Juan Williams: when people give themselves permission to act badly

The wonderful Muslims Wearing Things tumblr blog has the right response to Juan Williams's stupid comment,

But 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.

In the spirit of the link above (and for those who haven't yet seen it, a taste of the argument), I am displaying below the clothing commonly worn by the most visible Muslim man in the town where I grew up:

Some folks in Boston and Detroit may have been worried or made nervous by him, but not me or my neighbors. 

The New York times story on Williams's comments, firing by NPR, and hiring by Fox News is a classic example of seven wrongs' not making any bit of right. From being invited on a Fox News set, Williams took permission to say something stupid. While he had done so repeatedly in the past, NPR failed to fire him for it until it became an embarrassment–or, to put it another way, NPR management took the reaction to Williams's comment as permission to take action with atrocious timing, a judgment the NPR ombuds officer has made as well.

There's a difference between the circumstances surrounding the stupidity Williams and NPR engaged in: Williams said something idiotic on the spur of the moment, while NPR management had to meet and decide to fire Williams and make that statement the straw that broke the camel's bake, instead of non-renewing his contract beforehand. Yet in both cases, the gates were down, so to speak, when they granted permission to themselves to act in ways that they had restrained themselves from before (Williams when on NPR, NPR when a Williams comment wasn't causing a firestorm).