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Juan Williams is a
journalist who is now employed by Fox News, but prior to that he was a news
correspondent for NPR. Mr. Williams was
fired, wrongly in our opinion, for remarks he made concerning his reactions to
finding an Arab on his airplane. At most
he should have been asked to be more polite, instead he lost his job.
Mr. Williams then
made the mistake of running to Fox News, where for some reason he thought
his independent attitudes would be welcome.
He has now learned that is not the case.
The lesson came when Mr. Williams was heavily criticized after he made these
thoughtful comments on the speech Mrs. Romney gave at the convention.
“Mitt Romney’s wife,
Ann Romney, on the other hand looked to me like a corporate wife,” Williams said on
Fox News. “And you know the stories she told about struggle, eh, it’s hard
for me to believe. She’s a very rich woman and I know that and America
Williams said Ann
Romney didn’t convince him she understood the struggles of average American
women, and looked like “a woman whose husband takes care of her and she’s been
very lucky and blessed in this life.”
And of course this was not the corporate line. Brit Hume, for example just fawned over the speech.
One
of Williams’ co-panelists, Brit Hume, labelled Romney’s address as “the single
most effective political speech I’ve ever heard given by a political wife.”
in remarks that were crafted long before he heard or read
the speech. This is, of course, required
for Fox News analysts, something Mr. Williams was apparently not aware of.
“This was intended as an analysis of the speech,” Williams said.
“I think in the economic realm, from my mind, it was intended to appeal to
American women where the Romney campaign has a deficit right now. And it
would’ve been smarter, in my mind, if she had been able to say: ‘We know we’re
blessed, but let me tell you how much we are doing for others. … Americans know
that the Romney has extraordinarily rich people. And I don’t know that you can
say ‘We’ve had the same struggles as everybody else,’ because people go, ‘Uh? I
don’t know if that’s real.’”
It is easy to see why Fox News was upset. Their job is to promote Mr. Romney, to
humanize him, to portray the myth that Mr. Romney is just another working guy
who wants to help everybody. For someone
to toss the truth into that dream must be very disturbing. Don’t count on your Christmas card from Roger
Ailes or Rupert Murdoch this year Mr. Williams..
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