“Political correctness can lead to some kind of paralysis where you don’t address reality….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 the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.” — Juan Williams on “The O’Reilly Factor”
State-controlled media-monopoly National Public Radio took time last week from its perpetual beg-a-thons to tend to some administrative matters and fired its only black guy, Juan Williams. He was shown the door and not even given an NPR tote bag by our taxpayer-subsidized leftist “news” organization.
Given what happened to us on 9/11, it is logical to harbor some concern when you see Muslims on airplanes. This is the same fear you should have if you found out that I was on your fantasy football team.
NPR took its cue from President Obama, who eliminated the phrases “War on Terror” and “Islamic radicalism” from White House documents. Obama wants all directives to reflect the new reality that his government has only one true enemy: white businessmen.
In the America of today, we are no longer allowed to draw our own conclusions on the nature of others based on our own experience. Empirical data has no place in the leftist world — just ask Larry Summers, who was fired from Harvard for pointing out that women tend to do a little worse in math than men. If it were not for math scores, we would not know this.
If you notice that there is an increasing number of Croatian players in the NBA these days, well then, you are just racist. We all know the NBA is an equally distributed mosaic that reflects the exact tapestry of America by being 3 % Jewish, 11% African-American, 14% Hispanic and 72% white.
If you have been robbed three times by tattooed gang members who hang out on your street corner and you opt to avoid them by not walking near them at night, you are just a bigot. It is much better to be beaten, raped or robbed when you could have avoided it than to risk someone thinking you might be prejudiced against a group based on its past actions.
The media have appointed themselves arbiters of all things acceptable. They purport to defend the First Amendment, but only as it applies to their politically correct narrative of the world.
Growing up in a small town, I was a news hungry boy who listened to the only radio news show available then, NPR. That was 30 years ago, before news radio expanded and the Internet became an important free source of information. NPR is now like an AM radio station that plays music. You know it still exists; you just wonder why.
I am not sure what enumerated power in the Constitution LBJ used when he signed the Public Broadcasting Act in 1967, ostensibly to provide programming to smaller towns. I mostly remember they did a lot of stories on jazz and dance. Perhaps NPR was created in response to fears that kids in rural America were not learning how to do jazz hands.
Marketplace media has to provide quality, in-demand programming. Even great shows like 30 Rock are forced to innovate; it recently aired a live show. CNN (NPR in drag) might even have to step up its programming by adding a live Larry King to the Larry King Live show.
Juan Williams is a class act and seems to have landed on his feet. He saw Sarah Palin making all that money as a commentator on Fox even though she cannot say words that end in “g,” so he got in on some of that easy money.
Democrats will never stop funding National Public Radio with our tax dollars. They do not want to leave to the free markets and to free thinkers the important task of controlling what we hear, because what we hear might shape our opinions. Certainly advertisers, journalistic ethics and the U.S. public cannot be trusted to fund our information flow; as liberals know, it must only be funded through deficit spending and federal debt.
Ron Hart is a syndicated op-ed humorist, author and TV/radio commentator. Email Ron@RonaldHart.com or at visit RonaldHart.com.