These notes are from March 2011.

Political pranksterism has seen a rise in the past three weeks. On February 22nd, a call between the editor of the Buffalo Beast, purporting to be David Koch, and Governor of Wisconsin Scott Walker, surfaced on the internet.

On March 8th, James O'Keefe's "Project Veritas" released a sting video of NPR VP of Giving Ron Schiller and

"I'll talk personally instead of wearing my NPR hat," Schiller says, before describing the "anti-intellectual" turn in Republican fearmongering and Fox News backlash. In how many campaigns in 2010 and in 2008 did we hear Republican nominees decry "liberal elitism"? This is what Schiller gets at when he discusses how universities are now considered liberal just by virtue of serving the intellect. In O'Keefe's video, the accompanying text highlights "liberal because it's intellectual," as if Schiller is saying that all support for critical thinking is inherently liberal. If one watches the tape, you can see Schiller make air-quotes, and he is clearly disagreeing with this 1:1 association of academics with liberalism. This is the state of affairs as rendered by Fox News' supposedly populist rhetoric for the "everyday" person, against education but not against the money that the "conservative elite" has earned through capitalist development, union busting, and free market exploitation.

The undercover video that depicts Ron Schiller calling the Tea Party "xenophobic" and "seriously racist people" does not give us any new information. James O'Keefe's goal is to shut down public funding for supposedly liberal causes.

Conservative activism through video. Recording the biases of corporate executives within a government-funded, supposedly objective journalism organ. But NPR is not the liberal organ of news the way that Fox News vociferously champions a right-wing agenda.

O'Keefe is trying to make change, even if we don't find ourselves on his side, through the dissemination of damning and irrefutable video evidence. Yet it can be refuted because of its presentation: through editing. Words taken out of context? Hardly. But words re-presented as insider chatting.

When Juan Williams was removed from NPR, he also said some hateful things about Muslims.


O'Keefe's expose of ACORN led Congress to defund the community organizing group. Will this clip have the same effect?

Activism in Egypt?

The news is not what's breaking, it's the damning evidence. He could say whatever he'd like in his personal life. He could not say such things on stage or publicly as a representative of NPR. I suppose this is a work-related conversation and thus he would represent the organization.

This event says much more about the echo of media than it does regarding news or analysis.

Yes Men

Prank call to Scott Walker!

It's impressive that within 24 hours of video footage of a VP of corporate giving -- in no way a journalist who is supposed to remain objective -- NPR fires its chief executive. In the wake of the prank call to Scott Walker, in which a fake David Koch asks him if he thought of planting violent protesters in the crowd. "Yeah, we thought of that," Walker said. A man whose job is to funnel money to NPR but who plays no role in content creation. A Governor of a state who considered hiring Mubarak-like thugs to assault his citizens.