NPR exec Ron Schiller on the Tea Party: "they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people."

Caught on video by conservative pranksters posing as potential donors from a Muslim Brotherhood front group:

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"...

When [one of the pranksters] suggests to Schiller that “Jews do kind of control the media or, I mean, certainly the Zionists and the people who have the interests in swaying media coverage toward a favorable direction of Israel,” Schiller does not rebut him or stop eating. He just nods his head slightly.

When one person says something and another keeps silent, what should we think of the silent person? I recently discussed exactly that with Slate's Timonthy Noah, who was keen on using silence against a Republican Congressman who didn't immediately jump on a constituent who said "Who is going to shoot Obama"?



Somehow I predict that Noah will let Schiller off the hook for that, and I, being consistent with myself,  will too. As I said in the Bloggingheads, it depends on the context. Schiller was in a different context. Congressman Broun was at a public meeting. Schiller was having a seemingly private meal with prospective donors. You're not going to fund-raise very well if you scold people or make them feel uncomfortable. And in any kind of a private meeting, you might humor your interlocutors as a strategy to obtain more information about them.

The pranksters were trying to trap Schiller into sounding anti-Jewish or anti-Israel, and I would defend Schiller for what he said in response to that prodding. What does look really bad, though, is his virulent hostility toward social conservatives and his twisted image of the people in the Tea Party movement. What's completely predictable — we're familiar with NPR — is the preening self-love of the liberal who's so sure he and his people are the smart ones. Not smart enough not to get pranked, though.

Remember when Scott Walker got pranked the other day by a phone call purporting to be from David Koch? His opponents couldn't get enough of calling him stupid for that, and even though he said nothing inconsistent with his public talking points and seemed the same as he is in public, they fine-tooth-combed his remarks to find little things they could blow up and portray as evil. Forget empathy and fairness — use whatever you find as brutally as you can.

Now here's this choice new material from Schiller, giving conservatives the chance to punch back twice as hard (to use the old Obama WH motto).

ADDED: David Weigel notes that Schiller is no longer with NPR. And he has the text of the Schiller quote about the firing of Juan Williams:

What NPR did I'm very proud of. What NPR stood for is a non-racist, non-bigoted, straightforward telling of the news. Our feeling is that if a person expresses his or her personal opinion, which anyone is entitled to do in a free society, they are compromised as a journalist. They can no longer fairly report. And the question we asked internally was, can Juan Williams, when he makes a statement like that, can he report to the Muslim population, and be believed, for example? And the answer is no. He lost all credibility and that breaks your ethics as a journalist.