If the geniuses at NPR assumed it’d be a one-day story when they fired Juan Williams for experiencing a prohibited emotion — and, even worse, daring to admit it in enemy territory — they assumed very incorrectly. A week later, they’re taking heat from their own affiliates. James Rosen writes:

Some station executives said Williams should not have been fired, while others said the firing should have been more professionally handled. Still others questioned whether NPR is fairly administering its own ethics rules, and suggested Williams was fired purely because he appears on Fox News…

In telephone interviews with Fox News this week, general managers of several stations affiliated with NPR spoke sharply about [CEO Vivian] Schiller’s performance in the episode. Janet Campbell, general manager at Kansas station KANU, said she did not believe Williams should have been fired at all, and that she “absolutely” saw a double standard at work in the network’s treatment of Williams and Totenberg.

“I think it had to do with the network he was on,” said Campbell, who has served as KANU’s general manager for fifteen years. “I thought it was a knee-jerk reaction. And I was extremely disappointed at [Schiller’s] remarks in Atlanta. I thought that was very childish. Someone in charge of such a large organization should know better…”

Steve Lindbeck, president and general manager of Alaska station KSKA, expressed similar sentiments. “It struck me as an overreaction,” he told Fox News from Anchorage. “And then I listened online to his comment in context [on the October 18 edition of “The O’Reilly Factor”]…And it didn’t strike me as [being as] difficult as it originally appeared….That’s a problem, where people occasionally don’t look at the context.” Lindbeck said KSKA exceeded its fundraising goals last week, which saw the Williams controversy coinciding with pledge drives at most NPR stations, but added: “I doubt that it was good [for fundraising]….I don’t think it was the most deft handling of the situation.”

No, “deft” is not the first word that springs to mind. Vivian Schiller has thrown herself face-first into an identity politics minefield and can’t stop making snow angels.

John Sexton at Big Journalism, examining NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard’s semicoherent excuses for the fiasco, notices something very interesting about “the understandable outrage of people like Mohamed Khodr, a doctor from Winchester, VA.” Khodr wrote to Shepard:

On the Radio, Williams is somewhat of a thoughtful though superficial moderate while on FOX he shows his politically correct submissive Pro Fox bigotry for a few dollars more…NPR must and should take a stand against this bigotry and tell Williams’ he must choose NPR’s code of ethics or be let go to join the racist bigoted fearmongerers of FOX.”

And who is this Khodr fellow? Sexton explains:

Well, he turns out to be a far left author and activist who has written, among other things, that Israel is a “rogue terrorist apartheid state that lives by the sword of the IDF.” This is just one line in a rant which describes how “Tribal influence” (meaning the tribes of Israel) dominates Congress. In another online article Mr. Khodr describes our government as the “Three Branches of AIPAC.” He’s disappointed with President Obama as well, saying in a recent letter to a UK paper, “He has conned the world with laudable rhetoric, but in his deeds he is pro-war, pro-business, and pro-Israel, regardless of its actions.”

But as you might guess from his letter to NPR, Mr. Khodr’s roots are in media criticism. He explains that criticism of Israel is heavily restricted in places like the NY Times and the Washington Post because they are “Jewish owned or dominated papers.” How does he know? They never published any of the 500 letters he has sent them denouncing Israel. Mr. Khodr also has a problem with “Don Hewitt’s (Jewish) 60 Minutes on CBS.” And you won’t be surprised to learn that Mr. Khodr has elsewhere noted that Roger Ailes, President of Fox News, is Jewish.

So NPR sides with anti-Semitic cranks over its own affiliates. Why not?

If you missed it yesterday, check out Mary Katharine Ham’s thoughts on the whole matter. She was right in the middle of it, literally:

A week ago, minutes before Juan Williams and I went on “The O’Reilly Factor” to tape the segment that got him fired by NPR, we had a rather prescient conversation.

Juan has been a colleague and close friend for several years, and we often chat in the green room before our weekly segments on Bill O’Reilly’s show. Last Monday, I confessed to being a little nervous about our topic.

“It’s hard doing these speech-police segments, where you know, no matter how good your intentions are, if you say one thing wrong, they’re going to make you into a bigot,” I said.

Juan, who’s had years more experience with the slings and arrows of constant media criticism than I, gave his standard advice: Be yourself, be honest, and try not to sweat people whose job it is to take offense at everything we say.

Of course, merely consorting with the likes of the evil and malevolent MKH is a firing offense, which might be why she has instructed me never to make eye contact with her. Williams wasn’t so lucky, and now he’s paid the price: near-unanimous support and a multimillion-dollar contract.

Hey, waitaminnit!

P.S.

Via Glynnis MacNichol at Mediaite, who says O’Reilly is “apparently determined to wring every last ounce of story from the Juan Williams firing.” Good thing you didn’t fall for it, Glynnis!