Schillercide

"Schillercide" is what Jack Shafer calls the massacre at NPR, which I'm following from an Amman airport transit lounge. I'm the only person in the Amman airport, I think, who cares about self-immolating American public radio executives.

This is a horrible story, and not because this silly man from NPR kept on chewing while his fake donors told him they represented an organization founded by Muslim Brothers, or that he seemed to agree with the anti-Zionist invective they spewed. What is horrible about this is that an NPR executive has lost his job (and his next job, apparently) after falling victim to a truly pernicious sting operation run by a morally-deranged individual. Schiller is being punished (everyone at NPR named Schiller is being punished, in fact) for saying a couple of dumbass things in private, and nodding in agreement to another set of dumbass statements. How about we turn this story around, and assert that these types of sting operations are what is morally egregious here; that humans often say stupid things; and that a person's life should not be destroyed for making the sort of statements made in the Schiller entrapment. If we can't acknowledge that the Court of Reputation Restoration should throw out the tainted evidence in this case, let us acknowledge, at least, that Washington is about to become even more boring than it already is, a place where no one ever says anything interesting to anyone, in public or private, for fear of entrapment and subsequent death-by-media.