NPR Exec Who Fired Juan Williams Resigns After Being Turned Into Scapegoat

After the controversy behind the firing of Juan Williams, federal funding of National Public Radio has been severely threatened. In order to save face, NPR has made the executive that fired Mr. Williams into a scapegoat and has accepted her resignation:

Ellen Weiss, the senior vice president of news at National Public Radio whose quick firing of senior news analyst Juan Williams last October ignited a political and public relations firestorm, resigned Thursday.

Her resignation comes at the conclusion of an internal investigation into the firing conducted by the NPR board and the outside law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

Ms. Weiss’s quick dismissal of Mr. Williams, by phone, after he made controversial comments about Muslims on Fox News Channel, was found by the investigation to be legal under terms of his contract. But the way it was handled “became a flash point” in the debate that ensued, said NPR media reporter David Folkenflik. In the resulting political uproar, some Republicans called for an end to federal financing of NPR.

Even though the probe showed that she was well within her rights to fire him, they still decided to withhold her bonus for 2010 because of how the whole situation was mishandled and because of the firestorm that was created as a result.

She needed to step down because her actions is being used as a talking point by those who are wanting to cut NPR's federal funding.

However, NPR is still very susceptible to getting their federal funding cut, despite Ms. Weiss stepping down. The political winds in DC is blowing towards cutting frivolous discretionary spending because of the huge deficits and debt, and NPR is just too perfect of a target for the Republicans in Congress to ignore. Also, since NPR can survive on its own without the funding, so, Democrats will be hard-pressed to come up with an argument good enough to save it, especially if they don't want to considered too liberal or a free-spender, and in this era of TEA Party, that is the last thing that red-state Democrats will want to be labeled as. They won't survive 2012, if they are considered a "free-spending, big government liberal" by the voters.

Correction: I do apologize. I missed that it was Vivia Schiller, NPR president, not Ms. Weiss that had her bonus held back.

The Obligatory “War On Christmas” Post: NPR’s Totenberg: I’m Sorry, I’m Going To Say the Word Christmas?

Sorry, this is a bit late. It came out this morning, but I was out and about all day running errands. I couldn’t pull the embed off of my phone, and I didn’t want to post this without the video. So, here it is.

Apparently, Nina Totenburg was so embarrassed about even saying the word Christmas that she had to promptly apologize for saying the word before she even said it:

“I was at – forgive the expression – a Christmas party,” NPR reporter Nina Totenberg interjected on Inside Washington in the weekend’s oddest cautionary separation from a common description for a common event, seemingly embarrassed to invoke any religious terminology for Christmas. She didn’t say what she’d prefer for parties this time of the year to be named. “Winter solstice party”? Just plain old “holiday party”? Or a “seasonal gathering”?

Ridiculous.

Here’s the transcript:

I want to say one thing about the budget that didn’t get passed, the omnibus bill. You know, we talk a lot about – we just passed this huge tax cut in part because business said, you know, we have to plan, we have to know what kind of tax cuts we have. Well, these agencies, including the Defense Department, don’t know how much money they’ve got and for what. And I was at – forgive the expression – a Christmas party at the Department of Justice and people actually were really worried about this. These are law enforcement people don’t know exactly what kind of money they can spend for what.

Ed Morrissey pointed out that there was just as ridiculous gaffe behind the more obvious one that deserves some attention, too:

Really? They don’t know what laws to enforce based on continuing resolutions? The CRs provide the ultimate in continuity; by locking in the previous year’s budget plan, they maintain the status quo. In government, it doesn’t get more consistent than a CR.

And for a reporter, Totenberg has trouble getting her facts straight. Congress didn’t pass a tax cut. They passed a bill that maintains the current tax rates in the same status they’ve been for seven years. In fact, taxes went up because of the renewed estate tax; it just didn’t go up as much as Democrats wanted. It’s only a tax cut if government feels that they were owed that tax increase and the money it would have taken out of the pockets of citizens above what they have already taken over the last decade.

The DoD and DoJ will get ample notice about the remainder of this year’s budgets when the next session of Congress sits down to develop the budget that Democrats deliberately avoided producing. That won’t likely include more money for more regulatory efforts at the DoJ, and will almost certainly mean less money for some of the regulatory efforts they’re already engaged in performing. For that, Totenberg and the DoJ can thank the outgoing Democratic majority that punted on the budget all year long despite having large majorities in the House and Senate and one of their own in the White House.

This is the woman that NPR decided to keep on, after wishing Jesse Helms and his family catch HIV, but they had to fire Juan Williams. Really? Really? She needs to pay more attention to the facts than worrying about whether or not she might offend someone by admitting that there’s this holiday that we call Christmas.