Juan Williams, Why Do You Fear My Mother So?
Recently, NPR reporter and part time Fox News liberal(sic) punching bag, Juan Williams was let go(read fired) by his former employer only to find full time employment at his moon lighting gig. Weather he will continue his performance as a liberal punching bag for the network has yet to be confirmed. But that’s not the point of this post.
This all happened when recently Mr. Williams went on Fox News’ “The Factor” with Bill O’ Reilly and stated that he got cold sweats on flights when he sees people dressed in traditional Islamic clothing, suggesting that the person maybe a terrorist.
Here is my question to everyone who would share this viewpoint. If someone was planning a sneak attack(which is what would be required for a terrorist attack to be successful) would they necessarily announce themselves by dressing up in a thobe and a turban and sport a full on Taliban beard to boot drawing attention to themselves? Of course not. They would try to be undercover as much as possible. The guy would probably be clean shaved, wearing a baseball cap and appear as “westernized” as possible to avoid detection.
The statement suggests that Juan Williams would be looking with fear at my diminutive mother who wears a hijab and probably at my 92 year old granddad who does wear a skull cap and sports a full white beard but is fully blind in one eye and half in the other, and needs a wheel chair to get from check-in to boarding.
As Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic also pointed out, what if someone had made a comment about how seeing black people on the street in Ghetto/Urban clothing made them fear getting mugged. Would that not rightly be seen as a bigoted statement?
And lets examine the concept of “Muslim garb” for a moment if you will. What Juan Williams means is basically the clothing of a different tradition which may not even necessarily be Muslim. Sikhs wear the Turban more religiously then Muslims do. And they have been targeted by bigots for that. By Mr. Williams account if he sees a Sikh man on a plane, he would start praying for his life.
There is one more point to ponder in this whole affair. Juan Williams was supposed to be sharing the liberal viewpoint on “The Factor”. After pulling this stunt he was promptly fired by NPR only to be offered a $2 million contract by Fox News, which begs the question, was he angling for something like this to happen all along?
