Vivian Schiller, the CEO of National Public Radio, has resigned along with a fellow executive who called Tea Party members xenophobes and racists.
Schiller, NPR reports, has left the network effective immediately.
"The Board accepted her resignation with understanding, genuine regret, and great respect for her leadership of NPR these past two years," board chairman Dave Edwards said in a statement. "I recognize the magnitude of this news and that it comes on top of what has been a traumatic period for NPR and the larger public radio community."
Ron Schiller (no relation to Vivian), president of the network's foundation and the senior vice president for development, resigned on Tuesday after a video that shows him making the remarks went viral on the Internet earlier that day.
Ron Schiller was caught by James O'Keefe, who achieved notoriety after bringing down the left-wing ACORN organization with secretly videotapes. O'Keefe's Project Veritas set up the undercover operation.
In this case, two of O'Keefe's undercover operatives, posing as representatives of a front for the Muslim Brotherhood, met with Ron Schiller and Betsy Liley, another NPR executive. Both officials made remarkably stupid comments.
Schiller even told the two the alleged Muslims philanthropists, who suggested a large donation to NPR, that the leftist network would be better off without public funding. That statement directly contradicted what Vivian Schiller said at a press conference on Monday.
Tea Partiers Are "Racists"
The trouble for the two Schillers and Liley began when Ron Schiller and Liley ate lunch on Feb. 22 with representatives from the fictitious Muslim Education Action Center. Two officials of the non-existent group, Ibrahim Kassam and Amir Malik, offered $5 million of Muslim money to NPR.
During the lunch, Schiller and Liley expounded on their left-wing views and explained what they really thought about conservatives and the United States of America. Schiller's outrageous comments included these:
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. …
[The Tea Party is not] 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.
When Malik complained that the Muslim Brotherhood was demonized and "looked down on as horrible, terrible people, when they are simply just trying to help," Liley offered her opinion of the United States: “Sadly, our history from the record … shows that we have done this before. We put Japanese-Americans in camps in World War II.”
As well, Kassam said that NPR so favorably presents the Palestinian point of view in its reporting that Muslims call it “National Palestinian Radio.” The remark elicited a laugh from Schiller, and the following comment from Liley: “Oh really? That’s good. I like that.”
Neither of the news executives seemed to know anything about the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a radical Islamist organization with ties to terrorists, and proclaims as its goal "is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization … so that … God's religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions."
MEAC, the phony educational outfit for which Project Veritas created a website, claimed it wants to spread Sharia law across the globe, in accordance with the Brotherhood's plan for global hegemony.
Islam requires that every Muslim observe and live under Divine Law, yet many cultures are not receptive to this life. Many Muslims are prohibited from governing themselves under the principles of their own faith. We must combat intolerance to spread acceptance of Sharia across the world.
NPR Chief Aghast
Vivian Schiller, NPR's CEO, was aghast at Ron Schiller's remarks. She had just given a talk at the National Press Club, telling her audience the network does not have a liberal bias and that without federal funding, NPR would be crippled.
Vivian Schiller told the New York Times her underling's remarks "have no basis in fact."
"Eliminating federal funding would profoundly damage public broadcasting as a whole. It is impossible to separate NPR and the stations; we are one and the same," she said.
Ms. Schiller, a former executive at the New York Times, hurried back to Washington from New York to deal with the fallout from the video. “Everybody’s upset, I’m upset, who wouldn’t be upset?” she said.
Asked how she would go about the damage control, Ms. Schiller said, “We tell our story.” But she added: “I made a speech to the National Press Club yesterday telling what NPR was all about. I was not anticipating I would have to be defending the organization today.”
Asked if Mr. Schiller’s comments undercut the arguments in favor of continued federal financing, Ms. Schiller said: “They have no basis in fact. Eliminating federal funding would profoundly damage public broadcasting as a whole. It is impossible to separate NPR and the stations; we are one and the same.”
Ron Schiller apologized for his imprudent remarks, but his resignation doesn't affect him. He was planning to leave NPR, the Washington Post reported, to work for The Aspen Institute, a leftist think tank.
NPR placed Liley on administrative leave.
The network said it was "appalled" at Ron Schiller's remarks.
Related articles: NPR Exec: Tea Party Is "Seriously Racist"
NPR CEO Forced Out; Funding In Danger
Photo: In this March 24, 2009 file photo, President and CEO of NPR Vivian Schiller appears on The Kalb Report at the National Press Club in Washington: AP Images
