What Juan Williams really thinks about Muslims

There’s been a lot of wrangling here on the In Box about Juan Williams’ firing by NPR.

As I’ve said, it’s a legitimate debate, one that raises important questions about about journalism and analysis, about public broadcasting, and about the way our culture talks about tough, complicated issues.

But I think rhetoric about this being a case comparable to the Shirley Sherrod incident — in which a government official’s comments were deliberately edited to conceal the intent of her words — is way overblown.

It’s important to respond honestly to exactly what it was that Williams said on the Fox News program; and it’s also true that context matters.

So setting aside the “fire-don’t-fire” question, here’s my take on Williams’ argument and ideas.

First, it’s important to note that Williams didn’t just offer an emotional or unguarded opinion about his personal anxieties about seeing people “in Muslim garb” on airplanes.

His views were offered after Fox host Bill O’Reilly laid out his own detailed argument that Islam is the primary global threat to peace and security and that “moderate Muslims have not stepped up in a visible way to help combat the Jihadists.”

In fact, far more Muslims have died fighting against terrorists since 9/11 than have Americans.

Setting aside civilian “collateral” deaths, government officials, aid workers, and Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani soldiers have suffered appalling casualties.

What’s more, American Muslims are currently serving with distinction in our owned Armed Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But O’Reilly and the Fox network have articulated a very specific view that Islam itself (as opposed to Islamic terrorism) is a threat to America’s way of life.

They have embraced narratives about the danger that Islamic Sharia law might at some point be enacted in America.

On this particular program, O’Reilly spoke at length about “the Muslim dilemma” and once again condemned the “Ground Zero” mosque in New York City, despite the fact that it has been proposed by a completely non-violent congregation.

O’Reilly argued that “folks are fed up with politically correct nonsense. There is no question there is a Muslim problem in the world…” and he claimed that “…most Americans are uneasy with the Muslim world in general…”

At the end of his lengthy introduction, in which he laid out these ideas, O’Reilly turned to Williams and had this exchange:

BILL O’REILLY:  So, where am I going wrong there, Juan.

JUAN WILLIAMS, FOX NEWS POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, actually, I hate to say this to you because I don’t want to get your ego going. But I think you’re right. I think, look, political correctness can lead to some kind of paralysis where you don’t address reality.

The “reality” that Williams is agreeing with is clearly O’Reilly’s broad narrative about Islam. Williams then shares his own much-quoted anxieties about seeing Muslims on a plane.

Rather than acknowledging that his own fears may be irrational or merely a personal gut-level response, Williams goes one further, suggesting that his concerns about people wearing traditional garb are justified.

WILLIAMS:  Now, I remember also that when the Times Square bomber was at court, I think this was just last week. 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.

Williams goes on to offer a series of caveats and hedges that are important to note.

I think there are people who want to somehow remind us all as President Bush did after 9/11, it’s not a war against Islam. President Bush went to a mosque –

When O’Reilly suggests that even non-violent Muslims living in Germany are problematic for that society, Williams pushes back, insisting that “extremists” are the main concern.

Williams offers a series of warnings against over-broad statements about all Muslims, and points to instances of racism against Muslims in America.

In the end, frankly, his points are contradictory and incoherent, which I think accounts for much of the confusion here.

He first agrees point-blank with O’Reilly’s assertion that Islam writ large is problematic, a religious culture that people have legitimate reasons to fear.

He shares that fear, he says, argues that his own fear is justified, and suggests that people who don’t share these views are blinded by “political correctness.”

But he then casts fairly harsh judgment on his own and O’Reilly’s views, suggesting that it’s unwise and unproductive to fear Muslims as a whole.

I’m saying, we don’t want in America, people to have their rights violated to be attacked on the street because they heard a rhetoric from Bill O’Reilly and they act crazy.

It’s worth noting that Williams clearly felt some anxiety about how his own arguments.  He was the first to raise the b-word, telling O’Reilly during the segment, “I’m not a bigot.”

Fair enough.  But his muddled and fact-challenged analysis makes it almost impossible to decipher what Williams does actually think about the hundreds of thousands of American Muslims who live peacefully in our society.

Your thoughts welcome.

Tags: ,

39 Comments on “What Juan Williams really thinks about Muslims”

Leave a Comment
  1. He’s trying to work through a subject he finds uncomfortable and about which he has conflicting feelings. Perhaps, on-air in front of millions of people is not the place to do that. Perhaps it is. I think we’d be a lot better off when wrestling with prejudice of various sorts if we gave people a little breathing room to speak. These are subjects about which it is natural to have a muddle of thoughts and feelings. Rationally, you might know that the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists, but feel fearful anyway when you see someone in Muslim dress getting on your plane. He didn’t have to say it was an irrational fear for it be one. Must everyone who makes a comment on race and bigotry be so careful to place every statement in context, with proper hedging, or face condemnation? His firing does belong with Sherrod’s, I think, because it shows how too-quick we are to condemn people brave enough to speak honestly about prejudice. We’re all eager to rush in and prove, with the vehemence of our disapproval, how free of prejudice we are.

  2. phahn50 says:

    Agree – Juan William’s fundamental “sin” was validating -agreeing with- Bill O”Reilly’s anti-Muslim series of editorials. Fox News makes a very good living doing that stuff which is their business (business model really), but NPR stays away from that type of entertainment (thankfully). Even CNN fired that host who claimed that Jews were running the media and Jon Stewart was out to get him.

  3. JDM says:

    Two problems:

    1) Defining what is acceptable and what is not.

    Some would say that other NPR spokespeople have said far “worse” things and gotten away with it.

    2) Who gets to decide.

    Do we go with “things Brian Mann doesn’t like” as our national standard. (hopefully, no). Nor do we want “things JDM doesn’t like” to be the national standard.

    NPR is in a whole heap of trouble, now, because of these two issues. They should have simply said, “we don’t want you to appear on Fox, so you’re fired” and been done with it.

    Wonder what excuse they will give Mara?

  4. John says:

    As details emerge about Mr. William’s employment history with NPR’s management, it would seem that this was not a knee-jerk response on NPR’s part. Perhaps Juan Williams drank too much of his own kool-ade. LAst year, when Helen Thomas made intemperate remarks, voicing her opinions about Israel’s conduct in regards to the Palestinians, she was immediately fired. Nobody protested that decision. Ms. Thomas had a first amendment right to say what she said. The right to free speech does not guarantee freedom from consequences. Mr. Williams had been previously warned on several occasions that his decision to engage in commentary was running afoul of NPR’s policies. HAs anyone considered, ion view of the multi-million dollar deal that Mr. Williams cut with FOX, in the aftermath of this incident was perhaps a career calculation on his part?

  5. If Clapton is God, Warren Haynes is Jesus says:

    The below comment is from another blog I frequent. I’m curious if there is any truth to what is mentioned. I did hear the CEO of NPR eluding to this fact in an interview aired this morning on NCPR…..I would assume these employment terms apply only to the National NPR and not local affiliates such as NCPR. Perhaps Brian Mann can clarify.

    “Jaun Williams was fired for violating the terms of his employment contract. Employees of NPR are not allowed to give personal opinions to the public. He had been warned before that some of his statements were in violation. If you work for NPR, you can’t even put a bumper sticker on your car for a candidate for dog catcher. That applies to all employees, whether you are on air talent or not. Williams over stepped that boundary. He was fired. He was employed at will.
    Seems to me that he did it with deliberation. Knowing that his comments were out of line and Fox friendly, he appears to have been on a job interview for some time. He got the gig and will make 2 million for a three year deal.”

  6. rockydog says:

    Vivian Schiller needs to step down for her inappropriate comment saying that Juan Williams should have kept his comments to himself and psychiatrist.

  7. phahn50 says:

    Rockydog – there is a difference between a personally inappropriate statement and an anti-ethnic group opinion .

  8. Jack Spann says:

    I live in NYC. I personally get offended when I see Orthodox Jews in their “Jewish garb”. I hate it when I see blacks in their “Rappers garb”. When white people come to town, I hate it when they wear “Christian garb”. When I see a Sikh man in a turban, I am insulted and frightened by their “Sikh garb”. And on and on.

    Juan Williams is a hack journalist. But that’s not why he was fired from NPR. If the VP of say, an international energy corporation went on public airwaves and said he was offended by “Muslim garb”, he would be summarily and appropriately fired. How could an energy company that does business with middle eastern countries stand by such an individual?

    That is the same thing that happened to Williams. Who would want to sit down for an interview with him? Not the presidents or prime ministers of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, Syria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or even India (the worlds largest democracy). His effectiveness as an impartial news analyst is ruined.

  9. It's All Bush's Fault says:

    The difference may be that the “therapist” comment could have violated HIPAA laws.

  10. Ellen Beberman says:

    Williams basically said “I’m not a bigot, but…” Once you make that formulation, anything that follows is a bigoted observation.

  11. Bret4207 says:

    Here’s my take at this point and it ties in with Claptons post containing this excerpt- “Jaun Williams was fired for violating the terms of his employment contract. Employees of NPR are not allowed to give personal opinions to the public. He had been warned before that some of his statements were in violation. If you work for NPR, you can’t even put a bumper sticker on your car for a candidate for dog catcher. That applies to all employees, whether you are on air talent or not. Williams over stepped that boundary. He was fired. He was employed at will.”

    If this is going to be NPR’s defense then why wasn’t the NPR big wig who made a post hoping some right wing commentator (Limbaugh or Beck, I forget) died a horrible death just a couple months back fired? The difference I see is that she said that on a journalists blog or website that was supposed to be sort of “secret” and just for the clique, whereas Williams did it on enemy territory.

    In short, this has as much to do with where he said it as what he said.

    I would also agree with the posters who note that political correctness has simply gone beyond any reasonable point.

  12. Mervel says:

    He was being honest about how he felt, which is conflicted. Many Americans are conflicted about this issue right now and the only way to have that conversation and to address irrational fears, is to talk about it.

    This shuts down honest discussion. So we are back to walking on egg shells when talking about Islam. What do we say when many Muslims support the actions of the Taliban and how they treat women or how Saudi Arabian government officially interprets the Islamic faith? Is it okay to even criticize them or is that bigoted?

    Now if he violated the terms of his employment that is another story, I was not aware of the restrictions put on NPR journalists. I do think when you fire someone as public as Juan Williams you better have your ducks in a row and in this case I don’t think they did.

  13. dave says:

    “I think we’d be a lot better off when wrestling with prejudice of various sorts if we gave people a little breathing room to speak. These are subjects about which it is natural to have a muddle of thoughts and feelings.”

    Agree completely with Will’s statement.

    And, like Mervel, I also worry that this shuts down honest discussion on important topics. but I suppose the question there then becomes, should journalists be a part of these honest discussions to begin with? Or should they just be reporting about them? I am not sure how I feel about that, but your most recent blog post seems to try to wrestle with it. I am interested to see how that discussion goes.

  14. phahn50 says:

    When a journalist – or anybody else for that matter – discusses, in a public forum, an entire people belonging to a specific religion or ethnic group in a derogatory fashion they need to be especially careful. Juan Williams wasnt careful enough, even though he had evidently been warned to be extra careful in that particular situation.

  15. Brian Mann says:

    So here’s a question.

    Juan Williams spoke in broad and more or less unflattering terms about Muslims. He acknowledged fearing them on some level — albeit with qualifications and caveats — and offered some justifications for those fears.

    He suggested that people who disagree with his point of view are limited by “political correctness.” He was fired by NPR and it’s a huge controversy.

    Rich Sanchez spoke in broad and more or less unflattering terms about Jews. He suggested that they held a lot of power in the media and news industry, echoing anti-Jewish memes that have been around for years.

    He called Jon Stewart “a bigot” and suggested that while his Cuban heritage gave him an understanding of what it means to be an oppressed minority, modern Jews can’t make the same claim.

    Sanchez was fired by CNN and it wasn’t a big controversy.

    What do you all see as the difference between these two events?

    –Brian, NCPR

  16. Pete Klein says:

    I pretty much agree with Will D above. Yes, Will, I agree with you more often than not.
    To tell the truth, I really don’t worry about Muslims. I worry about them even less than I worry about many who call themselves Christians. Not that I’m particularly worried about Christians, especially since I and most of my friends are Christians of various denominations.
    Neither do I worry about atheists, whites, blacks, etc., etc.
    As Alfred E. Newman once said, “What? Me worry?”

  17. Jack Spann says:

    One more thing- Williams is the worst kind of hypocrite. Two days ago he was willing and thankful to take NPR’s paycheck. Now, he’s going on the air saying that NPR’s public funding (6% of it’s total budget) should be cut off.

    What a difference a day makes.

  18. dave says:

    “What do you all see as the difference between these two events?”

    Who did the firing, and the show and network that the comments were delivered on.

    The actual situation is very similar, but the circumstances of one was pretty boring, while the other is almost tailor made for drama.

  19. Mervel says:

    For me the difference is that I think Williams was addressing an honest yet irrational fear he holds about people dressed in traditional Arab/Muslim dress and went on to talk about that he understood intellectually that it was indeed only the extremist tiny minority that we should fear. I think Rick Sanchez was more stating what he believed to be factual about Jews in the entertainment industry.

    In addition a group of well funded well armed Jewish people have not declared war on the US in the name of Judaism and carried out that war through a series of military attacks on US citizens. So when we worry about Jews in the entertainment industry it seems more just like old time anti-Semitism. Within the US there is very little support among Muslims for al-quida, I don’t believe this is true in the rest of the world, it is not crazy to profile Arab Muslims on planes, it is logical.

  20. Phil Brown says:

    The bottom line is that Juan Williams was fired for disclosing that he gets nervous when he sees people in Muslim dress on a plane. He did not offer an opinion; he stated a fact. A news organization should be able to distinguish
    the two. When the head of NPR made an intemperate comment of her own within a day of the firing, that only underscored the unfairness of her sacking of Williams. I’m not a fan of Williams, but I am a fan of free speech.

  21. Suzanne says:

    Rick Sanchez shouldn’t have been fired either. But CNN isn’t heavily financed by the federal govenment so people don;t care as much.

    Cokie Roberts is listed on the NPR web site as a senior news analyst; she is also employed by ABC for $$$ as a political commentator. Hmmmm.

    Your suggestion that what Juan Williams said was somehow wrong is completely unjustified. You are not the police of what is and isn’t allowed. His statements were highly qualified and honest and completely unoffensive. Much of the criticism of NPR is being leveled by its liberal supporters like me.

    We have supported NCPR for years but will no longer send any money. I will still listen though. I am a liberal and I love your programming. I just don’t want to give money to the thought police.

    Moreover NPR’s CEO’s response that Williams should be discussing this with his psychaitrist makes it clear that the firing was politcal and personal and not professional. Since she made a personal attack as a representative of NPR and on behalf of NPR she deserves to be fired.

    Brian- what Juan Williams thinks of muslims is frankly, none of your business. Should you be allowed to write books and get paid to do so? If you express an opinion in your books does that make you unqualified to be on NCPR? What if something you expressed in your book resulted in your being fired…?

    And don’t split hairs between commentator and analyst. No one buys that argument for a moment.

    Again Juan Williams (news analyst) = Cokie Robinson (senior news analyst) . One paid by Fox, one paid by ABC. One fired. One still on the payroll.

    Jeez, And I don’t even like Juan Williams!

  22. Bret4207 says:

    In addition to the difference Mervel points out, the Jews/Israelis are the enemies of the Muslims even more than the US is. I think it’s an offshoot of the political correctness mentioned earlier. Right now the group most in the lime light of politically correct thought are Muslims. Jews are way, way, way, way down the list, just ahead bald, over weight, middle aged, white Christian men and ax murderers.

    If Sanchez or Williams had made any comment about Joe Sixpack and control or fear it would have been a complete non-story.

  23. knuckleheadedliberal says:

    Ignorant blowhards scare the crap out of me. That includes O’Reilly, Beck, Rush. Ignorant blowhards get people killed. Sometimes millions of them.

    There is little difference between O’Reilly or Beck and Mullah Omar, except that maybe Beck has never had the chance to live in a country without rule of law.

    Is violence the answer? Probably not. But if I saw them on a plane I’d sure like to beat the crap out of them. Is that not PC? So sorry.

  24. Suzanne says:

    I left a reply at 5:00 — why wasn’t it posted?

  25. Mervel says:

    You know I listened to a recorded interview this week between Terry Gross and John Stewart (on NPR of course), anyway Stewart made a good point, there is a difference between people we disagree with and people who are our enemies. Basically he said he didn’t agree with people being afraid of Glenn Beck or his people taking over, that we are not that fragile we can handle bad ideas. Glenn Beck is not our enemy he is simply wrong. However there are people who are our enemies who do want to kill us who have killed some simply because we defamed or made fun of Mohammad, or Jesus for that matter; these people are our enemies. So he said those people who would kill us for percieved slights to their religion could go **** themselves.

    Ignorant blowhards should not scare the crap out of us they have been part of our country for a long time and we have survived, we do need to be concerned about those who want to kill us all, and they do exist.

  26. knuckleheadedliberal says:

    Mervel, it is people like Glen Beck who help get us into wars like the one in Iraq. I’m not afraid of Glen Beck but it really scares me that there are millions of people who listen to him. Many even believe what he says.

    Fear and ignorance whipped this country into a thirst for blood. Innocent Afghans and Iraqis suffered while the real perpetrators of 9/11 are still at large.

    I’m not worried that America will fall because of a few terrorists. I’m afraid that many Americans aren’t very different from them. Do you believe that there is some form of human nature that is different in a Muslim?

  27. JDM says:

    Man Fired for Wearing Bush Sweatshirt at Obama Rally

    http://blogs.ktla.com/news_custom_eric/2010/10/man-fired-for-wearing-bush-sweatshirt-at-obama-rally.html

    Is this NPR country, or what??

  28. Mervel says:

    ‘Do you believe that there is some form of human nature that is different in a Muslim?”

    No not at all.
    But as Stewart made the point; you are confusing enemies with opponents. We have enemies in the world who would wish to destroy us, and they are not people in the US who you happen to disagree with politically.
    I agree; I am not worried either we will fall because of a few terrorists either. However I don’t think fear and ignorance whipped us into some sort of blood lust after 9/11 anymore than it did after Pearl Harbor caused us to declare war on Japan. Glen Beck and talk show radio and certainly didn’t, I do think it was a strategic mistake to attack Iraq and probably going back into Afghanistan now; largely because we don’t do well in those types of wars or occupations.
    But that is different from talking about people who riot and kill and make death threats if someone puts Mohammad in a bear suite. Those people are enemies, not Glenn Beck, who is simply often wrong. We cannot let PC worries over offending Muslims get in the way of understanding that we are defending ourselves against Islamic extremist groups, the extremists we are fighting who have killed thousands of Americans do this in the name of one religious tradition, Islam. They are not without support in certain parts of the globe. Who is supporting the Taliban? Who is supporting the leaders of Iran, who is supporting Hezbollah and Hamas, who is supporting Al-Quida a group that has cells all over the globe from Germany to Pakistan? These are Islamic terrorist groups who want to kill us and have no concept of individual liberty or Democracy we should not be squeamish about being honest about who they are.

  29. Bret4207 says:

    Knuck, what exactly is it that “scares” you about Beck? Seriously, I’m interested in what you hear or think you hear vs what I hear or think I hear.

  30. Mervel says:

    It is not just Islam either. During the war in Northern Ireland the IRA was a Catholic terrorist group. There is nothing wrong with pointing that out. This terrorist group got major funding from Irish Catholics living in the US. It does not help us to ignore that Catholic connection to terrorism in this case. On the other side we had the Protestant terror groups. It was not wrong to point that out and it does not denigrate the entire faith.

    There are terror cells today who kill in the name of stopping abortion, they are often motivated by their Christian faith. The KKK used the trappings of Christianity, largely the Southern Baptist tradition, many of the kkk attended Baptist Churches in the South, pointing out that connection out does not mean I am bigoted against Southern Baptists.

  31. knuckleheadedliberal says:

    Bret, people like Beck are always finding new people to be enemies. That is the whole problem with the War on Terror. What we should have done was enlist all the nations of the world in an effort to eradicate international criminal activity.

    Let’s start looking at the list of “enemies” we’ve had.
    Osama enemy now but was a friend in the Afghan war against the Soviets.
    Saddam enemy who was a friend to fight Iran.
    Iran who was a friend but we worried about them so we deposed Mossadeq in favor of the Shah then enemy under the Ayatollah, then helped in the overthrow of the Taliban but was put in the Axis of Evil and is now enemy.
    Qhadaffi, friend, enemy, sort of friend.
    I’m not going to even think about getting into Latin and South America but,
    Chavez and Castro. Why are we enemies with them?
    Russia friend, enemy, friend.
    China friend, enemy friend.
    Pakistan, enemy and friend at the same time.
    India wanted to be our friend but we treated them as an enemy, friend.
    France friend since the birth of this nation but treated like an enemy at times by people like Beck.

    I wish someone would compile a list of all the foreign leaders described as the next Hitler. Start with Obama and work backward.

    Beck and Rush and their ilk treat serious issues as if they are some sort of team sport in which the opposing team never loses it just morphs into another except that people get killed, maimed, the national debt escalates, Americans become ever more divided, ordinary people lose and international corporations, oligarchs, strongmen get rich.

  32. knuckleheadedliberal says:

    Mervel,

    I could very easily draw cartoons about Jesus that would get people to make death threats. I don’t because there is no point in making such purely offensive cartoons. The riots are not about the cartoons. The riots are about all the incidents that people elsewhere see in their news that we do not see here. The riots are about Danish leaders not meeting with Muslim clerics to explain why a cartoon is so offensive to Muslims. The riots are about people who are poor and oppressed and manipulated as pawns in an international game. The riots are about the pawns wanting to vent rage at having their valuable natural and human resources exploited without any gain trickling down to the ordinary person. They see Americans living in resplendent luxury and at the same time dropping bombs on the poorest and weakest of their bretheren.

    They see their people bombed and beaten and tortured and held in prison-limbos, and they wonder how a great and free and democratic society can do that to their fellow human beings. The see the greatest, most powerful nation on Earth taking form the poorest, destroying their cities and governments, social structures, and the walking away leaving then to become Somalia, or Iraq, or Afghanistan.

    They aren’t stupid. They know they are the dirt under our feet, and they don’t like it.

  33. Mervel says:

    I really don’t agree; the riots were about the blaspheming of Mohammad. Sometimes we have to take things at face value and not always be reading the Western Imperialist view into them.

    I mean was the death sentence issued against Rushdie because of Western oppression? Does the leader of Iran say what he does and act like he does because of Western oppression? The fact is Muslims need to get some thicker skin if they want to be part of the secular West. I mean “Piss Christ” that filthy exhibit that displayed in NYC: did just fine in the US, sure there were some minor protests and some people got mad, I got mad about it for example, but no one was scared no one worried about Christians burning a city down. Muslims are going to have to get used to living in a society with Richard Dawkins,Chris Hitchens and South Park.

    The reasons that Muslim countries are often struggling have nothing to do with the US and everything to do with their own internal policies, lack of Democracy, individual liberty and human rights.

  34. knuckleheadedliberal says:

    Mervel, you are right that it is very complicated. Sometimes a riot is just for the cameras. Sometimes it is state sponsored. Sometimes it is legitimate homegrown dissent.

    What I think you are missing is the point that what you see being covered in the western media is slanted just as the media in other countries is slanted.

    While you may see a preacher in Florida who wants to burn the Koran as being a pathetic moron without any real base he can easily be portrayed as a symbol of Western Imperialism and hegemony by a news outlet in another country…maybe a Middle East version of FoxNews.

    Do you remember the toppling of the Saddam statue in Iraq? It was only a few dozen Iraqis and they couldn’t even get it to fall over without the help of an American Army unit and a tank. But it played endlessly on US media with the role of Americans being edited out.

    My point is that you are being shown a slanted view of them and they are being shown a slanted view of us and each side is making judgements about the other with very poor knowledge of the real nature of the other.

    How many Muslims do you know? What do you know of the history of Muslim countries? Do you know that women have been the leaders of many Muslim countries? Not true of the US. Do you know that many Muslim countries are democracies? Many Muslim countries were held as colonies of European Empires not long ago, just as the American colonies; why don’t we identify with them as places with the potential to nurture new democracies just as France did for us? What do you know of the internal policies of Muslim countries and how those policies were formed? Didn’t most middle eastern countries form as modern states in the immediate aftermath of WWII? Do you think that Cold War politics may have influenced their internal policies and governments? Do you believe that the CIA and the KGB had no role in who ended up governing certain states?

    Finally, I am assuming that you are a US citizen in saying this: what right does any American have to talk about human rights to any other country? We are a rogue nation that uses torture, extraordinary rendition, random detention, detention without habeas corpus, summary execution, warrantless wiretapping, bombing and shooting of civilians; we wont even sign a treaty to ban land-mines that look like child’s toys to keep innocent children from having their limbs blown off.

    There are a lot of disgusting things about Muslim countries but don’t try to bring them up to me until the US signs the treaty banning land mines. Until then we are a despicable people.

  35. Bret4207 says:

    Knuck, sounds to me like you are just generalizing about Beck and have no idea what he’s been saying all along. Sounds like repeats of sound bites.

    Typical.

  36. knuckleheadedliberal says:

    Bret nobody has the time to do a point by point refutation of Beck or Rush or O’Reilly who get paid millions of dollars to spend their time slanting history and the news.

  37. Bret4207 says:

    ie- I never actually listened or watched, I base my opinion on what others have told me…

  38. admin says:

    Suzanne asked:
    October 22, 2010 at 7:37 pm
    I left a reply at 5:00 — why wasn’t it posted?

    The first time you post a comment on an NCPR blog using a new username/email combination, the comment goes into the moderation queue. During working hours, this would have been approved and posted within a few minutes. Evenings and weekends, it might not be posted until the next weekday morning.

    However, once you have had one comment approved for a new username/email address, all further comments will post immediately without going through moderation. One exception to this is if you have more than two live links in the comment. This is one indication of a spam message, so it will go into the moderation queue to await approval.

    Sorry for the inconvenience, but this is the only way we can run an open conversation without requiring a special log-in and without becoming buried in spam comments.

    Dale Hobson
    NCPR Online

  39. oa says:

    “This terrorist group got major funding from Irish Catholics living in the US. It does not help us to ignore that Catholic connection to terrorism in this case.”

    This is why there should be no Ground Zero CYO.

Leave a Reply