Former NPR CEO Vivian Schiller resigned March 9 after former Vice President of Fundraising Ron Schiller (no relation) was recorded making disparaging remarks toward the Republican Party and the Tea Party movement.
While speaking with conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe, disguised as a wealthy Muslim donor, Schiller called the Tea Party “racist” and criticized the GOP for being “anti-intellectual.”
I understand conservatives not wanting to be called racist, and the veracity of his accusation is questionable. But looking at the situation in Wisconsin, I think calling the Tea Party anti-intellectual is right on the money.
In 2010, Wisconsinites elected a Republican governor, Scott Walker, and voted in a strong Republican majority in the state legislature. After running on a platform of fiscal responsibility, Republicans produced several bills designed to balance the state’s budget.
One of these bills targeted public sector pay and included a clause designed to strip many public unions of their collective bargaining rights. The public employees of Wisconsin did not take kindly to the idea of neutering their unions, which would threaten their ability to negotiate their pay or pensions in the future.
Wisconsin Republicans claimed their goal was to balance the budget, and public employees were just upset about the bill reducing their pay. However, in the first days of their protest, public employees accepted the financial provisions and only requested their unions retain the right to collectively bargain.
Before the bill could come to a vote, Wisconsin’s Democratic senators fled the state so Republicans would not have the necessary quorum to approve a budget.
Last Wednesday, the same day Schiller resigned from NPR, Wisconsin Republicans separated the anti-union provision from the state’s budget proposal and passed it.
If the protesters accepting the financial provision of the bill and passing the union-busting legislation completely separate from the budget weren’t enough to prove this bill isn’t about balancing the budget, a comment from the Wisconsin State Senate majority leader sure is.
“If we win this battle and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you’re going to find is President Obama is going to have a much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin,” Wisconsin state Sen. Scott Fitzgerald said in an interview with Fox News.
Fitzgerald is referring to the efforts by Wisconsinites to recall several of the newly elected state senators, which would result in the union legislation being repealed.
Fitzgerald knows unions contribute a lot of money to the Democratic Party and stripping their power to bargain will hurt Obama and other Democrats in the future.
To me, the most troubling aspect of the events in Wisconsin is the way Fox News, as well as the rest of the conservative media, is portraying public employees, especially teachers.
Before Wisconsin, teachers were praised as heroes for doing an incredibly difficult, often thankless job for a low salary, but in the last few weeks I’ve heard dozens of conservative pundits criticize how much teachers in Wisconsin are paid.
They laugh about how teachers don’t work as hard as the rest of us because they get off at 2:30 p.m., not mentioning the countless hours spent after class and on the weekends preparing lessons, dealing with students and parents and grading stacks of tests.
Fox has also cluttered the issue by including thousands of dollars worth of pensions and benefits in the numbers they compare to average private sector salaries, which don’t report those values. Not to mention, all teachers hold at least one degree, if not an advanced degree, while the average salary in Wisconsin includes every high school dropout making minimum wage flipping burgers.
Teachers work hard for the money they make, and anyone who says otherwise really is anti-intellectual.
Andrew Shockey is a 20-year-old biological engineering sophomore from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_Ashockey.
 
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Contact Andrew Shockey at [email protected]