I first read the superb book Alive back when it came out in the mid-70s, and immediately became fascinated by the harrowing tale it tells of the survivors of the 1972 Andes plane crash. I wrote a little bit about them in this piece for RightNetwork about leadership under extreme conditions, comparing and contrasting their situation with that of the Chilean miners.
Then, coincidentally, I noticed there was a documentary being shown on the History Channel Wednesday night entitled, “I Am Alive: Surviving the Andes Plane Crash.” It’s recent, and excellent. Even though I knew the story of their 72-day ordeal very well and thought there wasn’t much new for me to learn about it in a 2-hour film, this one was loaded with information I’d neither heard nor read before, as well as visuals that made previously murky facts very clear.
But best of all were the interviews with Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa and a couple of the other now-60ish survivors, and a trip back to the site by an experienced climber who tried to retrace their steps and found how extraordinarily difficult their feat was (they had never seen snow before their ordeal began, nor done any mountain climbing). Even watching TV in the warmth and safety of one’s home, the mind reels at the shots of the terrain that faced them—rugged mountains stretching as far as the eye could see into a vast distance—and at the knowledge that, nevertheless, the young Parrado and Canessa climbed out of there while starving, unequipped and freezing, spurred on by the knowledge that the search had long ago been called off, and that this was the last and only chance for them—and for the fourteen other young men they had left behind to wait in the plane’s fuselage for rescue or for death.
The documentary is an unusual combination: part sensationalist adventure/endurance story, part psychological thriller, and part testament to the human spirit and the overwhelming power of love. At the end, there were tears streaming down my cheeks.
If you want to watch it (or Tivo it for later), the film repeats on the History Channel at 5 PM Eastern time on Saturday, Oct 23. And if all else fails, you can buy it.
…but the score stands at 49% for him, 37% for Bielat, and 12% undecided.
How could anyone be “undecided” at this point about Frank? If all those votes end up going to Bielat (unlikely, but possible), and the Republican turnout is greater than expected (somewhat more likely), then…well, you do the math.
James Rainey at the LA Timespoints out the obvious: that the policy NPR cited as its reason for firing Williams—that one that says correspondents in its employ can’t give opinions—is violated regularly and with impunity by others in the NPR lineup. This, for example, is a well-known instance:
Ha, ha, ha, Nina, funny joke, that, including the grandkids! And NPR apparently just smiled, too, when it happened—which was back in 1995. Totenberg is still with them, when last I checked—although now that their hypocrisy is so deeply exposed by the Juan Williams firing they might try to apply their policy more consistently ex post facto, and clean house by firing Totenberg, et al, too.
Of course, one problem would be that such a wholesale housecleaning would make it more difficult to fulfill one of NPR’s main raisons d’éªtre, which is to spew out liberal opinions onto the airwaves in the guise of supposed “objectivity” in those tony, neutral-sounding voices.
[NOTE: Stephen F. Hayes reminds us of a few other times Totenberg has violated the (wink-wink) “standards” of NPR.]
His response is excellent, just another indication of his basic upfront reasonableness. But that’s not acceptable at NPR any more; PC thought has trumped and eradicated it:
NPR, that public radio station that we all help fund, has fired longtime senior news analyst Juan Williams for making the following comments on Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor:”
“I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. 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.”
Mr. Williams also made reference to the Pakistani immigrant who pleaded guilty this month to trying to plant a car bomb in Times Square. “He said the war with Muslims, America’s war is just beginning, first drop of blood. I don’t think there’s any way to get away from these facts,” Mr. Williams said.
Ah, but there is, there is! Facts, truth, who needs them? We can get away from them by the simple act of firing people who speak them, especially if they commit the thoughtcrime of owning up to unpleasant but honest feelings of nervousness that they nevertheless resist acting on, such as the sort of religious-garb-while-flying emotional “profiling” that Williams is owning up to (see Jesse Jackson, of “I hate to admit it, but I have reached a stage in my life that if I am walking down a dark street late at night and I see that the person behind me is white, I subconsciously feel relieved;” or Obama’s typical white grandmother).
And that’s just what NPR did—fired Williams:
NPR said in its statement that the remarks “were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR.”
No surprise there. NPR long, long ago abandoned all pretense of objectivity or common sense to the great and higher goal of pure PC-bs.
Every now and then I’ve caught Juan Williams on Fox, and it began to occur to me a few weeks ago that his days at NPR might be numbered, since he’s been sleeping with the Fox enemy for too long and is therefore tainted. And, although a liberal, he’s far too reasonable and straight-shooting for NPR’s taste.
In fact, this move by NPR has probably been brewing for quite some time. I would wager they’ve been lying in wait for him to make a false step so that they can use it as an excuse to dismiss him. This idea is given further credence by the fact that, “In February 2009, NPR said it had asked that he stop being identified on ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ as a ‘senior correspondent for NPR,’ even though that title was accurate.”
I’m sure in the coming days people will dig up plenty examples of NPR reporters insulting Christians, America and other groups but not losing their jobs over it. As always, it’s just one group that gets super-protected status and it just happens to be the one that is so peaceful, they will kill you for insulting them.
And then there’s this news, which came the very same day that Williams got the boot. Coincidence?:
Media Matters, the liberal activist group that wages a rhetorical war against Fox News Channel and others in the conservative press, will announce on Wednesday the receipt of a $1 million donation from the philanthropist George Soros…[T]he organization says it plans to use the money to intensify its efforts to hold the Fox host Glenn Beck and others on the cable news channel accountable for their reporting.
“Fox has transformed itself into a 24-7 G.O.P. attack machine, dividing Americans through fear-mongering and falsehoods and undermining the legitimacy of our government for partisan political ends,” the group will say in the statement, to be released Wednesday afternoon.
In an accompanying statement, Mr. Soros, a billionaire who has a history of supporting liberal politicians and causes, accused Fox News hosts of “incendiary rhetoric” and said he hoped that his money would be used “in an effort to more widely publicize the challenge Fox News poses to civil and informed discourse in our democracy.”
Oh, and what was the Williams comment that sparked NPR to make that 2009 request that his affiliation with them not be trumpeted on Fox? This:
Michelle Obama, you know, she’s got this Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress thing going. If she starts talking, as Mary Katharine [Ham, a conservative blogger] is suggesting, her instinct is to start with this blame America, you know, I’m the victim. If that stuff starts coming out, people will go bananas and she’ll go from being the new Jackie O to being something of an albatross.
Williams, in case you don’t happen to know this already, is black. That might have made it more difficult for NPR to pull the plug on him—difficult, but not impossible, as we have seen.
It used to be that racism was a question of how one acted towards others. Now it’s built on thoughtcrime, and the best way to prove one’s own non-racist bona fides is to come down hard on anyone who dares to admit to a frisson of fear or a possibility of making a mental or emotional connection between Muslims and the vile outrage that was perpetrated in the name of Islam on 9-11.
[ADDENDUM: Ed Morrisey makes the point that, just after the remarks in question, Williams was careful to note that it’s important for commenters to make the distinction between moderate Muslims and extremists. Too little, too late, Juan; you’re outta there.
Here’s the whole segment:
Pretty ironic, huh? Especially when Williams says, “You’ve gotta be careful!”
Bernie Goldberg call’s NPR’s action “the death of liberalism.” I’ve got news for you, Bernie—that sort of liberalism died a long time ago.]
…[J]ust as Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar chose to storm of the set of “The View” during a recent appearance by O’Reilly, the politically correct guide to debate often involves cutting off discussion, not encouraging more of it.
There’s a simple explanation. That’s because it’s about proving themselves as champions of the oppressed underdog Muslims, and therefore non-bigoted. It’s not about the discussion or the issues, stupid.]
When I read this column by Brian McGrory criticizing Barney Frank in the Boston Globe, I had to keep checking the venue to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. Since I’m not a regular Globe reader anymore (although I put in my 30+ years), I thought perhaps McGrory might be its token conservative, although I know that spot is usually taken by Jeff Jacoby.
But no, it appears that McGrory’s a liberal, which makes it all the more amazing that he’s finally giving Barney a taste of the press he deserves. McGrory writes:
Just about every Democrat in Massachusetts has a Barney Frank story, and very few of them would earn him the Citizen of the Year award.
Frank belittles members of Congress. He berates Capitol Hill staffers. It’s not that he doesn’t suffer fools; he doesn’t really suffer anyone.
Now that he’s in his first competitive reelection campaign in 28 years, fending off justifiable questions over his role in the collapse of the housing market and a candidate good at asking them, Frank has toned down his act. But as Barney 2.0 learns to say “Please’’ and “Thank you,’’ his longtime partner apparently hasn’t read the updated script…
Hardly a puff piece.
Seems there’s a lot of stored-up anger and even outrage at Barney’s entitled behavior over the years. Perhaps the press and voters in his district are tired of being his enablers. The calm affability and obvious intelligence of his far more pleasant opponent Sean Bielat may have gotten more than a few of them thinking that it might be a nice change to have a Congressional representative who wasn’t an obnoxious, corrupt, loudmouthed lout.
At this point the Christine O’Donnell First Amendment story isn’t so much about candidate O’Donnell any more. It’s about the press and its agenda for her—because it turns out she was widely misquoted.
I wrote, in my previous post on the subject of her supposed shocking lack of knowledge about the First Amendment and separation of church and state, “I don’t know if she attempted to clarify [her position], but if she didn’t, she should have.”
But it turns out she was making her position fairly clear. But the MSM truncated and in the process distorted what she said. Ace writes that the exchange in question has now been revealed to have been the following:
[O’Donnell asked Coons,]”The First Amendment does [establish what you claim]? … So you’re telling me that the separation of church and state, the phrase ‘separation of church and state,’ is in the First Amendment?”
In other words, she makes it perfectly clear what she’s questioning. Not that the Establishment Clause says what it says, but whether the phrase “separation of church and state” appears in the clause.
And of course, on that point, she’s 100% right.
Ace also reports that the corrected quote now appears in the original Ben Evans WaPo article as a recent addition, although that fact has not yet been acknowledged by the WaPo.
If anyone believes that the sort of distortion O’Donnell has been the victim of here is an accident—well then, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to talk to them about. And anyone who believes that the dirty work of making O’Donnell seem far stupider than she is has not been already effectively accomplished is naé¯ve.
The technique is used because it works. O’Donnell is now forever the dunderhead who doesn’t know about the First Amendment, and her opponent Chris Coons is the erudite lawyer smoothly correcting her. The fact that she was right, and that later in the debate he was unable to list the other freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment, appears to be irrelevant.
I keep recommending columns by Hanson, and this one is no exception. His style isn’t flashy; Hanson’s not about showing off how clever he is. But he has a rare knack for summing up whatever situation we might be facing.
I have noticed a trend in the MSM that goes like this: the press decides that certain candidates on the right are idiots (Palin and O’Connell come to mind, and Bush before them). There is then a sort of lying-in-wait for the absurd utterance to reveal the utterly moronic nature of that person. However, since the press and pundits are not necessarily brilliant critical thinkers themselves, the utterance they fasten in is often (not always, but often) actually more intelligent than they realize.
Fast forward just a little bit, and see this post by Ace, referencing a whole lotta chortling going on at Twitter, lead by Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos (who qualifies as both press and supposed pundit), concerning that idiot Palin and her idiotic call to refrain from the urge to “party like it’s 1773” while addressing a Tea Party rally, no doubt attended by like-minded idiots.
