While driving between meetings yesterday, I listened to the first part of Keri Miller’s interview with Juan Williams.
Williams, of course, was the commentator who split his time between Fox News and National Public Radio – even serving as a talk show host on NPR on occasion – before being fired for admitting on the O’Reilly show to sharing many Americans’ nervousness about obvious Muslims on aircraft after 9/11 (while stressing – and the media reports, especially NPR’s, always left this part out – that it’d be wrong to base policy on the sort of stereotypes he was admitting to).
I’m going to paraphrase the part I heard. Feel free to validate it at the show link.
MILLER: So why did you revert to stereotype? Do you think that elevates the conversation?
WILLIAMS: Because we can’t have an honest conversation as a nation until we admit to the fact that this is how we feel.
MILLER: So why did you revert to stereotype? Do you think that elevates the conversation?
WILLIAMS: Now, let’s be honest – there was more than “reverting to stereotype”. I urged people to remember that’s now how we set policy in this country.
MILLER: So why did you revert to stereotype? Do you think that elevates the conversation?
WILLIAMS: In and of itself, I don’t. But it’s an honest part of the conversation; if political correctness forces us to stifle acknowledging it, it’ll leak out in other ways.
MILLER: So why did you revert to stereotype? Do you think that elevates the conversation?
WILLIAMS: Um…hello?
Miller’s point seemed to be not so much that humans must conquer stereotype; it’s that having them, or at least admitting it, is itself a base, evil thing.
I’d love to propose an experiment.
Some evening when Ms. Miller is making her way from The Loft and one of her “Talking Volumes” programs to a brie and chablis tasting party in Kenwood, she should run across a group of thirtysomething white males in full biker gear, smack across her path. Let’s measure her heart rate. See if she is indulging in any stereotypes.
In the interest of science, naturally.
UPDATE: Over on Twitter, “NarnFan” wrote the summary for this piece that I wasn’t caffeinated enough to hatch myself:
To the extent we can’t hold a complected thought about this stuff, we are screwed manifold ways.
People can yell “racist” at one another ’til they’re blue in the face; the fact is, it’s human nature to be “we-ist”. People are always most comfortable around people most like themselves; Keri Miller would no doubt be no more comfortable and relaxed among, say, white rednecks than would Cornell West.
Especially if there’s a “history”; Armenians might be forgiven for being leery of Turks; European Jews of a certain age might keep Russians, Poles or “Aryans” under close watch; blacks of any socioeconomic class in Los Angeles might be forgiven for being wary of tattooed, teenage and twentysomething Latinos.
Americans were attacked, and 3,000 of us murdered in cold blood, by people who caught us at our most vulnerable – stripped of weapons, jammed like cattle into aluminum tubes. Not every Muslim attacked us – and I’ll strenuously exclaim that many Muslims serve this country with great honor, including the Pakistani-American who was reported to have gone on the Bin Laden raid.
To say “you are a bad person” for acknowledging the real human need to see to one’s own self-preservation, itself, retards the conversation that Ms. Miller said she was trying to “advance”.
Miller’s point seemed to be not so much that humans must conquer stereotype; it’s that having them, or at least admitting it, is itself a base, evil thing.
Naah, I think you can have stereotypes, but Keri Miller gets to pick out the ones you get to have. Because in the end, the only way you can truly elevate the conversation is to agree with Keri Miller.
MPR? Seriously?
Miller is the perfect person for her position and audience, which says a lot about her position and her audience. Earlier this week, one of her segments focused on criticism of Obama from the left. She invited callers who were left or “moderate” to call in. Not even pretending that her audience might *gasp* think differently.
Didn’t Keri, at some point in her questioning, squawk and ask for a cracker?
“Some evening when Ms. Miller is making her way from The Loft and one of her “Talking Volumes” programs to a brie and chablis tasting party in Kenwood, she should run across a group of thirtysomething white males in full biker gear, smack across her path. Let’s measure her heart rate. See if she is indulging in any stereotypes.”
Stereotypes would say that the guys in full biker gear are probably gay or 50-something suburban dentists playing dress up and that Keri has nothing to worry about.
It seems that gay people and “suburban dentists” cannot be dangerous. A person must be pretty comfortable with stereotypes to so easily put them within other stereotypes. 😉
Suburban dentists scare the hell out of me. They are so much more threatening than those urban dentists.
People unable to understand satire scare me more.
As it happened, I heard some of this, had to switch it off, both of them insufferable. Miller is another case of a non-talent that would go nowhere in commercial radio. She measures every word, applying the proper public radio intonation, stringing them into sentences without regard to whether she actually said anything meaningful to sustain the dialog.
I have accidentially put on MPR/NPR on its so damn boring I change it, I fear it would put me to sleep while driving. Remembering when Jon Stewart made fun of NPR for trying to outduel Fox News after the Williams fiasco. It’s like bringing a toothpick to a sword fight.
“It seems that gay people and “suburban dentists” cannot be dangerous. A person must be pretty comfortable with stereotypes to so easily put them within other stereotypes.”
So one of you mouth breathers can finally get a joke, whoopie, now let’s get back to killing poor people and stroking flaccid egos.
Mouth breathers
1974 called — it wants its slur back.
You have got to have a lot of hate inside you to baselessly accuse others of wanting to kill people, poor or otherwise. Don’t you?
Thus it has always been with what passes for liberal “argument”. Ignore cogent questions and go straight for the personal attacks. Like when Chuck Schumer claimed the GOP was “holding a gun” to his head over the FAA funding.
Like, no duh!