Juan Williams's firing from National Public Radio (NPR) earlier this week was not only animated in part by the liberal George Soros-backed radio network's disdain of Fox News, it also reeks of a double standard, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told viewers of Friday's "Fox & Friends" program.
"If [Juan Williams] had said those words on the Charlie Rose show, it would have been seen as provocative or thoughtful.... This is the same network that featured Nina Totenberg hoping that Senator Jesse Helms would die or one of his grandchildren would die of AIDS because of his position on gay rights and nothing ever happened to her."
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"[Senator Helms] ought to be worried about what's going on in the Good Lord's mind, because if there's retributive justice, he'll get AIDS from a transfusion or one of his grandchildren will get it," the NPR correspondent said on the July 8, 1995 edition of "Inside Washington," a DC-area current events discussion program.
What's more, while Williams was dismissed for his supposed insensitivity to millions of American Muslims, NPR issued no disciplinary action for a contributor who, back in 1995, mocked Christians who believe in the rapture of the church at the second coming of Christ:
"The evaporation of four million people who believe this crap [the Rapture] would leave the world an instantly better place," New Orleans-based National Public Radio commentator Andrei Codrescu said on the December 19, 1995 edition of "All Things Considered."
"There were 40,000 complaints waged against him," Bozell noted, and "nothing was done," contrasted with just 60 complaints waged against Juan Williams's statement on Monday's "O'Reilly Factor."
