A couple of weeks ago, commentator Juan Williams got fired from NPR for saying this:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAfGKVK8PyE&feature=related[/youtube]
The firing caused a huge uproar; many believed Williams was simply stating a truth, something that many other non-Americans feel too, and that political correctness had run amok. Personally, I was glad to see Williams fired, mostly because it’s not okay to vilify a group of people based on their religion, especially in these hyper-sensitive times., but partly because I think he’s a jerk.
About a week later, Bill Maher said this on his show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_U3TYloQ_c
There was a small ripple of indignation after Maher’s comments, but nothing approaching the firestorm after Williams’s. Why? Were Maher’s remarks any less inflammatory? Is he saying anything different? Or is he getting a pass because he’s Bill Maher?
I think he said something slightly different, in that he didn’t directly raise the specter of violence (especially on planes). All the same, that was some paranoid, hostile hate-speech in its own right. I hadn’t even *heard* of this statement, primarily (I think) because it was on the same show on which Zach Galifahoozitz sparked up a doober. That was much more newsworthy, in this day and age, than the host of the show spouting ethnophobia (okay, let’s call it religiophobia, to make up a silly word). To quote the author of this post, “Sheesh!”
Hey! not boring!
it has to do with the role of the “comdeian” the “fool” to “speak truth to power” and “other” “things” that “should” “ONLY” be said (or written) using “‘quotes!'”
yes he is getting a pass because no one is supposed to take him seriously.
like King Lear, and Bob Dylan.