If the Teabag Fits …

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Here’s what Wingnut World is up in arms about today —

A man who appears to be a National Public Radio senior executive, Ron Schiller, has been captured on camera savaging conservatives and the Tea Party movement.

“The current Republican Party, particularly the Tea Party, is fanatically involved in people’s personal lives and very fundamental Christian – I wouldn’t even call it Christian. It’s this weird evangelical kind of move,” declared Schiller, the head of NPR’s nonprofit foundation, who last week announced his departure for the Aspen Institute.

I had just read a piece at Salon by Steve Kornacki about how the Republican Party has morphed into a branch of evangelical fundamentalism. Kornacki compares a Republican presidential candidate forum held in Iowa recently with videos of similar functions held in Iowa 20 years ago. Of the recent event, Kornacki said,

The five candidates who did show up — Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Buddy Roemer, and Herman Cain — peppered their speeches with references to God and morality, denouncing abortion and gay marriage (and, of course, disparaging President Obama). As the Los Angeles Times put it, “the candidates essentially pledged the same thing, with a few variations in language and emphasis.” By now, we’re more than accustomed to national Republican politicians making these kinds of appeals to these kinds of audiences.

If you compare that with Republican presidential candidate rhetoric of just two decades ago, leading up to the 1988 elections, the difference is pronounced. And at that point, as most of us remember, the Christian Right already was a big factor in politics. But it hadn’t completely consumed the GOP. Back then, it still was possible for a major Republication politician to make campaign speeches and talk about stuff other than God, morality, abortion, etc.

As John Cole wrote, everything Ron Schiller said “should be met with a resounding -‘No shit.'”

Naturally, Ron Schiller was captured on a James O’Keefe video —

In a new video released Tuesday morning by conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe, Schiller and Betsy Liley, NPR’s director of institutional giving, are seen meeting with two men who, unbeknownst to the NPR executives, are posing as members of a Muslim Brotherhood front group. The men, who identified themselves as Ibrahim Kasaam and Amir Malik from the fictitious Muslim Education Action Center (MEAC) Trust, met with Schiller and Liley at Café Milano, a well-known Georgetown restaurant, and explained their desire to give up to $5 million to NPR because, “the Zionist coverage is quite substantial elsewhere.”

— which makes me suspect Schiller isn’t exactly the brightest bulb in the lamp store. I’m sure the video was subjected to O’Keefe’s famously creative editing, but this has “entrapment” written all over it. But then, the teabaggers are upset over this —

On the tapes, Schiller wastes little time before attacking conservatives. The Republican Party, Schiller says, has been “hijacked by this group.” The man posing as Malik finishes the sentence by adding, “the radical, racist, Islamaphobic, Tea Party people.” Schiller agrees and intensifies the criticism, saying that the Tea Party people aren’t “just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.”

All together now — ‘No shit.’ See also (and I still can’t believe I’m saying this) Charles Johnson.

And — Peter King, anyone? Steve Benen says the GOP is divided over Rep. King’s over-the-top-Islamophobic witch-hunt hearings, adding, “Just as aside, we now have House Republicans targeting abortion rights, access to health care, Muslim Americans, and domestic priorities, but the elusive GOP plan to create jobs is still nowhere to be seen.”

14 thoughts on “If the Teabag Fits …”

  1. Re: Charles Johnson…. I might be mistaken, but didn’t O’Keefe have his felony charge dropped down to a misdemeanor? I remember being disappointed because O’keefe managed to get off easy for his stupid “Mission Impossible” scheme in a Federal Building. I hope I’m wrong and that O’keefe is a convicted felon because I can’t stand the idea that that little creep should continue on without some meaningful penalty for his deceitfulness.

    I watched the video before I read the accompanying story and when I saw Project Veirtas in the credits…I checked back to see that O’keefe had his hand in it. What a sleaze bucket!

    • I don’t pay enough attention to Odious Toad O’Keefe to know what his criminal record is. Someday somebody ought to sue him out of his socks.

    • I’d say Veritas requiescant in pace. And I’m necessarily referring to O’Keefe’s organization with the Veritas.

  3. Ah, the reason for the continuation and excalation of the battle against NPR.
    Or, the tale of “Hears Voices Through the Air” as he gets a lesson from his Nataive American superiour:

    “Many, many moons ago, “Hears Voices Through the Air,” something called NPR may have spoken more to you for your left ear to hear than your right.

    But lately, over the last 10 sun cycles, it has more for your right ear to hear than your left, because cowardly warriors from the right complained to the Great White Father that their voices were merely whispers unto the people, and not the shouts that they hoped for them to hear. All of this despite that these cunning runts from the right could print, and had almost the rest of the waves in the air that all people could see and hear.

    And they wished that the Great White Father would step in and allow their code-talkers from the right more voices.

    And the Great White Father said let it be so.

    And now, the FOX is allowed to scream and moan and cry and rule the roost, and the chickenhawk is still allowed to rule the air crying for all but them to go to war, war, war, after they ducked battle in their own time.
    The lowely doves have no voice any longer, except on one wave in the air for a couple of hours. That too, soon may disappear.

    And so, “Hears Voices Through the Air,” you are left deaf in your left ear for most of the day, and may now grow more deaf there forever. While the dumb from the right will be allowed to yell louder, and more often, even taking over that wave of air that you used to hear in your left ear.

    And as the “Great Spirit” might put it, “We are all of us, well and truly fucked! And not in the way we may wish, like the bee flitting from flower to flower, or getting a really good freak on, but fucked like a young deer going between the great black ribbons in the valley to nibble at the flowers in the middle, only to get fucking flattened by a fucking 18 wheel semi (if 18 wheels is a semi, wtf is a whole?), driven by an ignorant, white, racist, xenophobic MFing cracker in a Caterpiller hat and listening to country music or some doughy, stupid white buffalo named ‘Rush,’ like he could move faster than what we once knew as glaciers.

    This is the way of not of OUR people, “Hears Voices Through the Air,” but it is the way of all of those around us since the assholes who speak to you in your right ear took us all along for a ride not into the mountains, but off a cliff.

    “Hears Voices Through the Air,” the Great Spirit laughs at all of us since we have forsaken that spirit, and gives us a Justice Thomas, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, wedgie’s, allows robo-calls, and damns us to a world where it is hot, there is too much sun, too much water, too much Charlie Sheen, and Al Gore is not only divorced, but still fat.

    So it is written, “Hears Voices Through the Air:”
    Grin and bear it. For foul is fair, and fair is now foul. And you will no longer hear or see any balance in the air. What’s right isn’t always right. But if they can pay for it, it’s hard to prove it ain’t.
    Go with peace, “Hears Voices Through the Air.” And be careful crossing those black ribbons in the valley’s.” If the whole don’t kill ‘ya, the semi will.

  4. I wish I were someone with the keen historical eye of a Shelby Foote or Simon Schama. I could write a history of the extraordinary tale of our “interesting” times.

    As it is, I am alas, just an ordinary fellow trying to make sense of it all. I can see how fear and anger are deliberately encouraged and amplified to create confusion and distraction so that the kleptocrats can build their game to the next level. But, I wish I could understand how people like the teabaggers seem to become almost addicted to their anger and fear, like someone mainlining cocaine, such a rush. Anger and fear are their natural state. If there were nothing to be outraged about, (the chance of which is vanishingly close to zero) it would be necessary to invent something, and Fox “news” and a host of others are so handy at obliging.

    Perhaps there is a tipping point of dumbassery and we have long since passed it. All that remains is to tumble into the stew of ignorance, fear and selfishness. We need a new Dante to describe this and sadly, I am no Dante.

    But, on the other hand, I make a pretty good “Manhattan”.

  5. I’m still trying to figure out why people are upset about what this guy said. Can someone explain it to me? Not that I’d trust an O’Keefe video for a second, but even if it were absolutely faithful documentation of this guy expressing his opinion in private, so what?

    It’s not like he’s an elected Governor like Scott Walker talking to “David Koch”, right?

    Is this just the same old “no one is allowed to acknowledge reality when it makes the right-wing look bad” rule?

    • Is this just the same old “no one is allowed to acknowledge reality when it makes the right-wing look bad” rule?

      Yeah, pretty much.

  6. Can someone explain it to me?

    biggerbox…. I’m sure you already know that teabaggers can’t be explained comprehensively because there are too many diverse agendas operating under the same banner. So I guess that the best that can be said is that if any perceived negative comment referencing the teabaggers is made to one it is an affront to them all. Personally I couldn’t agree more with Schiller’s assessment of the baggers. Racism and xenophobia has risen to the surface as a characteristic that can be overwhelmingly attributed to the teabagger movement even though some teabaggers might not be racist or xenophobic. Isn’t it strange how they get all offended by being called gun toting while they reveled in the public display of their second amendment rights. Their gun toting came back to bite them.

    Keep your powder dry!!!! 🙂

  7. I hope Ron Schiller has the courage to stick by his comments and not backpedal, although you’d think someone of his rank would know better than to open his yap the way he did – entrapment indeed.

    And is anybody really surprised? I’ve heard other Republicans say much the same thing, shaking their heads over the state of their party.

    And O’Keefe, he’s still playing dress-up? I thought they took away all editing software and all sharp objects from that little weasel.

  8. I glimpsed a photo of Peter King on HuffPo this morning, and wondered why they were doing a story on “Walternate” from Fringe. We all know he’s an embittered, worlds-destroying maniac, what else is there to say?

  10. Swami and biggerbox – As I understand it, the Tea Party so-called movement began as a protest to TARP, specifically the resentment against rewarding Wall Street (with tax-payer money) for its crimes. It was only when the likes of the Koch brothers saw an angry-against-the-government mob, infiltrated it and planted its agenda that the Tea Party became what it is today – an unfathomable conglomeration of just-plain-pissed off people.

    That said. The latest Gingrich protestations on the “immorality” of the national debt/deficit can only be designed with the hope of diverting attention from his less-than-stellar record, read lack of, personal morality – his reputation as a lothario is well-documented and might not sit too well with the Moral Majority? (Watching “Moral” come out of his mouth, though directed at the debt was still a dada moment.)

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