It’s a tough time for NPR. First they fired Juan Williams in a sloppy and public fashion, and then CEO Vivian Schiller up and resigned after James O’Keefe (the man who played a pimp in the ACORN offices) taped a high-level NPR fund-raiser disparaging the Tea Party. If you can imagine.

Okay, the exec in question, Ronald Schiller (no relation to Vivian) made a point of saying he was stating his own opinion when he told O’Keefe’s actors (masquerading emissaries from a pro-Muslim group looking to give the network a million dollars) that the Tea Party had hijacked the Republican party and they were racist. The second point seems demonstrably true, but certainly defensible as opinion, while the first just seems slightly inaccurate. If the GOP has been hijacked it’s been a rather willing hijacking (think of the kidnapping in The Big Lebowski) from a pummeled party looking for some mojo.

All of this comes as some of those same GOP members are looking hard at the amount of money the federal government gives public broadcasting, PBS and NPR, annually $420M last year. And the irony is that, as a regular NPR listener (and subscriber) I think they actually try harder to be fair and balanced in their news coverage than almost any news organization out there, the New York Times included. Seldom do I hear a  report of anything political that does not strive to give equal weight and time to the conservative position, and never do I hear the reporters (not guests or commentators mind you) betray a bias. For that you go to Fox or MSNBC.

Which is exactly why NPR is so necessary and so in need of support (including yours, if you haven’t coughed up lately). As much as my personal political beliefs skews to the left, I get tired of the MSNBC way very quickly, and was kind of relieved when Olbermann finally left. He was like that crazy uncle of your friend’s in high school, who you dreaded being in the car with  because of how he drove when he was yelling at you about Cambodia or whatever. And with the leg-twitching and eye-popping, he started to seem like a truly crazy uncle…

The slightly smug I-went-to-a-better-school-than-you voices of NPR’s announcers notwithstanding, their news coverage trends toward topics beyond the beltway and the bicoastal regions — and has been, for instance, refreshingly Charlie Sheen free in recent weeks. It would be a shame if they lost the federal money due to this — but it’s about two percent of their budget and frankly could do a lot for fundraising efforts. Why I can hear the pitch right now…