Thursday, October 21, 2010

You Can't Sow a Million Seeds Without Reaping One Potato ...

... And even Andrew Sullivan makes sense now and then. He posted this blistering rejoinder to Juan Williams's vicious remarks on FOX:
"Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous," - Juan Williams.

No, Juan, what you just described is the working definition of bigotry.

What if someone said that they saw a black man walking down the street in classic thug get-up. Would a white person be a bigot of he assumed he was going to mug him? What percentage of traditionally garbed Muslims - I assume wearing a covered veil or some other indicator and being of darker skin - have committed acts of terror? And, of course, the 9/11 mass-murderers were in everyday attire, to blend in. So was the Christmas Day undie-bomber. The Fort Hood murderer was in US military uniform, for Pete's sake.

The literal defense of anti-Muslim bigotry on Fox is becoming endemic. It's disgusting.

Glenn Greenwald also weighed in. Like Greenwald, I don't think Williams should have been fired by NPR for saying these things -- NPR has its own blind spots on the Middle East after all. I just think he should be shunned for life by all decent human beings. Or as Tom Carson once wrote in another context, someone should hire a mimic to follow him around and say "You're dethspicable" in the voice of Daffy Duck every time he opens his mouth.