I met Juan Williams several years ago when he and I were involved in a panel debate.� What struck me about Juan was how he carried himself after the debate was completed.� During the debate he was articulating his center-right politics, and was quite energetic in his approach.�� At the end of the debate, however, Juan became a different person.� He was warm, friendly, and seemed to have no antagonism towards me, despite the fact that we had been at odds.� At that moment I realized that Juan Williams, more than anything else, was and is a performer.� He is performing a role.� When he is �in character�, he is everything that Fox News wants.� In playing that role he is well compensated.� As a result, I have no idea what he actually believes or actually why he says many of the things that he says.

When word broke about his termination by NPR I had contradictory feelings.� I listened to what he had said and thought about how he COULD have used the opening to discuss Islamophobia and the need to struggle against it.� Juan chose not to do that.� While he threw the public a bone by referencing a distinction between extremists Muslims and moderate Muslims, the bottom line was that he was supporting racial profiling.

Had I not just completed reading Charles Ogletree�s excellent The Presumption of Guilt: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Race, Class and Crime in America I might not have thought about how outrageous it was that a black Juan Williams would engage in open, and unapologetic racial profiling.� Yet everything that Juan said could have (and probably has) been used by white Americans to describe various phobias that many of them have about African Americans.� How many times, as a black person, has Juan walked near white people who hold their packages closer to their bodies?� How often has he been stopped by the police for questioning when he has not resembled any suspect (assuming that there was a suspect)?

The fact that Juan did not draw a direct line between the racial profiling that nearly all African Americans have experienced and his racial profiling of Muslims either speaks to his utter naivite; his performing a �role� that Fox wishes; or an Islamophobia that he has been trying to hide using the �good Muslim/bad Muslim� framework.

Whatever the source, Juan stepped over the line, and in the media there is a line.� Ask Helen Thomas, the legendary White House reporter whose inappropriate, off-color remarks about Jewish Israelis (certainly uttered in a moment of frustration since she had no history of anti-Jewish rants), led to her being forced to retire.� If Helen Thomas was forced to step aside because of her remarks, then why should any quarter be given to Juan Williams?� Sure, Juan should have and could have apologized to the public.� Perhaps had he IMMEDIATELY apologized and tried to use that as a �teachable� moment, it would have been appropriate to offer forgiveness.� But that is not what happened; not even close.� Instead, Juan received a bonus deal from Fox and went on the attack mode against NPR and liberal media outlets.

I probably would also not have been as affected by this incident had it not been for the continuous onslaught of anti-Muslim, anti-Arab vitriolic rhetoric in the mainstream media.� If we could box in this irrationalist nonsense, it would still be an insult to anyone with any degree of morals and integrity.� But Islamophobia is not restricted to obscure websites or late night radio programs.� It seems to pervade every aspect of US society and is tolerated as long as the speaker sounds educated or plays to 9/11 sadness.

Juan took the approach of the moth circling the flame.� He has been flitting around the demagoguery of the political Right for a long time without getting singed.� Last week he flew too close and finally became one with the flames.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president ofTransAfrica Forum and co-author of, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice (University of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.