Oh, Juan

I need to start this post by making myself perfectly clear: I am not a Juan Williams fan. I owe the brother a huge debt of gratitude for his Eyes on the Prize documentary series. However, for the past few years, he's been steady-pissing me off. That Rupert Murdoch money has been getting too good to him, and he's been becoming more conservative by the fiscal year. He had a particularly large bug up his bugger over Obama in '08, and his calling the First Lady Stokely Carmichael in drag was way out of bounds. All that being said, the only thing more annoying than Williams' pseudo-sagacious commentary these past few years is his being fired by NPR for that same commentary last night.

The reason given for the termination was a comment Williams made on The O'Reilly Factor earlier this week:

"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 a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they're identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous." 

NPR claims that Williams' statements "were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR." Earlier today on that same network, one of their executives also claimed that Williams' spouting his opinion like that on Fox also undermined said "credibility."