X. Benedict

Ohio State Law......must be some kind of freaky Sloopy thing...

there was an injunction. http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/documents/BlkPants-Judgmt-5-18-09.pdf

I believe you mean NPR and continued support from donors.... If NPR had dismissed Totenberg it would have been perfectly justified at the time. She could have gone on to a shrill at MSNBC without the conflict of being a legal reporter. Williams now has the same liberty.

Really? I have no problem with his making public commentary (I imagine that you think I do). And I have no problem with NPR firing Williams either. What I was/am refering to specifically is the blurring of his editoral role in conflicting personas the guy had between networks, and how one role compromises the other. I really do "get" that "sharing his personal visceral feelings" became news. So now we are talking about Juan Williams true "feelings." That in no way undermines his editorial voice? I think it does. Is that really such an asinine position?

a non-seq but anyways..... Juan Williams lives in your community? By sharing his folksy, shucks I think ****ty things about muslims sometimes too, homespun banter....the news suddenly becomes self-referential in that its cycle has nothing to do with evidence or the community; and we have Oberman reporting on what O'Reilly says, and O'Reilly deconstructing Couric, Couric reporting on and so on......

For personal safety great, maybe....but are you making a distinction for public journalism? If hunches, instincts and dead reckoning are to drive newsrooms, news-reporters and commentary before evidence ...that's asinine.

Perhaps...but isn't that idea so generalized as to be unhelpful to any discussion? Profiling in the sense that I think he means is that if you see A there is a great chance of B. If you are not screening for B at all.....what is that?

I never liked Williams much myself....but in the end, I do see a conflict in terms of editorial voice He was hired to be one of those para-textual voices of news criticism ....that is, someone who deliberates about the news cycle like an ombudsman, and synthesizes it into oversight and digests it into an evaluation of what is going on - Sober, deliberative, and detached in persona and passions. That persona is fundamentally at odds with a lightening fast repartee where he is asked to be the "liberal voice" or the foil/straw position for a network star akin to an Alan Combs(?) role that he's been doing on FOX. So anyway.... yes..I do think that one role compromises the other....but, as far as Juan Williams being a metaphor for some big Red vs. Blue thing...I don't much care about as it is about three levels detached from news as news - just a farting contest inside the 4th estate IMO.

I had a little time.

Natasha Fatale.....the first butterface I remember.

Summary... Muslim terrorists in civilian clothes attack the US on 9-11. Some people that get on planes today are afraid of people in Muslim garb (even though, not even the dumbest terrorist in the US would telegraph an attack by wearing Muslim garb). Juan Williams admits to being one of these people that holds this sub-rational prejudice. He loses his job at NPR.....where he is paid to rationally analyze news. He gets a much more lucrative job at FOX.....where it is okay to air such prejudices as long as emoting about personal fears comes from an honest place. How am I doing?

This is still going? Postscript: Williams going from NPR to Fox makes both networks smarter. However, couldn't Fox have spent money instead on at least one correspondent outside of Jerusalem?

I'd like a Cinnamon Mocha Latte, please. Whoops. Wrong line. Sorry everybody.

Although Juan Williams is getting fired ostensibly for these comments. I often think it is often a case of managers wanting to bring in their own people - and finding a cause of separation. Careerism is as alive in Public Radio as it is in network. I have it on pretty good authority that WBFO - NPR's affiliate in Buffalo is going to release their entire news staff by the end of the year. Nothing to do with bias. Careerism.

You want to have an honest discussion about Turks in Germany?

Good to see they still play Porch Song.

I hope to make an equally big splash when I resign from the National Geographic Society. Anyway...this is the statement the Gaucho prof seems to be protesting. http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/07_1.cfm

An asswhooping on the Philly Phantoms. Anyway...it's fun.

Good Question. I think it would lose its Zone status.

Japanese Sushis practice Wasabi-ism.

I think you should consider that holding American Sufis as arrogant for the actions of Saudi Wahabists is a little like asking Baptists to have more contrition in the Catholic clerical scandals.

Mainstream Muslims who are guilty of nothing should show humility for what? Acts they dissociate from? They should be humble because some nut-bags have similar professions of faith, but radically different conclusions?

Bringing the Bowling Ball to Buffalo next month?

That's an amazing album.

No apology required. Good stuff. In my opinion - and this is why the country needs conservatives - is that they should be the ones asking "At what expense?" when legislation is proposed. Where this got lost in the last decade was largely in their "starve the beast" approach to legislating and budgeting. Budget deficits would eventually cause the role of government to shrink because and nobody would be dumb enough to keep borrowing. Add this to some very unsuccessful attempts at deregulation and ... 50 years from now we might be talking about the era of the Chinese Funded American wars. Now I'm no conservative, and certainly no believer in the spiritual morality of markets nonsense I hear from time to time.. . But I would be interested in a Conservative that says fiscal sanity starts with a much more limited Executive Branch and a reduced overseas role. But...I really can't see this movement getting divorced from the Judeo-Christian civilization/American Exceptionalism/Culture Warrior folks.