Juan Williams: Mugged by Reality
Michael Reagan, FrontPageMagazine.com, August 3, 2006
NPR and Fox News commentator Juan Williams is a certified liberal — so liberal some have called him the black Alan Colmes, the liberal half of Fox’s Hannity and Colmes. When he writes a book you’d expect the left-wing media to fall all over each other to be the first to review his book and have him as a guest on network radio and TV.
That hasn’t happened, however, because his book Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America — and What We Can Do About It, has crossed the boundary of what is — and what is not — permitted by the high priests of liberal orthodoxy.
For this grievous offense he has been cast into the outer darkness reserved for conservatives and other patriotic Americans.
On my radio show the other night Juan told me how he has been silenced by the very liberals who have always clasped him to their bosoms. When I asked him if he’s been put on the “back burner” he said: “It’s not the back burner, but the burner itself that has disappeared. You just don’t get covered when you try to talk about what I consider to be central issues in terms of not just black America but all America. It’s part of American history, it’s part of the reality of the way we live, especially with increasing numbers of minorities in the American population, racial politics, drop-outs in schools, the fact that people talk about what’s going on with jails and all that.
“People just don’t want to talk about why we are in a grievous situation even now in the 21st century with regard to race and the kind of leadership we have on race.”
This is a tragedy. It is important that Juan Williams be heard loud and clear, and that his book should have the largest readership possible. Like Bill Cosby before him, Juan has looked his fellow blacks in the eye and told them the truth — a truth they must face if they are to overcome the obstacles that hold them back.
He deplores the incredible rate of illegitimate births among blacks — a staggering 70 percent of all black children are born out of wedlock. These children are deprived of a normal upbringing, of a family with the father present in the home.
So-called black leaders such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton draw his scorn. Williams notes: “If you attack anybody who is designated by the white media as a black leader you are therefore attacking black America and blaming the victim and you’re not seeing the larger picture while you have real problems afoot in terms of educating black kids, in terms of watching black kids born out of wedlock into poverty in this country, in terms of watching what I consider a culture of failure where people don’t call to account…violence and sadistic rap music.”
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So Juan Williams sets out to tell the truth, writes a book about it, and he can’t get on liberal television, he can’t get on ABC, NBC, or CBS because they have sold out to these leaders of the black community picked by guilt-ridden white liberals. White leftists refuse to allow blacks to be individuals. They look at them only as a group. They have put them on their liberal white plantation where their hand-picked black taskmasters such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton rule the roost.
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