NPR Features Bribed Pundit Armstrong Williams

Last Wednesday, NPR did a stupid thing. They let Armstrong Williams on their airwaves. They had him on the Political Junkie segment of Talk of the Nation to discuss the Republican "debate" at Morgan State University. I put "debate" in quotes because the frontrunners for the Republican presidential nomination skipped this debate. They skipped it because the debate was geared towards African-American voters and Republicans don't support African-Americans...

because African-Americans don't support Republicans...

because Republicans don't support African-Americans.

So NPR decided to have on African-American Republican Armstrong Williams. My, my, my, how quickly we forget:

From Wikipedia:

Selling the Bush Administration's "No Child Left Behind" policy

In January 2005, USA Today reported that documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that Williams had been paid $240,000 to promote the controversial No Child Left Behind Act ("NCLB") of the Bush administration. According to USA Today, Williams was hired "to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same."

As part of the agreement, Williams was required "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that aired during the show in 2004." The contract with Williams was part of a $1 million contract between the U.S. Department of Education and the public relations company, Ketchum Inc.

Melanie Sloan from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told USA Today that the contract may be illegal "because Congress has prohibited propaganda," or any sort of lobbying for programs funded by the government. "And it's propaganda," she said. Representative George Miller, a member of the House Education Committee, called the contract "a very questionable use of taxpayers' money" that is "probably illegal." Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington was founded in 2001 by Melanie Sloan, a former aide to Representative John Conyers (D-MI) and Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY).

After the USA Today revelations, Tribune Media Services terminated its syndication agreement with Williams. In a statement to Editor and Publisher (not available on its website), TMS stated: "[A]ccepting compensation in any form from an entity that serves as a subject of his weekly newspaper columns creates, at the very least, the appearance of a conflict of interest. Under these circumstances, readers may well ask themselves if the views expressed in his columns are his own, or whether they have been purchased by a third party."

What? NPR couldn't find an African-American Republican pundit who HADN'T BEEN BRIBED to promote a Bush policy?

I know there aren't a lot of African-American Republicans, but come on. Having on Armstrong Williams is completely disrespectful to African-Americans, pundits, and the NPR audience (but completely typical of Bush Republicans).