He's an embarrassment ... ...to himself, but he makes many of us squirm with embarrassment for him.
Today he has a piece in The Hill about What He Has Learned (over the past year). Sheesh! I went and expected he might have acquired a little wisdom as one might expect from a middle-aged guy fired from a high profile job. But no, he is still wallowing in resentment "since being labeled a bigot, a bad journalist and fired from NPR" last year.
He's not at fault for any of it. Who or what is the villain here, according to Williams?
1. "...the constant pressure in politics these days to keep quiet." Huh? The media? Williams? Quiet?
2. Everyone is trying to "muzzle" everyone else. Huh? I've never seen so much talking, so many bytes, so much bandwidth, so many loud TV's tuned to Fox in Honda service waiting rooms, so many bumper stickers in all my long life. I'd hate to have to do a word count on every political opinion Juan Williams has expressed or hinted at during his career...
3. All America is going to hell in a hand-cart. This is true, Juan, but you're not a victim of this but just another perp-of-the-press. You have no right to complain.
4. "I am not yet convinced that the NPR national operation in Washington has been able to rid itself of the elite liberal orthodoxy that made me into their whipping boy." Oh, those elite liberals in public radio. They work for the most consistently competent and most widely respected part of the media. Imperfect though they may be, they do their jobs for much smaller paychecks and with far more useful results than the overpaid information ortho-doctors at Fox News -- and with a lot more respect for their audience.
Juan Williams is one of those un-grown-ups who is never wrong. A friend of mine told me that when he turned 60 he finally stopped blaming everyone else for his problems. He acknowledged that it seems to take American men longer to arrive at that level of wisdom than other nationalities.
Since Juan Williams is American and only 57, I'll give him some leeway. But as for integrity as a person and as a reporter, he has quite a lot to answer for.
