Juan Williams appeared on ABC's Good Morning America this morning, where he called the comment made about him yesterday by NPR head Vivian Schiller "low." Schiller said Williams comment on the O'Reilly Factor about being a bit paranoid on air flights when he sees somebody dressed in Muslim garb was something between him "and his psychiatrist."
Williams still appears shell-shocked after being fired over the telephone Wednesday night in reaction to his comments on the Fox News Channel on Monday night.
Condemnation from the right and the left has been pouring down on NPR, and in particular, Vivian Schiller, who has got to be regretting the firing, since 36 hours ago nobody was calling for the federal government to defund the national radio network, which is what's happening right now.
If you're a regular NPR listener, whether you agree or disagree about the canning of Williams, you ought to be concerned this morning - and not just because, incidentally, that he was the only black male voice regularly heard on the network.
No, the reason to be concerned is if NPR stations like WUSF (attempting to end its fall fundraising drive today) get cut off from federal funding. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) gives money to a host of public radio and television stations. NPR reportedly gets about 2% of their funds from that grant, which obviously isn't critical for them. But local (or "member") stations rely a lot more on that funding, and if the GOP wins control of the House in two weeks, don't be shocked if they decide that though it's not a large amount in the whole scheme of things, that they attempt to defund or cut out entirely funding CPB.
It wouldn't be the first time. Back in 1995, when the Newt Gingrich led revolution took control of the House of Representatives, funding for the CPB was on the agenda. But NPR, PBS and their allies alerted the public, who beat back that attempt. Perhaps the same scenario will play out this time.
(The progressive, pro NPR group Free Press is now targeting its email base, informing them to write to Congress to make sure that defunding doesn't happen).
Meanwhile, we don't wish to join the NPR bashers, as we think it's always amusing to hear conservatives bash it for it's "liberal" tendencies. But the fact is there's a lot of folks on the left who loath Fox News, and never could stand Juan Williams for being a regular on the conservative cable network, albeit as one of their "moderate" guests.
The theory that the network was just looking for a reason to can Williams makes sense, which is why they're being blasted as being liberal fascists by many on the right. But Vivian Schiller's comments that it's against NPR policy to express opinions on the air makes no sense when there are other members of the network who do just that.
As Stephen Hayes writes in The Weekly Standard, by Schiller's theory, Nina Totenberg should also be canned. Hayes says he doesn't want to see that happen, but lists some of the opinions that Totenberg has expressed on a PBS public affairs show recently.
On October 10, Totenberg compared the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, the prominent campaign finance case, to Watergate. Host Gordon Peterson said:
Thanks to the Supreme Court Citizens United ruling earlier this year, 501(c) nonprofits can pump millions of dollars into our elections and they don’t have to tell us where the money is coming from. The best government money can buy, Nina.
Totenberg, who covers the Supreme Court, was not shy about expressing her opinion. “Well, you know, really, this is the next scandal. It’s the scandal in the making. They don’t have to disclose anything. And eventually, this is the kind of thing that led to Watergate.”
The week before, on October 3, she decried Republicans – a “concerted minority” – for holding up business in the Senate and declared that their willingness to exploit antiquated congressional rules was a “loony way to do business.”
Her most partisan comment came when Charles Krauthammer pointed out that 31 Democrats in the House had written to Nancy Pelosi to call for extending the Bush tax cuts, Totenberg wished them out of the party. “When a party actually has a huge majority, it has a huge diversity. And that is part of the problem that Democrats have. But would I like it to be otherwise? Of course.”
On the same show, Totenberg said that she was looking forward to Jon Stewart’s Rally for Sanity, but for reasons that might strike some as, well, implausible. “Let me just say – let me just say something in defense on Jon Stewart here. I’m a devotee of the program because it’s fun…And I must say he’s been pretty savage about Obama and pretty savage about Democrats who smear people, too. So I kind of like the idea of the Rally for Sanity.”
From this vantage point, NPR screwed up. Forget about the fact that it's pretty tacky to fire somebody over the phone who previously had been a pretty solid employee for over a decade. It allows conservatives to accuse the network of using that phrase from that Jonah Goldberg book a few years ago, Liberal Fascism. And that's inexcusable.
And we should note that Williams will survive, as Fox News head honcho Roger Ailes has always offered up a $2 million contract for 3 years with the network.
