Is the NPR Crazy or What?
Juan Williams' bosses at NPR are either crazy or must love the idea of getting sued. By firing the commentator for voicing an opinion about Muslims wearing standard garb in airports, they could wind up making Williams and his descendants quite comfortable, should he chose to take the primrose path of the law.
The station is funded in part by public funds, which means that they must follow the Constitution, especially the part about free speech. Had he used his free speech to threaten to blow anything up, that would have been one thing, but he was expressing an honest fear about his body safety, which is not all that unusual for anyone who has read a newspaper, watched television or hasn't been living in a cave over the past several years.
In ways, this one is no different from Don Imus being fired from CBS radio after his remarks about the "nappy-headed ho's" playing for Rutgers' University women's basketball team. While his remarks were off-color and rude, they were not termination-worthy. After all, offensiveness is part of his brand and his shtick.
Imus is suing and hopefully Williams will too. Although he wound up with a pretty sweet deal over at Fox, the NPR has it coming. Who knows? Maybe in the best-case scenario, his former bosses will either get canned or have to repeat Journalism 101.
He can sue for wrongful termination, but the First Amendment won't help him there. He was fired from his broadcasting job for the "Muslims make me nervous" comment, not thrown into jail. The guy's not a political dissident. He's just someone who pissed off his bosses and got canned. Same goes for Imus; he pushed it too far, got the public (or at least segments of the public) after him, so he had to go.