Did NPR Do the Right Thing by Firing Juan Williams?

I’ve always liked Juan Williams. If nothing else, I was forever impressed with how he was able to ride the seemingly impossible media see-saw: working as a talking head for right wing Fox News and left-leaning National Public Radio at the same time.

It was a nearly impossible feat of literal left brain/right brain tap dancing that few had ever attempted … and this week we found out why.

Like the jocks on “Glee” who are forced to act tough and put down the sissified singers while on the field, but search for that elusive falsetto sweet spot in Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” while on stage, the gig forced him to be two different people while remaining true to his essential self.

That split personality was publicly torn in half Monday when Williams told Fox's Bill O’Reilly that he gets “nervous” when sitting on planes with people who appear to be Muslim. In the comfy confines of Fox News, this was like saying President Obama hates white people or is a secret Muslim, i.e. no big deal.

But for NPR it was a major incident and longtime contributor Williams was axed without even a phone call to warn him. Williams, not to mention O’Reilly, former House speaker Newt Gingrich and the rest of the tub-thumping right were outraged! Outraged! They called for NPR, which derives less than two percent ($3.3 million) of its annual budget ($166 million) from federal sources, to be immediately defunded, disbanded, neutered and yanked off the air!

Half-term Alaska governor and Fox News contributor Sarah Palin also weighed in, of course, writing on her Facebook page, “If NPR is unable to tolerate an honest debate about an issue as important as Islamic terrorism, then it's time for 'National Public Radio' to become 'National Private Radio,’” also calling for the Congress to “defund” NPR.

NPR said Williams' comments on O’Reilly’s show were “inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR.” In other words, he made a poor choice to appear on shows that “encourage punditry and speculation rather than fact-based analysis.”

Frankly, Williams began his statement to O’Reilly with the kind of caveat that is the lay-up of the closet bigot: “Look, Bill, I’m not a bigot,” said Williams, who has written extensively on the civil rights era.

In his defense, Williams did stress there are “good Muslims” and that the focus should be on extremists and not Muslims as a whole and that we need to find a way to rise above our knee-jerk anti-Muslim sentiment.

"We don't want, in America, people to have their rights violated," Williams added, "to be attacked on the street because they hear rhetoric from Bill O’Reilly” and they act crazy."

But the die had already been cast.

What if it had been a white liberal saying they crossed the street every time they saw someone “in a doorag and saggy jeans” during a discussion about black-on-black crime? Would NPR have fired that person? Absolutely.

You need look no further than former CNN talker Rick Sanchez, who recently lost his gig for calling Jon Stewart a “bigot” and trotting out the age-old “Jews run the media” race card. Or famed White House reporter Helen Thomas, who was canned this summer after five decades of covering Washington politics over her comments that Jews should go “home” and leave Israel to the Palestinians. News reporters and anchors are paid to deliver the straight news, analysts are paid for their opinions, but as anyone who watches CNN or Fox News knows, that line often blurs.

NPR has drawn fire from the right and the left for the ham-fisted way it handled the matter, with the network’s Chief Executive Vivian Schiller taking the fiercest condemnation for her quip that Williams should have kept his comments between him and his therapist. And the firestorm couldn’t have come at a worse time, since it coincided with a $1.8 million grant from avowed left-wing philanthropist George Soros earmarked to hire 100 new reporters.

The bottom line is that Williams spoke his mind honestly, which is what he’s paid to do and he’ll be fine, since he got a $2 million contract from Fox News this week. As The Daily Beast pointed out, Williams has long toed an odd line as an African-American who sometimes criticizes blacks and who took serious heat in 1991 when he was a Washington Post columnist and he defended Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas against claims by Anita Hill.

He’s also been called out by NPR in the past, including last year, when he referred to First Lady Michelle Obama having a “Stokley Carmichael in a designer dress thing going on,” later apologizing for comparing her to the civil rights rabble rouser when, in fact, he said he was just trying to point out a potential political blindspot.

Maybe, as he claimed on “Good Morning America” Friday, his former bosses were just looking for an excuse to fire him because they didn’t like his Fox gig. And maybe he really just said what was on his mind.

But this isn’t Williams’ first rodeo and he clearly knew the rules at NPR and the fact that he was already on the bubble. Making this about funding NPR is a distraction from the real issue and an easy dodge for the right to bash NPR with the righteous stick of mock moral indignation over xenophobic comments that hardly raise an eyebrow in the Fox News universe.