Juan Williams just got fired by National Public Radio for saying out loud something that 95% of Americans feel — and I would bet my house almost every executive at NPR feels — that he gets nervous when flying in an airplane near people in heavy Muslim garb.

Besides the obvious — that the NPR execs are despicable, self-serving, almost comical hypocrites — the real question is whether Williams has a lawsuit against NPR for restriction of his speech and, if so, whether he would pursue it.

Though it is the NPR execs who have actually befouled their company here, what would militate against such a suit would be the standard clause  Williams probably signed giving NPR license to end his contract for blemishing the network’s reputation in some vague manner.

Nevertheless, I would like to see Williams go ahead with legal action. It would be like putting political correctness on trial.  This would be a great service to our nation, which has lived under the totalitarian PC yoke for too long.  We cannot rely on South Park alone to oppose it. Indeed, the Williams firing would be perfect grist for an episode of South Park with an NPR exec forced to ride next to a Richard Reid-type on a plane, the exec still desperately trying to be politically correct while Reid loaded up his shoe bomb with myriad forms of explosives. (“Do you have athlete’s foot, sir?  Would you like some powder?”)

But seriously, folks, NPR, as we all know, makes a show — emphasis on the show — of being politically even-handed, yet they can’t stand a self-avowed liberal speaking honestly about his feelings.  It’s worth remembering too the executives of this public corporation have been under attack for their wildly inflated salaries. These are the people who are telling us what is correct speech — in a democracy.  Forget South Park.  It’s subject matter for Jonathan Swift — and Aristophanes.

UPDATE:  Evidently, I am only dreaming here.  Law professor and First Amendment expert Eugene Volokh writes:

No; NPR is a nongovernmental entity, and is thus not bound by the First Amendment.  That it gets some federal subsidies doesn’t change that.  See Rendell-Baker v. Kohn (1982), http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=10176312845394846270.

In fact, it might well have its own First Amendment rights to hire or fire those employees who speak on its own programs based on their speech, even off-program speech.  See Nelson v. McClatchy Newspapers (Washington Supreme Court 1997), http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=2967807308826584631.  That’s not completely clear, to be sure; but in any case it’s not that important, since I know of no statute or common-law rule that would try to limit NPR’s decisions on this score.  And, as I mentioned, the First Amendment certainly doesn’t.

Back to Square One… or South Park.

Nothing is more reactionary in America today than identity politics, and there is no better example of this than the NAACP.  The organization was of great importance in its day, but there is a strong argument to be made it should no longer exist.

Do I have a right to say such a thing? Well, I was a civil rights worker in the South in the sixties, lost the full use of my finger there, went on to be a significant financial supporter of the Black Panther breakfast program in the seventies…. Is that enough?

Maybe, maybe not, but whatever you think of me, the NAACP has become a creator, not a fighter, of racism. They are in the racism business, fanning the flames in order to survive, and I won’t be reading their shameful, phony propagandistic report on the supposed bigotry in the Tea Party movement just being issued today in time for the election. Life is too short. If it were centuries long, it would be too short.

But am I attacking this report without reading  it? Indeed I am. If Nancy Pelosi can shove through Congress sweeping health care legislation that changes the economy of our country  without reading it, I certainly can attack some trivial report on my little Internet blog after only glancing at the first paragraph and the names of the authors.

There is, however, a serious issue represented by this report. We have come to a moment in our national development when identity based organizations like the NAACP have a strong vested interest in impeding progress, especially for the groups they purport to represent. If things get better for black people, the NAACP has no reason for being — or must devolve into some kind of social club.

For many of us, forty may be the new thirty and fifty the new forty, but for Barack Obama “scared” is the new “angry.”

As if channeling Dr. Phil or some other shoot-from-the-hip television shrink, our president is now barnstorming the country, telling us the voters are “scared” and not thinking clearly.

“People are still hurting very badly, and they are still scared. And so part of the reason our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we’re hard-wired  not to always think clearly when we’re scared,” Obama said at a Democratic fundraiser Sunday in Boston. “And the country is scared, and they have good reason to be.”

Talk about misdiagnosis!  The voters aren’t scared.  They are angry.  Mad as Hell, in fact.   They are angry at his policies and the way those policies have been rammed down their throats –and they have a right to be.  That’s why citizens — who have never done anything like that before — have organized all over the country and are on the brink of destroying his party at the ballot box.

Now the question remains, why is “scared” the new “angry” for Obama?  Is he just throwing (obfuscating) mud at the wall in a moment of electoral panic or is there some sort of plan or attitude behind it?

I lean toward the latter and here’s why:  The accusation that their opponents are “scared” has become the default position of the left. A prime example, as many realize, is the word Islamophobia.  It is a deliberate misnomer, imputing “fear” to people who dislike or even despise the ideology of Islam for whatever reason. (Institutionalized misogyny might be a good one.)

Of course, the deeper intent in accusing your opposition of being “scared” is to defuse it.  An ancillary benefit is to avoid discussing the issues, which in the current situation Obama and his allies are doing their level bests to avoid.

Finally, we have to ask whether Obama actually believes what he is saying — that we are all trembling neurotics afraid of the future. All I can say to that is, if he does, he is a fool.

Angela Merkel isn’t perfect.  What politician is?  But she seems a bit more forthright than most heads of state these days.  Not long ago, the German chancellor was taking Obama to task for his spend-happy approach to economics.  Now she is being brutally honest about “multiculturalism,” saying that mangy euphemism had “failed utterly.”

No kidding.

I’d go Merkel one better and call multiculturalism “inherently reactionary.” But more of that in a moment.

Meanwhile, the times are indeed a-changing in Old Europe, where the populace appears to be awakening to the results of decades of unrestrained immigration from cultures with little or no intention of assimilating into their own. The French have banned the burqa, but nowhere is this new resistance so evident than the Netherlands, where the trial of their MP Geert Wilders is currently underway. In a surprising turn of events the prosecution in the trial called for Wilders to be acquitted of all charges against him, most of which stem from his outspoken opposition to radical Islam, indeed to the ideology of Islam itself.

Wilders’ partial victory — the trial isn’t over until the judges rule in early November — could so far be construed as a victory of free speech over multiculturalism.  (As Bruce Bawer reminds us on this website, the European democracies have no First Amendment.) MC has always been a masquerade or polite social term for “cultural relativism,” the doctrine that asserts all cultures and ideologies are equal.  Everything is relative.

This week in POLIWOOD Lionel and I discuss a new documentary for which we had high hopes – Gerrymandering.  Unfortunately, it’s a great subject but a disappointing film.  Check out the video to see where we think it pulls its punches.

But we’re not all doom and gloom.  To make it up to you, we highlight some of our favorite documentaries of (relatively) recent years – Crumb, Hoop Dreams and Paris 1919.

One of the famous definitions of insanity is repeating the same mistake over and over again while expecting a different result. Whether that’s a perfect definition is open to debate, but one thing is certain: it’s as accurate a description of the California electorate at this moment in 2010 as you could get.

How else to explain that Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer are still leading Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina by 5.4% and 3.3% (RCP averages) in a state where unemployment is 12.4% (not including the underemployed and the astronomical number that have already given up), and from which businesses are fleeing like rats from the proverbial sinking ship? Even the storefronts on swanky Rodeo Drive are standing empty.

Nevertheless, a plurality of the voters still want the same old, same old. I thought it was supposed to be the economy, stupid. It’s not as if Whitman and Fiorina are implausible candidates in a time of economic crisis. They’re ex-CEOs.

Crazy, no? How do you explain it? Sure Whitman and Fiorina have made mistakes in their campaigns, but so have their opponents. And with the state nearing bankruptcy, you would think minor campaign flubs would pale into insignificance.

So is it the mainstream media fuddy-duddy liberal obfuscation thing? That’s part of it, I guess, but given the extent of  the layoffs at the state’s largest newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, which have been going on for some time now, you’d think even the media class would be waking up.

Alas, no. The truth is California — the land built on the future — has become stunningly averse to change.

OUR ELECTION DAY PLAN

PJMedia is announcing a new initiative for election day 2010 — “VOTER FRAUD WATCH.”   This initiative is to be carried forth on Pajamas Media and PJTV.

As almost everyone would agree, in a democracy the integrity of the vote is paramount.  If significant fraud or intimidation occurs at our polling places during an election, our democratic system of government is in peril.

PJMedia has been at the forefront of this struggle for integrity of the vote, most recently via its coverage of the Department of Justice/New Black Panther  controversy. This coverage was led by DOJ whistle blower and former attorney in the department’s voter rights division, J. Christian Adams.  Mr. Adams has agreed to lend his legal expertise to “Voter Fraud Watch.”

WHAT WE INTEND TO DO

Under “Voter Fraud Watch” PJMedia seeks to develop a network of citizen journalists/poll watchers to monitor as many polling places as possible across the nation on election day.  These people would report back to us — with either video, still photos, text or some combination thereof — on cases of voter fraud, intimidation or other voting malfeasances they may encounter. We will then cover these occurrences heavily on Pajamas Media and PJTV and promote them to the media at large.

It should go without saying that we expect these reports to be made irrespective of the political party or ideology of the person or persons involved.

WHAT POLL WATCHERS SHOULD LOOK FOR

Most important are voter intimidation and “electioneering within X feet of the poll.”  (The X is there because this distance is matter of state law. Please check the requirements in your state.) These areas are obvious and visible.

According to Christian Adams, other areas of interest are:

1. Forced assistance.  Everyone has a right to have someone help them vote, except their employer or union representative.  But all too often forced assistance is imposed on elderly voters. The voter doesn’t get to vote, but instead the assistor votes for them.  This allows large numbers of votes to be cast by a single machine connected assistor.  This particularly corrupts the “down ballot” contests where the voters would otherwise have no idea for whom to vote.

At this particular moment in time I have, amazingly to me, 4513 Facebook friends.  After viewing The Social Network for the latest Poliwood on PJTV, I wondered again what that really meant. I know it’s a macabre thought, but what if all those people showed for my funeral?  I better start saving for the catering now, or — forget any piddling post-death tax estate — I’m going to leave my family with a due bill double the cost of a fleet of 7-series BMWs.

Of course, we all know that Facebook friends aren’t likely to show for a funeral.  They aren’t really friends — not in the way we grew up knowing about genuine friends, what few we had.  I had about two in high school, maybe jumped to four in college, and considered myself lucky. But we now live in an era of virtual friends and have scads of them.  What are they really?

This is one of the issues raised by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin in his semi-biopic of young Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder. I think Sorkin is somewhat more cynical about the possibilities of virtual friendship than I am.  He’s been a busy guy and perhaps hasn’t had the experience with the online community that I have.  Seen from afar, it’s easy to draw the conclusion that online relationships are a symptom of modern anomie, alienation, etc. — geeks flailing away on their keyboards in the middle of the night, texting someone they never met (and never will) three continents away, while trying to get the pizza gook off their monitors.   And that image has some truth to it.

And yet… and yet… I like to feel like these umpteen years of blogging (well, since 2003 anyway) have not been entirely through a (pizza-stained) glass darkly.  I have actually made some real life friends from it.  Some of them stuck — and a few didn’t.  But the whole experience did give me a different perspective watching The Social Network, adding what Woody Allen used to call, back when he was funny, a certain “heavyosity.” I had been in Silicon Valley offices similar to the ones in the movie, during the days (2005) when I was traipsing around trying to get money to start Pajamas Media.  I have to say the film got the locations and the atmosphere pretty accurately — special kudos to director David Fincher — although it did play fast and loose with some facts, apparently.

Lionel Chetwynd and I discuss the question of what allegiance filmmakers owe to the truth, especially when it is so recent, on that new Poliwood. We invite you to have a look. But I am even more interested, at this moment, in the question of what these social networks — Facebook and Twitter — have done, what they mean to our society.

Forget Barack Obama.  Forget Sarah Palin. Forget even Lindsay Lohan.  They may just be blips on the screen of history when compared to Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg.  These are the figures that are truly influencing our times.

The latest from Jobs’ Apple today, according to the WSJ,  is that the iPhone is ready to move beyond its AT&T-only platform and on to Verizon. The usually reliable AppleInsider goes further, suggesting the iPhone will be on T-Mobile and/or Sprint as well and will come in a variety of forms and sizes, the better to compete with Google’s Android.

In case you missed it, Apple is already the second biggest corporation in the world in terms of capitalization and is poised to pass Exxon as number one, possibly this winter with the iPad this year’s most coveted Xmas gift. The Silicon Valley company is sitting on some 50 billion in cash, pretty well positioned to do whatever it takes to maintain their technological/aesthetic edge.  That’s one helluva long way from two young guys in a garage, tinkering with a computer.  It’s close to the most extraordinary business story of all time.

This only proves that things can still be done well in California — just not by politicians. I wonder if this is for long. Consciously or unconsciously, the politicians seem to be doing everything in their power to get us all to leave.  The current election has the most atrocious list of candidates for key positions in recent memory.  Could you put together a worse collection than Jerry Brown, Barbara Boxer, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina?  Well, maybe.  But not by much. And this in our most populous state with the eighth biggest economy in the world.  For shame.  I will, of course, be voting and rooting for Whitman and Fiorina, but with no special pleasure or expectation.  It’s just self-defense.

Is CNN a joke or have we gone back to the Dark Ages?  No sooner has the dust cleared on brain-dead racist Rick Sanchez than the network brings us a new show with whoremaster Eliot Spitzer!

CNN, lest we forget, is a news organization.  They want us to respect them.  How desperate for ratings they must have become. With MSNBC presenting the execrable Olbermann, even though no one watches him, CNN cannot stand still.  Out goes the wretched Sanchez, in comes the sleazy Spitzer.

Well, I guess it’s okay.  The ex-gov of New York’s prostitution scandal was way back in 2008. Who can remember? And no one cares that he had spent years prosecuting hookers in the most draconian fashion while simultaneously employing them personally.  One thing we know about our Eliot — he’s no libertarian when it comes to the world’s oldest profession.  He’s a monumental hypocrite — the kind of guy who would arrest you for possession of marijuana while privately making sure he had the best stash in town.  And we’re supposed to trust what he says on TV?

Remember when CNN was founded in 1980, how revolutionary it was — the first cable news network?  Well, it’s declined to the level of bear-baiting.

Of course, along the way it hasn’t been exactly distinguished. Sanchez and Spitzer are but sideshows compared to the network’s self-admitted deception in its coverage of Saddam’s Iraq.  As you may recall, in April 2003, CNN’s then chief executive producer Eason Jordan wrote an op-ed for the New York Times titled “The News We Kept to Ourselves” — in which Jordan detailed how the network deliberately misreported or downplayed Saddam’s atrocities, allegedly to protect its Iraqi employees.  Actually, it seems to have been even more about the network’s maintaining near-exclusive access to a brutal dictatorship, whitewashing many forms of extreme torture in the process.  Shades of Walter Duranty.  Of course, CNN came back to say everything bad possible about Abu Ghraib. They knew George Bush wouldn’t cut their employees’ tongues out or, worse yet, kick the network off the air.