On the matter of the firing of Juan Williams by NPR, I wanted to add a few thoughts to what has already been said and written. The first is that this incident will not soon fade from memory; rather, it will be seen, over time, as an important moment that further discredited liberal media institutions. It took well-known but fairly abstract truths — NPR is taxpayer supported and dominated by a liberal political culture — and gave it a name, a context, and a human face. The fact that NPR’s Vivian Schiller turned out to be monumentally inept and mean-spirited may have been known to a few others before NPR cashiered Williams; now that fact is known by millions of others. Consequently, NPR will suffer a serious blow to its reputation and pay a considerable price (hopefully) in terms of funding.
Second, what was unmasked during the last week was the extent to which modern liberalism (at least as embodied by NPR) is antithetical to classical liberalism, which celebrated open-mindedness, a diversity of thought and opinion, and the spirited exchange of ideas. The depth of intolerance at National Public Radio is so deep that even a liberal like Juan Williams was thrown to the curb. His sin is not only that he didn’t parrot the Party Line closely enough; it was also that he didn’t parrot the Party Line at the appropriate Party Outlets.
Which leads to observation number three: the degree to which Fox News not only obsesses liberals but also blows their circuits.
The genius of Roger Ailes wasn’t simply to build the most successful cable news network in history; it’s that in the process, he has caused liberals from President Obama and his top aides to NPR to make stupid errors — errors rooted in their intense hatred for Fox News. They cannot stand the fact that Fox shattered the liberal media monopoly in television journalism. But what truly drives the left around the twist is that Fox News is thriving — and with each attempt to discredit it, the network grows more popular, more powerful, and more dominant.
Out of this most recent controversy, Juan Williams will come out just fine. NPR, on the other hand, has emerged disgraced. All in all, not a bad outcome.
