Topic category:  Government/Politics

Juan Williams used to be on both NPR and Fox News.

Then Williams candidly told Bill O'Reilly, on "The O'Reilly Factor": "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're identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

After that politically incorrect admission, NPR fired Williams...and Fox gave him a $2,000,000 contract as a full time Fox contributor.

Should Williams have been fired for sharing his anxiety about Muslim airplane passengers?

Would Williams have been fired if he had not been a Fox contributor?

Put me down as a no to the fire question and a probably not to the second.

NPR's firing of Williams is like building a mosque near Ground Zero--there's a legal right to do it, but it's wrong to exercise that right.

After then presidential candidate Obama dealt with his Reverend Wright problem by throwing his white grandmother under the bus by sharing with the world the anxiety about being raped by black men she did not know that she confided to him as her grandson and went on to win the presidency, NPR figured it had a suitable pretense for firing Williams and a great opportunity to exemplify extreme political correctness.

Bottom line: Williams was honest, but not political correct. NPR prefers political correctness to honesty...and preferred Williams not to appear on Fox. NPR was entitled to fire Williams, but it is not entitled to taxpayer money and the sooner its extreme political correctness is not subsidized by the taxpayers, the better.

Silver lining: Williams declared, "I used to think the right was the intolerant side." The man is educable. For Williams, that's the kind of change we hoped for!

Make no mistake: Williams' own words show that he was not always willing to be honest because he was working for NCR.

Williams: "And now they have used an honest statement of feeling as the basis for a charge of bigotry to create a basis for firing me. Well, now that I no longer work for NPR let me give you my opinion. This is an outrageous violation of journalistic standards and ethics by management that has no use for a diversity of opinion, ideas or a diversity of staff (I was the only black male on the air). This is evidence of one-party rule and one sided thinking at NPR that leads to enforced ideology, speech and writing. It leads to people, especially journalists, being sent to the gulag for raising the wrong questions and displaying independence of thought.

Better late than never, Juan! But NCR management had "no use for a diversity of opinion, ideas or a diversity of staff" BEFORE you were fired...and you didn't mention it until AFTER you were fired.

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.