In the course of a lunch at Café Milano, Schiller presents himself as a liberal who thinks the tea party is "scary" and that there are not enough Muslim voices on the American airwaves, nodding as his lunchmates say they are glad NPR allows Hamas's and Hezbollah's views to be heard.

He claims the Republican party has been "hijacked" by the tea party, and when one of his lunch partner's suggests that they're "radical, racist, Islamaphobic, Tea Party people," Schiller says, they're "not just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it's scary. They're seriously racist, racist people."

He also veers pretty wildly off the script that NPR CEO Vivian Schiller clung to during her address to the National Press Club Monday, saying "it is very clear that in the long run we would be better off without federal funding." Vivian Schiller (no relation) was very careful to make the point Monday that while federal funding is only about 10 percent of NPR's budget, it's essential.