Thaindian News

Washington, Mar 9 (ANI): A sting operation conducted by James O’Keefev has shown NPR executive Ron Schiller calling the tea party racist and the GOP anti-intellectual.

Schiller had made the comments to a hidden camera during his interaction with O’Keefev, when he called the tea party movement that propelled Republicans to huge congressional gains in the midterm elections “scary” and “seriously racist,” The Christian Science Monitor reports.

He further complained that the Republican Party was anti-intellectual, and that America did not have enough “educated, so-called elite” citizens, but the public opinion is driven by “this very large uneducated part of the population.”

“I mean, basically they … believe in sort of white, middle-America, gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people,” he said, adding that NPR would do better without federal funding.

The video had been secretly recorded by O’Keefe, the sting artist who took down ACORN in 2009.

NPR has reportedly renounced the comments of Schiller, who left NPR on Monday for unrelated reasons.

“We are appalled by the comments made by Ron Schiller in the video, which are contrary to what NPR stands for,” NPR spokeswoman Dana Davis Rehm said in a statement. (ANI)