Imus's Advice to Juan Williams: 'Man Up'

Imus was joined by the man of the moment this morning, newly-hired Fox News commentator Juan Williams, who, earlier this week on The O’Reilly Factor, said, “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.”

Yesterday, as a result of those comments, Williams was fired from National Public Radio, where he had been a news analyst for ten years. Then, in a strange turn of events, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller said that Williams should have kept his feelings about Muslims between himself and his psychiatrist.
 
“I think she should apologize to me,” Williams told Imus, adding that Schiller’s remark “was intended to demean me, and introduce into the mind of anybody who’s aware of this controversy the idea that I’m unstable, and there’s much more to this than the eye might initially see.”
 
A renowned journalist who has written numerous books about civil rights, Williams, looking wounded, agreed with Imus that NPR was after him for some other reason. “They didn’t like me coming over to Fox,” he said, point-blank.
 
Though Williams insisted he was merely expressing an honest emotion and not violating journalistic integrity when he made those fateful remarks to Bill O’Reilly, Imus took a different, much less sympathetic position on the issue.
 
“You’ve gotta man up,” he told his guest. “If I go into an airport, or anyplace else, or I’m walking around the streets of Manhattan and I see somebody in traditional Muslim garb, you know what I think? Nothing.”
 
Said the man who flies around the country on a private plane.
 
Williams noted that his firing has not turned into the typical polarizing affair between left and right wing interests. “What happened is that people have said, ‘This ain’t right,’” he said. “It’s not like I’m a newcomer onto the scene. People know my journalism.”
 
Exactly. “You’re a left wing nut,” Imus said.
 
Acknowledging that momentarily had the wind knocked out of him, Williams resolved to fight back using advice once bestowed upon him by his father, who used to train boxers. “You could use fear to run away, or you can use fear to light your fire, and get out there and kick ‘em,” he said.
 
And if that doesn’t work, Imus has an even better solution. “If you want to sue them,” he said, talking about NPR. “I’ve got a great lawyer.”
 
-Julie Kanfer