Juan Williams

His statement was entirely rational.

The statement was entirely irrational.

A rational statement about a partially irrational feeling.

An irrational statement about irratrional feeling.
If he had said he got nervous on a plane when he saw a normal looking person in a FDNY baseball cap and a Go Navy hoody with a Stars and Stripes badge pinned to it because they might be a really sneaky terrorist going over the top to blend in then it would be a rational statement about a rational feeling. But to have it over someone who dresses like they might be a muslim is pure bollox and totally irrational no matter which way you look at it.

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

The statement was entirely irrational.

An irrational statement about irratrional feeling.
If he had said he got nervous on a plane when he saw a normal looking person in a FDNY baseball cap and a Go Navy hoody with a Stars and Stripes badge pinned to it because they might be a really sneaky terrorist going over the top to blend in then it would be a rational statement about a rational feeling. But to have it over someone who dresses like they might be a muslim is pure bollox and totally irrational no matter which way you look at it.

Perhaps it was rational stereotyping? Whatever the case...the man should not have been fired. End.....

[Bubblehead1980]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

You really do live in a bubble seperated from reality.

.

No, quite in tune with reality, thanks.

Sherrod admitted to not helping a white farmer and automatically thinking he was racist etc. Now the video was unfairly edited to not show the entire speech but what the woman said was racist and I have no doubt she still feels about the same, except she did remark its not just about race, she saw its about rich and poor also, so she added some class warfare views also.

Maybe she did change, but the point is what she said was racist and admitted while performing her job to letting her views influence her work.Yet the media stood up for her bc she is a black woman, a Democrat and Liberal to boot.

Williams simply said he feels nervous when he sees a muslim on a plane, guess what?? Most people in US do and there is nothing wrong with that, at all.Now is someone were saying Muslims can't fly because of this, it would be different that was not said.

O Reilly last night asked why Sharpton etc are not coming to his defense, Williams said because he is not "the cookie cuter angry black liberal" and that is very true.Williams does not let his skin color define him, he thinks for himself, he doesnt have a victim mentality that morons like Sharpton etc exploit.

[AVGWarhawk]

Maybe she did change, but the point is what she said was racist and admitted while performing her job to letting her views influence her work.Yet the media stood up for her bc she is a black woman, a Democrat and Liberal to boot.

The media stood up for her because she was wrongly beaten about the head and neck. It was the worst knee jerk reaction I have seen in a long time. Fired immediately. Chastised right up to the White House in a matter of minutes. She was completely and utterly railroaded for no good reason other then speaking the truth and how she actually handled the personal issue she was having. It had little to do with her being a black women or a democrat liberal to boot.

Even Bill OReilly offered an apology. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_655411.html

[tater]

An irrational statement would be to—describing his irrational feelings—"I like popcorn! Muslims scare me on planes!"

Instead, he rationally described a partially irrational fear. It is only partially irrational. It would be irrational to fear his own kids, or mother, for example (unless he knows they have been involved in terrorism). Muslims on planes, however, are more likely to be terrorists than, say, Quakers.

What % of intentional airline disasters in the last 30 years have involved muslims? I rather imagine they are grossly over-represented.

Anyway, he was not irrationally discussing his feeling, he was in fact rationally dissecting them.

[MH]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

The statement was entirely irrational.

An irrational statement about irratrional feeling.
If he had said he got nervous on a plane when he saw a normal looking person in a FDNY baseball cap and a Go Navy hoody with a Stars and Stripes badge pinned to it because they might be a really sneaky terrorist going over the top to blend in then it would be a rational statement about a rational feeling. But to have it over someone who dresses like they might be a muslim is pure bollox and totally irrational no matter which way you look at it.

Thats true that its stupid statement and in many cases terrorist don't look like terrorists(generally speaking) but you should see a faces of regular people when an Arab with big bag would enter a bus in a period of time when Israel signed peace treaty with PLO and buses blew up almost every week.
Thats a BASIC instinct that happen to be with most if not all of people.

Williams simply said he feels nervous when he sees a muslim on a plane

No he didn't, which is why his statement is even more irrational.
Bubblehead, if you want to comment on what he said then comment on what he said, not what you in your alternate reality think he said.

An irrational statement would be to—describing his irrational feelings—"I like popcorn! Muslims scare me on planes!"

No, its an irrational statement he made as its neither reasonable or logical.

[tater]

It's entirely reasonable. If I'm walking down a dark street, and look back upon hearing footsteps and it's two guys (white or otherwise) wearing business suits, I'd instantly become less nervous (for good reason). If instead, it was two gangbanger looking minorities... I'd be fearful. They might just be wearing the style, but the chances of them being criminals are worlds higher than the guys in suits.

My reaction would be appropriate if "irrational." Note that we've evolved emotional reactions because they are adaptive.

Being nervous with muslims aboard is certainly not entirely irrational.

[August]

Originally Posted by tater

It's entirely reasonable. If I'm walking down a dark street, and look back upon hearing footsteps and it's two guys (white or otherwise) wearing business suits, I'd instantly become less nervous (for good reason). If instead, it was two gangbanger looking minorities... I'd be fearful. They might just be wearing the style, but the chances of them being criminals are worlds higher than the guys in suits.

My reaction would be appropriate if "irrational." Note that we've evolved emotional reactions because they are adaptive.

Being nervous with muslims aboard is certainly not entirely irrational.

Dude you know that he's just going to disagree with anything you say. I don't know why you or anyone even bothers...

In any case Juan Williams has the last laugh here. He ends up with a 2 million dollar contract and NPR and the liberal viewpoint they represent comes off looking biased just before election. Game, set and match.

[tater]

True. The dark street analogy is courtesy of Jesse Jackson, BTW, I cannot take credit for it (he made the "gangbangers" simply "black youths" so I made mine less ambiguous).

When I get on a plane with my family, I absolutely have a situational awareness I lacked entirely before 9-11 (like on 8-11-2001 when I was flying into JFK from Casablanca and helped a young guy fill out his immigration form and he didn't even know what college he was going to though that was his claim. Anyway, I look around, and have a rough plan just in case (including likely guys to get to help). I see other guys doing the same, there is usually a sort of guy nod when we realize what we're doing, lol.

I don't know why you or anyone even bothers...

Maybe because not everyone is closed minded like the few nuts you mention at every opertunity
So its august the troll on his usual rants again

It's entirely reasonable.

Look at the statement he made.

Being nervous with muslims aboard is certainly not entirely irrational.

Look at the statement he made

It makes no sense.
Take two west africans both wearing their sunday/friday finest on a wednesday, which one is the muslim and which is the christian?
Now take two or three Indians, look at their clothes, which one is the muslim?
Do the same with a couple of arabs....see it makes no sense.
That is why it lacks even the flake of rationality that could make the statement he made rational.
If he had said he gets nervous if there are muslims on a plane then irrational as it may actually be then it is slightly rational, but to say its if he sees people dressed like what he thinks muslims dress like it makes him scared then he has an irrational fear based on an irrational concept.

What you have been doing tater is attempting to explain the rationality of a statement he never made instead of dealing with what he said.

[August]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

What you have been doing tater is attempting to explain the rationality of a statement he never made instead of dealing with what he said.

And what you have been doing is imagining that anyone here actually cares for your constant and uninvited criticisms. Do you come to this board for any other reason than to try and prove to yourself how superior you are over everyone?

Try bringing something to the conversation besides your usual egotistic crap and people might stop seeing you as the troll you are.

And what you have been doing is imagining that anyone here actually cares for your constant and uninvited criticisms

well August why are you reading it?
Join the other pillocks using the ignore function.
Perhaps I could then add a little tag line to my sig space, "proud member of augusts ignore list".
But then again I am sure have read similar signatures before on this forum.

Try bringing something to the conversation besides your usual egotistic crap and people might stop seeing you as the troll you are.

So you are unable to address the fact that people are managing to defend the statement only by changing the statement which implies they are unable to defend it at all.
So that means you bring nothing to the conversation at all which is possibly worse than those who are defending the content of the comment by changing it to something else.
Actually since nothing in your last post even touches on the topic in question doesn't that make it pure trolling again on your part

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

Lets face it when someone starts by saying ...I am not a bigot but.....it usually indicates that they are going to say something dumb and bigoted.
Juan certainly followed that pattern.

Does it? And here I was thinking it was indicative of the fear of litigation that PC society has fostered. Certainly, you've read legal "intellectual property" disclaimers enough to understand how desperate people are to avoid the perception of association, bias, neglect, misinterpretation, and so on and so forth. Why, then, should it follow that someone would not precede their opinion with a disclaimer? Unless, of course, you are of the opinion that everyone should be posessed of universally nonoffensive opinions, something which you are clearly incapable of.

What Williams said is that the Muslim extremists have generated a fear of Islam for him, personally. That's it. If he were to say that Muslim Fundamentalists have generated a condemnation of Islam by him for their treatment of women, would this be an issue? That stance doesn't seem to affect many Women's Rights groups. Why is it such a big deal now?
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All this is ignoring the fact that NPR has no justification for being a Federally-funded institution in the first place. For those who disagree, I invite you to argue for Federal funding of my favorite station, 92.1 KTFW "Country Gold" radio, which regularly provides updates on commodity prices for the agricultural economy and a wide selection of classic country music between the news breaks. Surely, it performs just as valuable a community service as NPR does. Unfortunately, the Federal government has absolutely no business funding it or regulating its content beyond the FCC, which is itself, in any case not relating to bandwith, a dubious extension of the ICC. Providing a political or value-based message cannot ethically be interpreted as being within the realm of a fiat power.

Personally, I'm not a fan of Williams. Even with his conservative views, he's a bit too liberal for me. He supports rent-control and the like. Nonetheless, he doesn't deserve this kind of publicly-funded censorship. He should be able to say whatever he wants to say in whatever publicly-endorsed venue he wishes. For a public institution to condemn his opinion is tantamount to an abridgement of free speech.

[Bubblehead1980]

[QUOTE=Tribesman;1520113]No he didn't, which is why his statement is even more irrational.
Bubblehead, if you want to comment on what he said then comment on what he said, not what you in your alternate reality think he said.


I watched the show when it occured and during the recap etc, thats all he said.Muslims on a plane make him nervous....