NPR Exec: Why Yes, We'd Love Some Of That Sweet, Sweet Muslim Brotherhood Money. It's Much Better Than Money From Those Racist Tea Party Perople (Though We Happily Take That Too)

Via Byron York, the O’Keefe gang is back at it. This time they posed as two Muslims with an organization they say is connected to the Muslim Brotherhood who want to help NPR survive de-funding efforts by evil Republicans.

A man identified as Ron Schiller, NPR's Sr. VP for Development and President of NPR Foundation, wants to make sure these prospective donors know exactly whose side he's on.

On the tapes, Schiller wastes little time before attacking conservatives. The Republican Party, Schiller says, has been “hijacked by this group.” The man posing as Malik finishes the sentence by adding, “the radical, racist, Islamaphobic, Tea Party people.” Schiller agrees and intensifies the criticism, saying that the Tea Party people aren’t “just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.”

Schiller goes on to describe liberals as more intelligent and informed than conservatives. “In my personal opinion, liberals today might be more educated, fair and balanced than conservatives,” he said.

...When O’Keefe’s two associates pressed him into the topic, Schiller decried U.S. media coverage of Egypt’s uprising against former dictator Hosni Mubarak, especially talk of the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence on the protests and future of Egypt. Schiller said that is what he is “most disappointed by in this country, which is that the educated, so-called elite in this country is too small a percentage of the population, so that you have this very large un-educated part of the population that carries these ideas.”

There's much more, including the video at the link.

This will take the normal pattern with these things...NPR will claim it's all edited to make them look bad, the O'Keefe may have broken some laws, they'll also say it was just lunch and they would have vetted these guys before taking their money (yeah right) and hey...look over there, it's Elmo!

Will this get as much play in the MFM, as say the guy who called Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and pretended to be one of the Koch Brothers? Of course not. It will get the same amount of coverage that the story of how the guy who made that call wrote a piece celebrating the death of American troops...none.

Best part? Just yesterday NPR CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation to Ron) said there's no way NPR is liberal or biased at all. Now, they'll say this guy is a fundraiser and not involved in editorial but that's simply not going to wash. Saving NPR some trouble, they had already announced Ron Schiller is leaving NPR in a few weeks.

On the upside, there is some common ground here for conservatives and Schiller, he says that NPR and public radio stations could survive without public funding. Let's make that happen.

posted by DrewM. at 09:59 AM

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