For a group of people who likes to claim that liberals are constantly playing the victim, the Tea Party sure screams like a little baby when anyone dares point out their many and varied issues.
The latest people to face the foot-stamping tirades of Tea Partiers everywhere are Ron Schiller and Vivian Schiller (no relation) now both formerly of NPR.
Even if Ron Schiller had said things that were verifiably untrue about the Tea Party–and what he said was pretty spot on–the question remains, why does it matter? Ron Schiller wasn’t a reporter, he wasn’t an editor, he wasn’t involved at any level with the news reporting side of NPR. He was a fundraiser. His job was to get people to give money to NPR, and in this case, he was apparently put off enough by what these actors were saying that he turned down their purported donation. Let me repeat that–he refused their money.
Jack Steuf of Wonkette put it this way: “Later in this video, the O’Keefe plants say they’re a Muslim Brotherhood group and think Jews control the media. And the NPR guy keeps eating his food, listening politely. Which is pretty much what anyone would do when you’re sat down by powerful-seeming people with unexplained ties to conservative Muslim groups overseas and they suddenly start saying Jews run the media.”
But this is obviously proof of some master plan to make the Tea Party look like a bunch of gun-toting racists, as though the guns and racist signs that appear at every singe Tea Party rally don’t do that on their own. NPR must have some kind of stroke to be able to pull that off. John Cole at Balloon Juice probably put it best, “I love the rules. Say true but harsh things in private, and you have to go. Make up awful nonsense, and you get a gig at Fox, a Vice Presidential nomination, or a Senate seat.” That about sums it up.
