Click here to view the O'Keefe video.
In a press release, the Tea Party Express fires back at the NPR static:
Tea Party Express Chairman Amy Kremer issued the following statement in response to comments made by NPR executive Ron Schiller that smeared the tea party movement:Note: NPR says Schiller had left the network before the video release. But an apology is definitely still in order--from Schiller and NPR.
We were extremely disturbed to hear Ron Schiller, the Senior Vice President for Development of National Public Radio, spew baseless, hateful fiction about the tea party movement today, calling us weird, Evangelical, Islamaphobic, and gun-toting racists.
The tea party is composed of hardworking American citizens of every race, creed, and religion, whose taxes help fund NPR and pay Schiller's salary. I can't think of a time in recent history when a group of Americans have been so vilified and denigrated by a person who is supposedly serving the public's interest. Schiller's ignorant comments lend overwhelming evidence for the need to stop all federal funding of NPR.
Even more outrageous was Mr. Schiller's fact-challenged claim regarding the education and intelligence of tea partiers: "In my personal opinion, liberals today might be more educated, fair and balanced than conservatives." This sweeping, unenlightened generalization is abjectly false, according to a New York Times poll conducted last year, in which tea partiers were found to be better educated than the general public.
Mr. Schiller shows blatant disrespect bordering on contempt for a constitutionally-based political movement. It is untenable that he would express such ignorant views in public or in private. We at the Tea Party Express demand an immediate apology from Mr. Schiller, and will gladly welcome his departure from NPR. Regardless of Mr. Schiller's future employment prospects, we highly recommend he undergo sensitivity training to discover why he is prone to express such unenlightened rhetoric.
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2 comments:
This sounds like a statement written by one high school student government officer to another
This is a skewed and disingenuous post. Schiller gave the GOP better ammunition than you cite here by stating outright it would be better if NPR received no federal funding. And not sure what the parenthesis questioning Schiller's position at NPR is about. He was a Senior Vice President who had announced his resignation but was still on the job, representing NPR to potential donors.
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