Bigoted NPR

National Public Radio is bigoted.

Recently I wrote about NPR in a somewhat, marginally, slightly slanted positive light. I was wrong to do so. This week NPR showed that they are bigoted.

I admit that I am not quite sure what they are bigoted against. They are either bigoted against humans, against reality, or against humans who speak the truth about reality. It's hard to tell.

I hate to get all serious and quotatious on you, but let's start with a definition. Princeton University, on their wordnetweb.princeton.edu site, defines bigoted as, “blindly and obstinately attached to some creed or opinion and intolerant toward others.” Other definitions make it clear that bigotry requires intolerance.

This week NPR fired correspondent Juan Williams for stating that since 9/11 he gets nervous when he gets on a plane and he sees someone who is identifying themselves as Muslim by their clothing. He didn't say it was right, he didn't defend it, he didn't say he refused to get on the plane, he didn't say he asked that they be searched, he didn't say he changed his actions in anyway, he just stated the truth that he had a nervous reaction. Nowhere did he indicate an intolerance, thus, no bigotry.

On the other hand, NPR fired him without discussion. They acted on their prejudice against a different opinion with swift dispatch. Intolerance. Bigotry.

The truth about humans is that we categorize things, situations and, yes, people. It is how we make sense of millions of bits of information so that we can function efficiently by consciously considering only thousands of bits of information. That is just the fact of the matter as it is taught on even the most liberal of college campuses, except they may skip the part about people. Doesn't mean that part isn't true, just that they skip it.

That means that if Yogi Bear and Boo Boo went around eating people, or, say, killed about 3000 people in an attack by commercial planes on a building, a person in a dark forest or on a commercial plane would get a bit nervous if they saw a pair who looked like Yogi Bear and Boo Boo. The person could choose not to act on their fear or nervousness, thus being tolerant, or they could choose to make intolerant, unreasonable and discriminatory demands about dealing with these bears, and thus be bigoted. Same experience, different action, different definition.

Over time, if a person was tolerant and ran into enough Yogi Bears and Boo Boos who were just happy-go-lucky picnic basket mooches (sorry to group you with the mooches, Boo Boo, but you seem to always be hanging around the master mooch), the instant reaction of associating these bears to the horror would decrease over time. However, if there were a small but significant number of bears who looked like Yogi and Boo Boo and who loved eating humans, it would be foolish not to pay attention until you knew whether you were dealing with a human eater or a picnic basket mooch. Such caution is not bigotry, it is careful tolerance.

Juan Williams was fired for admitting he felt what the vast majority of people feel, most of whom are tolerant and non-bigoted.

I hope Yogi steals NPR's picnic basket.