So James O'Keefe, the lying criminal scam artist whose deceptively edited videos -- along with a complicit media who swallowed them whole -- brought down ACORN has scored another scalp with his latest hit job targeting NPR: Not only has Ron Schiller, the fool caught on video being way too frank with strangers, stepped down in advance of his planned departure, but NPR CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation) is out, too.
Not a bad day's work for a lying criminal scam artist.
Naturally, Fox News was all over the story, with every one of its evening-show hosts -- O'Reilly, Hannity, and Van Susteren -- featuring segments on the video. Of course, there was only scant mention of the fact that O'Keefe was a lying criminal scam artist whose track record of deceptive editing was well-established. As Ellen at Newshounds puts it: "Who Cares If James O'Keefe Is A Lying Creep With A Criminal History? He Hates ACORN And NPR, So What's Not To Like If You're Fox News?"
But really, what can you expect from a news organization with such a sterling record of running like scared sheep whenever conservatives get out their Full Umbrage schtick and run at them and their federal funding with it? Sure enough, the first people to toss Schiller under the bus were his colleagues at NPR.
No doubt at Fox this will be spun as a defeat of a "liberal" media organ, except that NPR is anything but a liberal entity. They specialize in classic spineless-Beltway-liberal behavior -- hippie-bashing, conventional-wisdom genuflection, he-said-she-said 'balance' in its reporting and the-left-does-it-too false equivocation. It's why Juan Williams managed to hang on as long as he did, and why Mara Liasson is still there.
And in this case, it's pretty funny. As the WaPo's Stephen Stromberg noted, it's hard to see exactly what it is we're supposed to be outraged about.
After all, what has the Fox folks outraged were his comments about the Tea Party -- which actually were perfectly defensible renditions of cold fact. Are Greta and Byron really trying to pretend that there weren't Tea Partiers bringing loaded weapons out to public rallies? Really?
All in all, it's a classic one-day non-story. Hope the Fox reporters enjoy their bit of breathlessness. Who knows what piece of recycled propaganda from lying criminal artists they'll treat as legitimate news next.
