{"id":14575,"date":"2010-10-22T07:40:53","date_gmt":"2010-10-22T12:40:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=14575"},"modified":"2010-10-22T07:40:53","modified_gmt":"2010-10-22T12:40:53","slug":"national-pc-radio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=14575","title":{"rendered":"National PC Radio"},"content":{"rendered":"

Humans profile. \u00a0Every last one of us.<\/p>\n

Don’t believe me?<\/p>\n

If you’re a middle-class black American, and you see a bunch of people who scream “Latino gang-banger” up ahead, do you modify your behavior?<\/p>\n

If you’re an openly gay American, and you see a group of guys in mullets mulling about showing signs of obvious angry intoxication up ahead, do you find an alternate route?<\/p>\n

If you’re a couple of NPR listeners, in your alpaca and tweed and too-perfectly-gray hair, and a bunch of Hells Angels walk into the gas station as you’re looking for an air freshener for your Prius, do you get out of the way?<\/p>\n

You all do, of course. \u00a0Because while none of you may like <\/em>to discriminate against other human beings, our self-preservation reflex recognizes threats. \u00a0It’s human nature.<\/p>\n

And when you get on a plane? \u00a0Yep – young men who look middle eastern rate a second glance. \u00a0Maybe more. \u00a0It’s because humans are hardwired to try not to get killed.<\/em><\/p>\n

I do it. \u00a0You do it, no matter what kind of mewling liberal PCBot you think you are. And\u00a0Juan Williams did it – and made the mistake of offending his holier-than-thou masters<\/a> at NPR.<\/p>\n

Yesterday NPR fired me for telling the truth. The truth is that I worry when I am getting on an airplane and see people dressed in garb that identifies them first and foremost as Muslims.<\/p>\n

This is not a bigoted statement. It is a statement of my feelings, my fears after the terrorist attacks of 9\/11 by radical Muslims. In a debate with Bill O\u2019Reilly I revealed my fears to set up the case for not making rash judgments about people of any faith. I pointed out that the Atlanta Olympic bomber — \u00a0as well as Timothy McVeigh and the people who protest against gay rights at military funerals — are Christians but we journalists don\u2019t identify them by their religion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To be fair, both belong\/ed to sects of Christianity just a little relatively far out on the fringe than Wahabbism.<\/p>\n

But here’s the important part:<\/p>\n

And I made it clear that all Americans have to be careful not to let fears lead to the violation of anyone\u2019s constitutional rights, be it to build a mosque, carry the Koran or drive a New York cab without the fear of having your throat slashed. Bill and I argued after I said he has to take care in the way he talks about the 9\/11 attacks so as not to provoke bigotry.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which is something most Americans of all creeds believe. \u00a0The US is still the best place on earth to be a Muslim<\/em>.<\/p>\n

National Public Radio seems to see itself as a benign national thought police.<\/p>\n

Maybe it should <\/em>fund itself…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Humans profile. \u00a0Every last one of us. Don’t believe me? If you’re a middle-class black American, and you see a bunch of people who scream “Latino gang-banger” up ahead, do you modify your behavior? If you’re an openly gay American, and you see a group of guys in mullets mulling about showing signs of obvious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-pc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14575"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14599,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14575\/revisions\/14599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}