NPR Fires Juan Williams...Because He Strayed "Off The Plantation"?

I must admit, I was surprised when I heard this. Not a big fan of Juan Williams ,but he had the occasional semblance of balance, which is more than can be said for 99% of media liberals.

Which, of course, may explain this:

NPR terminated its contract this evening with Juan Williams, who worked with them as a senior political analyst, after Williams appeared on Bill O’Reilly and spoke of a “Muslim dilemma”

Mr. Williams said...“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.”

Mr. Williams also made reference to the Pakistani immigrant who pleaded guilty this month to trying to plant a car bomb in Times Square. “He said the war with Muslims, America’s war is just beginning, first drop of blood. I don’t think there’s any way to get away from these facts,” Mr. Williams said.

NPR said in its statement that the remarks “were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR.”

So odd. I have questions:

-How does the act of Mr. Williams relating his own concern about seeing full-fledged Muslims on airplanes "undermine his credibility"? Nowhere does he say that he believes all Muslims are terrorists, he only speaks of his own feelings of nervousness when he flies. Being that all recent terrorist-related airplane disasters were orchestrated by Muslims, is he not simply reflecting upon an overall national concern (one that is likely shared by most Americans), and thus enhancing his position as a legitimate "news analyst"?

-do NPR's "editorial standards" including hiding from the American public basic facts about radical Islam's attitude towards America? Note NPR does not repudiate the facts involved, only the speaker and the fact they were spoken...

-why is a taxpayer-funded organization firing someone for engaging in free speech?

-would Williams have been fired if he made similar remarks about Jews, or Israel? Never mind, I know the answer to that one...

-was Williams fired because he appears often on FOX, and made his comments on O'Reilly's show? Would he have been fired had they been made on Rachel Maddow's show, or CNN? Not that anyone would have seen them anyway...

-was Juan Williams fired because he said these things while being black? Certainly, members of specific groups who Democrats feel are rightly "their" constituency are the ones who take the most heat for straying off the ideological plantation. Colin Powell, Condi Rice, women such as Sarah Palin, Christie O'Donnell....you get the drift. So does Dan Riehl:

What Juan Williams did is very similar to why the Left hates Sarah Palin, other conservative women and conservative homosexuals. He played against the progressive stereotype of himself, revealing a balanced and too candid humanity within. For a moment, in essence, he became too real.

Well, if Juan Williams is impacted by the behavior of Muslims, then progressives - and NPR is that, can't lecture white America that their concerns are based on hate, religious intolerance, bigotry or xenophobia. Juan Williams didn't drop his mask and reveal any Islamophobia last night on Fox. What he did was rip the mask off the tactics NPR and other progressives, including the liberal media, use to lecture America and prevent an honest discussion of the threat from Islam.

Sorry, Juan. You got screwed by the very progressive cause you championed. In the old days, a conservative was "a liberal who had been mugged". We are seeing a lot of that today, as Democratic voters migrate towards the Right in the run-up to the 2010 midterms: Today's conservatives are liberals who realized they wouldn't be the ones wearing the boots, they'd be the ones feeling the heel stomp across their collective faces...

UPDATE: Thoughts from Cliff May, which confirm some of my analysis:

Bottom line: NPR has its own interpretation of sharia, and Juan violated it — and paid the price....It’s also true — I have this on good authority — that NPR has long been furious with Juan simply for being a regular on Fox. You’d think they’d appreciate the fact that he is making the liberal case, intelligently, to a largely conservative audience. How else are right-wingers going to learn? But no, at NPR most people favor engagement with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — but not with Bill O’Reilly...