The Juan Williams-NPR Flap

I realize I'm about a week late to this story. That should give you some idea of how trivial I think it is.

Basically, NPR canned liberal Juan Williams because he stated his feelings of anxiety when seeing people dressed in burkas on airplanes, when on a Fox News program.

The firestorm which erupted cast NPR in a bad light because it chose some innocuous little rule on which to base its firing of Williams. Critics trotted out Nina Totenberg's decade-old clip wishing Jessie Helms' grandchildren an unpleasant death from AIDS as proof that the network was playing favorites.

Okay. News flash- NPR is really liberal. Williams isn't the most liberal guy there. So they found a very public instance of his behavior that they felt they could attack and used it to fire him.

Now, for Christ sake, you'd think Williams was dead, gone to heaven, then rose from the dead and is a canonized Saint.

Honestly, this guy is nothing special. Like most liberals, he's not too bright. If he were, well, he'd be conservative, wouldn't he?

Like most liberals, he has no sense of how real people behave in society. He, too, seemed to be missing in action the day God handed out the common sense about people's economic and general social motivating behaviors.

Some liberals are just plain stupid. That would be, say, Alan Combs. Others are smart, but missing that ability to understand how most real people behave. That would be Williams.

If you've seen Williams on Fox, he typically gives a knee-jerk defense of any liberal elected official, like Wonderboy or Frisco Nan, in response to reasonable, informed remarks by people like Steven Hayes or Charles Krauthammer. No matter how inane he looks, he always comes to the defense of his ideological kin.

When I hear people like O'Reilly and Krauthammer say what a great guy Williams is, and how they are friends, I wonder what they are smoking. Maybe they're just spouting a Fox News line to keep Williams on board.

After all, let's face it, Williams is a two-for. Not simply liberal, but a black liberal. Even Colmes isn't that valuable.

And how much richer can it get than for Fox to rush to Williams' defense, then give him a new contract as the networks official token in residence, at NPR's expense?

Sure, let's defund NPR. It's way past time. And, yes, NPR is now basically on Soros' payroll. Williams' firing at an inopportune time, right before the mid-term elections, probably won't help Democrats, either.

But c'mon. Let's not go overboard. Juan Williams is hardly God's gift to journalism or cable news and opinion programs. What he is is a tolerable liberal who serves a purpose of providing Fox with more balance than their rivals.