LEFT-LEANING JOURNO MUGGED
BY REALITY

Well, he truly is a liberal type, and I don't see him evolving into a neo-con any time soon [the popular definition of a neo-con being "a liberal who has been mugged by reality"] -- nevertheless Juan Williams, respectable journalist, historian of the Civil Rights movement, and decent rational man, has most certainly been mugged, battered, worked over, dead-fished, sat upon, spat upon, and ratted on by his former employers at National Public Radio.

It is all too easy to believe (Williams himself and others have since observed) that NPR was just waiting for an opportunity to cut him loose, basically because he is a rational human being instead of a leftist ideologue, and he has the almighty gall to be comfortable putting the F and B in "Fair and Balanced" over at FoxNews: the ultimate sin against the MSM creed.

They saw their opening when he made a completely personal revelation about feeling unnerved at the prospect of getting on a plane with fellow passengers decked out in full Muslim array -- not because he felt proud of it, or even justified, but simply because he is a real person having the same kind of very normal responses one can expect from informed Americans in the wake of the 9/11 massacres.

Cue the bloodhounds. Top and middle brass at NPR barely took time to draw breath before making Williams walk the plank, without so much as a face-to-face meeting with any of them, or a chance to reflect on Williams' prestige and reputation or his eleven years of service to the network. All just seepage under the bridge. Twenty-four hours after his live-TV off-the-cuff musings on the dreaded O'Reilly program, Williams was National Public History.

About that bridge that his career seeped under?: call it a Bridge Too Far. The backlash against this brainless drive-by career and character assassination [one of his bosses tossed off a remark about how Williams should keep these sorts of feelings between himself and his head-shrinker...] has been swift and bipartisan. Put Juan Williams among the top five names nobody could imagine being on any sane person's pundit hit-list.

Oh, wait --- that was "sane" person -- I forgot we're talking about NPR, an "independent" broadcaster that seems to be for sale cheap to George Soros, and that may now be gunning for Mara Liasson's smart & liberal "Washington-helmet-head..."

Listen (doo-dah-doo), do you want to know a secret? (doo-dah-doo) Do you promise not to tell? (woe-ooh-woe-oh....): Juan, you're not alone. I sat in a hot and crowded airline waiting area where a man lounged around wearing a ridiculously heavy parka, with his face totally swathed in a kaffiyah (the classic Arafat-style black and white head-scarf) revealing only his eyes, niqab-style -- and I couldn't take my eyes off him.

He eventually fell asleep on two seats, and when we were finally called to board, I was massively relieved to see that he was not getting on our flight -- had he done so, I would have been a complete nervous wreck the whole time.

So there. This is life at the dawn of the 21st century.


GIGANTIC "HEH"

Ms. Barbara Boxer is the junior senator from the Left Coast, a decades-long politico of sterling intelligence (i.e., you could fit her brain into a silver teaspoon), who be-clowned herself last year, when she scolded a Brigadier General of the Army for calling her "ma'am" (as respectful military personnel are wont, and mandated, to do), because she preferred to be called "Senator" (presumably as a poor substitute for "Your Goddessness").

Those who would just as soon not send her back to the Senate for another round of embarrassing verbal flatus, have produced the following ad to memorialize that Special Moment with Brigadier General Walsh. Gustate et videte:



In the clearing stands a Boxer... who carries the reminder of every glove that laid h[er] down...

Ahhhhhhh.