no, he agreed with O’Reilly. If he were defending the concept that a book cannot be judged by its cover, then he would have said as much; maybe something like, “seeing someone dressed in Muslim garb doesn’t constitute a terrorist”. But he didn’t add that caveat.
Like I said in my previous post, if he’s edgy when he gets on a plane with someone who is ID’d as a Muslim, then that’s a personal and private emotion. But I don’t think it was smart to broadcast his fear–despite his honesty in the matter. And I think that’s what NPR was upset about.
(For the record, Bill’s reason for his aversion to the NYC Muslim group building a mosque a couple of blocks from Ground Zero is illegitimate and I think that was part of the reason why Whoopie and Joy were offended).
Pure and simple, he says he gets nervous when he sees individuals in Muslim attire.
A clarification: Juan’s fear-inducing association of a terrorist is someone on a plane who is dressed in Muslim garb. But if you will remember, the video of the two Saudi’s who entered the states from Canada (prior to their part in the twin towers being hit) showed them to be wearing casual American attire.