You shouldn’t have to subsidize NPR…and I shouldn’t subsidize
NPR ‘appalled’ by former exec’s comments
Former NPR executive Ron Schiller slams Republicans and the tea party movement and suggests that NPR would be better off without any federal funding in a hidden-camera video released Tuesday by conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe.
Schiller, president of the NPR Foundation and a senior vice president for development until just last week, appears on the tape at Georgetown’s Café Milano with NPR director of institutional giving Betsy Liley and two men–Shaughn Adeleye and Simon Templar–posing as executives from a fake Islamic organization considering a $5 million donation to the network.</em>
We’re going to leave aside the odious Mr. O’Keefe for now, other than to wonder, why isn’t he in jail in Louisiana somewhere? His gotcha video isn’t the issue. The issue is, should anyone have to support a media organization? Should conservatives be forced to fund a group who derides their existence daily, offends their sense of moral decency, and conspires against them? Of course not.
Nor should I get out of bed each day, go to work, come home and look at my paycheck, let my eyes wander to the withholdings, and realize that some small amount of that money went to fund Rush Limbaugh. Sean Hannity. Mike Huckabee. No, I shouldn’t have to be reminded of that. See, all those guys (as well Ed Schultz, Alan Colmes and NPR) are broadcast on the Armed Forces Network, which is a part of the Department of Defense, which, last time I checked, I paid for. Why should I pay these champions of the free market/capitalist cheerleading jackwad theocrats a fucking dime? Now, Rush earns something like 400 gazillion dollars a year to belch his brand of anti-American nonsense to a vast audience, he parades his income around like some sort of white boy bling, I doubt he really needs my minor contribution to his coffers. So, please, by all means, yank NPRs funding. It only amounts to about 3% of their budget, and without it- and the meddling aggravations of the no-nothing corner it invites- they would make up the difference in a week just by forgoing the money. Their demographic loves to support martyrs.
Please do this just as soon as you stop asking me to fund right wing demagogues and that homophobic clown from Arkansas. A group, need I remind you, have cost this nation far more than that brie-munching smarty pants crowd at NPR. Yeah, by relentlessly pimping the wars, by lampooning Abu Grahib, by endlessly cheerleading for Israel, these people have cost this nation dearly, both financially and morally. Sure, NPR might run a Noam Chomsky interview once in a blue moon, but that beats giving war criminals like Rumsfeld an open mic to spew his lethal lies. Big difference. By advancing the notion that somehow, after the last two years, the American public should rise up in arms against…school teachers…?…the Rush/Sean school of propaganda lets the real villains escape, while real people suffer.
So sure, I totally agree. You shouldn’t have to fund National Public Radio. And I shouldn’t have to fund right wing lie factories. So until I don’t have to, STFU.