The Ol' Sacrifice Play

Over at National Review, Andy McCarthy argues that if Republicans can't end NPR, there's no way you can believe them on ending Obamacare, so to prove they are serious fiscal gangsta badasses they have to kill a media outlet.

So here is the question: Why does a country that is trillions in debt, and in which people have unlimited options for obtaining information, need NPR? More to the point, why do we need to fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which keeps NPR afloat?  

The whole "we can't X with a deficit this big" argument is so much sophistry,  but that's just an excuse to flog his bigoted ignorance against Muslims to justify it.

Juan Williams said things anyone with an ounce of common sense knows to be true: “When I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

So do I. So do most of us. This is not mindless, noxious prejudice. There is a context: Muslim terrorists used airliners to attack us. And as Williams pointed out, the terrorist convicted of trying to massacre New Yorkers by bombing Times Square just reaffirmed the oft-repeated jihadist promise that there is much blood left to be spilt.

But wait a second, the PC police tut-tut, Williams didn’t just indict terrorists; he smeared everyone who merely dresses like a Muslim. Yeah, right: Save that for the CAIR sensitivity-training class, just down the hall from the FBI’s next Citizens Academy — you’ll be sure to get an A+. To the rest of us benighted slugs, it seems fairly obvious that most Muslims in the West do not appear “in Muslim garb.” To the extent they concern themselves with scripture at all in this area, most American Muslims construe sharia simply to call for sartorial modesty — be dignified, but neither flashy nor slovenly.

For Islamists, on the other hand, clothing oneself is not about achieving modesty but announcing oneself, first and foremost, as a Muslim. To be sure, some such Muslims are just being pious, not exhibitionistic. Still, it is simply a fact that many men who don robes and skull-caps, and many women who shroud themselves in the niqab, abaya, or burqa, are making a very conscious statement that they reject the West. Though living in it, they have no intention of assimilating into it.

Only dangerous, evil, Islamist Muslims dress in "Muslim garb" and they're all baby-eating killers.  So, he's not prejudiced against all Muslims, just the really scary ones who don't wear Old Navy.  Clearly, anyone who actually would dress in "Muslim garb" hate America and want to crash airplanes into buildings, otherwise they'd dress like Americans, dammit!

Oh but he's not done yet.

Williams miscalculated. He figured that because he is a long-standing member of the NPR-certified Society of the Slavishly Right-Thinking, he could safely stroll a few steps off the reservation. Too bad he was wrong, but at least he got the chance to miscalculate. On the political right, we get no chance. In the NPR world Williams helped foster, we’re already condemned. It wouldn’t even occur to us to ask for the can’t-we-talk-about-this-face-to-face meeting that NPR denied to a stunned Williams despite his years of faithful service. Like the NPR news chief told him, there’s nothing we can say that will change their minds.

Yeah, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and other right-wing commentators get no chance when they clearly say anything racist, bigoted, inflammatory or just plain stupid.  Beck, in particular, gets fired five or six times a day and is flat broke, and El Rushbo lives under a bridge in Milwaukee.  Unlike Juan Williams, who was too stupid to see that African-Americans are kept "on the reservation" by the evil liberal media.  Hahaha, what a doofus!

So we have to get rid of the evil liberal media starting with the mind-altering propaganda machine that is Prairie Home Companion, or the Republicans are fiscal austerity poseurs!  Why, the CPB costs millions!

Oh yes, and while we're at it, their not fiscally serious unless we get those hundreds of billions in tax cuts for the richest 5% we can easily afford because tax cuts don't count.

That's being serious about fiscal restraint.  You know, like ordering ten thousand Chicken McNuggets and a Diet Coke.  Folks, the only thing that needs to be cut around here is Andy McCarthy's paycheck.