Blogosphere

The left and right blogosphere seem to agree NPR overstepped in their firing of Williams. Kaus makes a funny bit.

National Public Radio CEO Vivian Schiller has now apologized for a "thoughtless" remark about Juan Williams, whom she fired as an analyst for admitting that he gets "worried" when he's flying and sees people in "Muslim garb" on the plane. Schiller had told an Atlanta crowd that Williams should take his feelings up with "his psychiatrist or his publicist."

Will Schiller now fire herself? NPR officials seem to have a free-floating hair trigger oversensitivity, even about their own thoughts. This wouldn't seem to make for exciting, or even honest, radio. It's clear from this interview, for example, that Williams' firing was in part delayed punishment for him saying that Michelle Obama had "this Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress thing going on." I guess that was a colorful line. Can't have that . . .

They were wrong and overreacted. Better to fess up quick rather than string it out.