Shirley Sherrod did not simply admit her own past prejudice, and she did not tell the story to show how her sympathy for bigoted black people. She told the story to condemn her own, specific, prejudices. Juan Williams did no such thing.
Saletan goes on to cite Juan Williams admirably noting the folly of claiming Muslims attacked America on 9/11, and assuring host Bill O'Reilly that "there are good Muslims." I am sure those "good Muslims" are as grateful for Williams' defense as he would be for their defense of "good blacks." But that aside, the notion that Williams initial statement of prejudice is somehow absolved by his objections to O'Reilly greater prejudice is false. I can, all at once, believe that Jews are blood-suckers and still think the Holocaust was horrific. Strom Thurmond's defense of white supremacy is not absolved by his support for South Carolina's black colleges. It is not comforting to behold Trent Lott's pining for segregation in light of the black Senate aids working in his office.
Williams is peddling bigotry on a channel devoted to demonizing and stigmatizing all American Muslims as often as it can as shamelessly as it can. It is doing this as an integral part of one political party dedicated to using such bigotry to demonize the president of the United States.
We need to be clear: Fox is neither a news nor an opinion channel. With almost every GOP candidate running for president on its payroll and with massive donations to one political party, it is a propaganda channel. People like Williams who take its money to legitimize it as a credible journalistic enterprise have somewhere along the line lost their soul.
Dispositive proof of Williams' bigoted double standards for Muslims and African Americans here.