Despite being fired by National Public Radio over a bout of public Islamophobia, Williams has land on his feet with a $2 million Fox News Channel contract. In addition, look for him to be used as the poster child for the next conservative-led attack against NPR.

When the history of U.S. journalism is written - or patched together in a 5-minute You Tube video - the name Juan Williams is unlikely to appear. However, when the next attack against National Public Radio is launched by conservatives - and you can expect that to happen in a Republican-controlled Congress -- expect to see Williams, or his likeness, front and center.

The very public recent firing by National Public Radio (NPR) of its longtime contributor, Juan Williams -- after he acknowledged on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News Channel program to feeling anxious over seeing fellow air travelers dressed in Muslim garb -- has resulted in the immediate deification of him by many conservatives. It also appears to have paved the way for a big payday for Williams (a $2 million dollar Fox News Channel contract), and the revival of a tried and true conservative cause - the de-funding NPR.

(It seems a little strange that Williams' would reveal his innermost fears about the clothing that some Muslims choose to wear aboard airplanes on O'Reilly's toxic program. Why didn't he air his thoughts directly on NPR? It still would have been controversial, but it wouldn't have had the stamp of Williams' opportunism writ large all over it.)

The Williams firing appeared to have once again loosed the looney: The Washington Post reported last week that NPR had received, amongst its stacks of hate mail, a bomb threat. NPR spokeswoman Anna Christopher told The Upshot - a Yahoo News Blog -- that "on the advice of law enforcement, we are not sharing details about the threat."

After Williams' firing, O'Reilly declared that "No taxpayer dollars should be going to an outfit that abuses freedom of speech. No more money to NPR," O'Reilly bellowed. The Upshot reported that "O'Reilly producer Jesse Watters ambush[ed] the NPR [Chief] Executive [Vivian Schiller] on the street Monday."

Williams later told O'Reilly that he didn't "fit in their [NPR's] box. I'm not predictable black liberal. You [O'Reilly] were exactly right when you said you know what this comes down to. They were looking for a reason to get rid of me because I'm appearing on Fox News. They don't want me talking to you."

Williams has had a successful career in journalism, he is currently a political commentator for Fox News Channel; he writes for several newspapers including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal and has been published in magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly and Time. And, he was a senior news analyst for National Public Radio (NPR) from 1999 until October 2010.

Williams is also the author of Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965, a biography of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and Enough, a book critiquing black civil rights leaders.

For years, stripping funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) - under whose umbrella NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) operate - was a guaranteed fund-raising bonanza for the right. Although conservatives were never successful in de-funding CPB, it nevertheless succeeded in somewhat shifting its political focus.

Recently, Kenneth Tomlinson, who headed CPB from September 2003 to September 2005 and was forced to resign under the cloud of multiple ethics violations, wrote in the Washington Examiner that since the Williams incident unfolded, he had been rethinking his position on the agency and has decided that it was time to defund the agency: "I had long believed that the many tentacles of public broadcasting should be reformed - not defunded. I now realize I was wrong. Federal funding for NPR should be eliminated-as should handouts to CPB and PBS."

During an appearance of "Fox and Friends," Williams, who recently signed a several-million-dollar contract with Fox, also let it be known that the agency should be kyboshed. "Fox and Friends" co-host Gretchen Carlson pointed out that "Some members of Congress are calling for NPR to be defunded." Williams responded to Carlson by saying that he "love[s]" NPR and believes it "is an important institution," whose "quality of journalism is [often] fantastic."

If NPR "want[s] to compete in the marketplace, they should compete in the marketplace. They don't need public funds. I think they should go out there, if they think the product is so great, go out and sell the product. And what happens is, too often, then, they want to make it out like, 'You know what? We are a public jewel and we need the protection of the federal government. We need federal funds that come through the member stations and they pay for this product.' Nonsense. They are on a federal dole, is what it is And they better admit it and step up if they want to compete."

Williams, apparently not showing the "love" he feels for the network, claimed that NPR is "speaking to an elitist crowd" and has "become self-righteous in their attitudes" which is "why they want to attack somebody like me."

(For more from the Foxies on the Williams Affair see http://mediamatters.org/research/201010220034.)

Not to be outdone by Bill O'Reilly, Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee also checked in on the William brouhaha. "If NPR is unable to tolerate an honest debate about an issue as important as Islamic terrorism, then it's time for 'National Public Radio' to become 'National Private Radio,' Palin wrote on Facebook "It's time for Congress to defund this organization."

Huckabee said he'll "no longer accept interview requests from NPR as long as they are going to practice a form of censorship, and since NPR is funded with public funds, it IS a form of censorship."

Just how much money does NPR get from the federal government? According to NPR spokeswoman Anna Christopher, who told The Upshot that "NPR receives no direct federal money in any given year."

"Christopher explained that NPR receives about 1 to 2 percent of its funds in the form of competitive federal grants or the National Endowment for the Arts that come from government grants -- a figure similar to the proportion of the budgets for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That accounts for a roughly $1.5 million to $3 million annually, Christopher said. She also noted that individual NPR member stations receive, on average, about 10 percent of their funding from state and federal sources."

(For more details on NPR's funding, see http://www.npr.org/about/aboutnpr/publicradiofinances.html.)

The Upshot reported that the Williams firing had provoked an enormous amount of coverage and commentary. In addition to media sites like Romenesko and Mediagazer covering it, The Upshot's "first report on Williams' firing had so far received about 25,000 comments -- more evidence that the controversy is provoking strong reactions among the public and sparking online debates about bigotry, profiling on airplanes, public funding for media, and the question of whether political correctness has run amok."

As Peter Beinart pointed out at The Daily Beast, Williams' firing probably says more about the American right then it does about NPR: "First, its extraordinary lack of empathy for Muslims. ... Williams ... was voicing a stereotype. Like many stereotypes, this one has a small basis in reality: Muslims (although not in 'Muslim garb') did blow up airplanes on 9/11. And like most stereotypes, it extrapolates from that narrow truth in a way that harms large numbers of innocent people. Most of the time, in such circumstances, even people sympathetic to the stereotyper acknowledge that the stereotype does real harm. Had Williams said that 'when I get on the subway...if young black men are wearing hip-hop clothes...I get worried,' even Bill O'Reilly and company would likely have acknowledged that such an attitude is unfair to the African-American young. Had Williams said that 'when I get on the train...if I see someone reading a Bible...I think they're closed-minded,' O'Reilly would have screamed discrimination until his head exploded. But in this case, the right-wing pundits and politicians who lined up to defend Williams and denounce NPR didn't even acknowledge the harm such stereotypes do to innocent Muslims."

In a piece at National Review Online headlined "NPR: A Test Case for Republicans, Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, and the author of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America, asked: "Why does a country that is trillions in debt, and in which people have unlimited options for obtaining information, need NPR? More to the point, why do we need to fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which keeps NPR afloat?"

"Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said he plans to introduce legislation Friday to cut off federal funding," The Upshot reported. "Such a move by the tea party favorite could galvanize conservatives -- especially on Fox News and talk radio -- who have long been critical of NPR and its perceived liberal leanings."

Despite his journalistic accomplishments, Williams - who has been playing the martyr quite effectively on Fox - might ultimately wind up best known for greasing the skids of NPR's demise.

Cross posted from BuzzFlash: http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/11883

Berkowitz is a freelance writer and longtime observer of the conservative movement who documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the U.S. Right. In addition to BuzzFlash, his work -- which has been cited in a number of books -- has appeared in Alternet, Inter Press Service, The Nation, Religion Dispatches, Z Magazine, and numerous other online and print publications.