TIMING IS EVERYTHING, CONT'D – AT 8:05 P.M. ET:  National Public Radio (NPR) executives are expressing shock and dismay – shock and dismay, I tell you – over comments by one of their executives, secretly recorded as part of a journalistic sting operation.  This is making the internet rounds:

An NPR executive was caught on camera lambasting the Tea Party as "seriously racist" and claiming that liberals might be, as a whole, more educated than conservatives.

The comments from Ron Schiller, a senior executive at NPR and president of the NPR Foundation, were made during a meeting with two people posing as members of a fictitious Muslim organization. The two activists, who recorded the February meeting on hidden camera, were trying to convince NPR executives of accepting a $5 million donation -- money NPR apparently refused.

Schiller has since announced he is leaving NPR to join the Aspen Institute in Colorado, though NPR said there is "no connection" between the video of his comments and his departure.

Yeah, there's never a connection.

During the secretly recorded meeting, Schiller lamented how the Republican Party had been "hijacked" by the Tea Party.

"The current Republican Party, particularly the Tea Party, is fanatically involved with people's personal lives," he said.

NPR put out a statement reacting to the comments:

"We are appalled by the comments made by Ron Schiller in the video, which are contrary to what NPR stands for," the statement said.

Are you laughing as hard as I am?  Is NPR telling us that Schiller never expressed these views inside the organization?  What we have here is a classic "Casablanca" moment, in which the NPR honchos are shocked, shocked, to find such opinions expressed by one of their own.

In fact, those opinions pretty much express the mentality of NPR.  You won't find a statue of Ronald Reagan in their lobby.

NPR CEO Vivian Schiller, who is not related to Ron Schiller, delivered a speech Monday in which she rejected claims of bias at NPR.

Yeah, and the Soviet Union was a workers' paradise.  Of course, Vivian Schiller probably believes that.

The timing of this incident is choice.  The NPR budget is up for consideration in Congress.  I'm sure, given the propensity of goofy billionaires to chase after left-wing causes, that the network could find private funding.  As a citizen, I resent having to pay taxes to finance a left-wing propaganda machine.  The nation somehow survived before we had public funding for NPR, or PBS.  We can survive again.

March 8, 2011