NPR MAKES JUAN WILLIAMS CHOKE ON HIS RIGHT-WING KOOL AID

Folks don’t know what happened to journalist Juan Willams. He was a rather solid liberal when he was on National Public Radio (NPR) and CNN’s Crossfire as well as when he hosted the show America’s Black Forum. Then again people think his recent venturing into right wing positions on Fox News since Barack Obama came onto the scene is nothing new. After all, he defended Clarence Thomas over Anita Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment back in 1991 – the same year Williams himself was discliplined by his then-employer the Washington Post for the same thing after some female employees brought a complaint to the paper. Over the past year with Williams attacking Obama at every turn, his old friends on the left were confused, disappointed and upset about the various stances he took against the then-candidate, then President-elect. Today people could care less, and the last straw happened two weeks ago when he appeared on the show of his fellow sexual harasser Bill O’Reilly and refered to First Lady Michelle Obama to “Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress”. Now for those who don’t know, the late Stokely Carmichael, a/k/a Kwame Ture, was the leader of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) who was among the first to make the leap from the Martin Luther King, Jr. era into the era of the Black Panther Party. We can get into it about the fact that no matter how much conservatives try to paint this face on Michelle Obama, nothing she has said or done is any evidence that she plays racial politics of that stripe or any other, but it’s like we said earlier. People stopped caring where people like Juan Williams is coming from and just want him to go back there. Williams is often listed as being from NPR whenever he appears on Faux News. NPR wants that to stop. Now.

NewsHounds.us

NPR has gotten so many complaints about Juan Williams’ distasteful remarks about Michelle Obama (likening her to “Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress”) that it wants FOX News to stop identifying him as an NPR Political Analyst.

On January 26, Williams said on The O’Reilly Factor, “Let me just tell you this. If you think about liabilities for President Obama that are close to him, Joe Biden is up there. But Michelle Obama’s right there. Michelle Obama, you know she’s got the Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress thing going. If she starts talking, as Mary Katherine (Ham, a conservative writer) suggested, her instinct is to start with this ‘Blame America,’ you know, ‘I’m the victim.’ If that stuff starts to come out, people will go bananas and she’ll go from being the new Jackie O to being something of an albatross.”

NPR’s ombudsman responded yesterday. It was obvious that the suits were not amused.

“(Williams.) ‘Stokely Carmichael’ comment got the attention of NPR’s top managers. They are in a bind because Williams is no longer a staff employee but an independent contractor. As a contract news analyst, NPR doesn’t exercise control over what Williams says outside of NPR.

‘Juan Williams is a contributor to NPR programs as a news analyst,’ said Ron Elving, NPR’s Washington editor. ‘What he says on NPR is the product of a journalistic process that includes editors. What he says when he is not on our air is not within our control. But we recognize that what he says elsewhere reflects on NPR, and we have discussed that fact with him specifically in regard to his remarks on Fox News regarding Michelle Obama.’

…But in the end, NPR must decide — as it apparently already has — whether giving its listeners the benefit of Williams’ voice is worth the cost of annoying some listeners for his work on Fox.

As a result of this latest flap, NPR’s Vice President of News, Ellen Weiss, has asked Williams to ask that Fox remove his NPR identification whenever he is on O’Reilly.”