In New York, No One Can Hear Libs Steal

It all started a week ago....

What happens when the [Extreme] media, after years of seething over conservative talk radio's success, discover its alternative got diverted public funds, earmarked instead for inner-city youth and seniors?The answer, with one key exception: they pretend it didn't happen.

Yes, only because of a New York Daily News tidbit do we know that Bronx-based Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club nearly shut down major programs recently, because almost $500,000 in governmental grant money was instead diverted to Air America's liberal radio network.

A few things have changed since then. Such as that the amount of stolen grant money is closer to double this initial estimate, and the money-grubbing hypocrites are developing (or maintaining) awfully sticky fingers:

After promising to pay back a nearly $1 million "loan" it obtained from a South Bronx community group that services poor children, the liberal radio network Air America now says the organization will have to wait for its money.

"We are waiting for direction from investigators on how to proceed," an Air America official told the New York Post on Wednesday - referring to a New York City Department on Investigations probe into "inappropriate transcations" by the group in question, the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club.

Convenient excuse, isn't it? Too bad it doesn't hold water:

The news didn't sit well with Gloria Wise spokeswoman Matta Rose, who complained to the paper: "Air America reached a legal agreement to have the [Gloria Wise] loan repaid in full."...

After first denying any responsibility, the new owners of Air America promised the refund on Friday, in a statement still posted to the network's Web site:

"We are very disturbed that Air America Radio's good name [snicker] could be associated with a reduction in services for young people, which is why we agreed months ago to fully compensate the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club as a result of this transaction."

I've heard of Indian givers, but this is the first time I can recall a real-life example of an Indian taker.

That isn't the end of their two-facedness, either:

In its Friday statement, Air America said that because Gloria Wise is now under investigation, it was severing all ties to another Gloria Wise project, Camp Air America....

"We have offered any individuals who contributed to the camp as a result of Air America's promotion the option of a refund paid for by Air America Radio and the Club offered the alternative option of having their donation redirected to Kip's Bay Boys and Girls Club," the statement said, claiming that both Camp Air America and Gloria Wise had been closed.

But five days later, the Gloria Wise Web site is still up and running - and still touting Camp Air America while soliciting contributions in the name of the network.

Air Scamerica itself is just the head of the scandal snake. Michelle Malkin highlights the Black Klan connection:

Air America's flagship New York City station is housed on Park Avenue at WLIB-AM, owned by Inner City Broadcasting. The company shunted aside its black-themed talk format at WLIB to accommodate Air America. In return, Air America made room for a few minority radio hosts and also entered into lucrative lease management agreements with Inner City Broadcasting, which owns and operates 17 radio stations in five markets.

The co-founder of Inner City Broadcasting is New York media mogul Percy Sutton, best known as Malcolm X's lawyer and former Manhattan borough council president. Sutton helped bail [Al] Sharpton out after Sharpton was ordered to pay former Dutchess County prosecutor Steven Pagones over the Tawana Brawley race hoax. Sutton also raised and donated money for Sharpton's 2004 presidential bid. Sharpton still broadcasts a Sunday radio show on WLIB.

Sutton and Jackson are longtime friends and partners. Sutton served as Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign finance chairman. Jackson has lobbied on Sutton's behalf. Sutton sits on Jackson's Citizenship Education Fund. As original investors, Jackson and his wife reportedly hold more than 23,000 shares in Inner City Broadcasting.

To again quote Double-M, since I can't do any better, "If a conservative radio network had been entangled in a scam to steal from black children to line the pockets of wealthy white con artists, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would already be staging hunger strikes in protest." I think they'd be doing a lot worse than that, actually. Something along the lines of "NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE! NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!" Heck, look how the Left delighted in Rush Limbaugh's pain killer addiction couple of years back and are still trying to frame him for "doctor shopping" and other imaginary offenses.

Look also at all the Extreme Media attention that episode generated. There's none of that in the Air Scamerica caper. The New York Times has completely blacked it out, despite the sensational (and appalling) irony of self-styled defenders of the poor and downtrodden bilking nearly a million bucks from Alzheimers sufferers and underprivileged children. Ed Morrissey approaches this deafening bias socratically in his Weekly Standard column today, painstakingly setting up the equation and then delivering the punchline:

The mission of the [Extreme] media to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, to tell truth to power, and to hold the reverse Robin Hoods accountable for their malfeasance wouldn't depend on the politics of the criminals.

Would it?

Indeed it would. Though it's not as if that many people even know that Air Enron exists anyway, given their subterranean ratings. As Vince Russo used to say when running another struggling organization, "Any publicity is good publicity."

Not that the center-right blogosphere and our talk radio counterparts haven't been all over it, but only three newspapers - the New York Post and Sun and the Washington Times - have devoted word one to the scandal, and the networks have been just as selectively circumspect.

It reminds me of something I wrote back during the Eason Jordan "U.S. soldiers assassinate journalists" uproar, another scandal that the Extreme Media completely ignored:

ABC, CBS, NBC, NYT, WaPo, et al are not going to jump on this because they are ideologically sympatico, and because they know that next time it'll be one of them. They've "circled the wagons" out of common interest.

What we bloggers have to understand is that we are powerless to keep them from getting away with it. They WILL get away with it. We can't make Big Media act against its own self-interest. And we shouldn't expect them to out of a sense of fair play and professional ethics that they so clearly do not possess.

Rather, we should expect Big Media to do precisely what they're doing: betraying their own country and its interests, slandering traditional institutions that they hate, making a living from same, and quietly making their getaway when one of them gets caught.

The blogosphere is like a swarm of fireflies, and Big Media is like a grizzly bear. When the bear poops in the woods, we can gather around and collectively shine our light on the big steaming pile, but we can't clean it up, or force the bear to clean it up, or stop the bear from moving on to poop someplace else. And we sure as heck shouldn't expect that the bear will clean it up of his own accord.

We're pests, in other words. Nuisances. The bear might bat at us occasionally, but it knows it still has the upper hand.

Aside from the "betrayed their country" clause, the above applies pretty much verbatim to the Extreme Media's mausoleum silence about Air Scamerica. The one addition is that the "network" nobody knows despite that big, fat idiot Al Franken is the smirking gopher (think the one in Caddyshack) sitting on the grizzly bear's shoulder holding the stolen picnic basket.

It's a pretty good cinch that this scandal won't be brought up in Stuart Smalley's contemplated 2008 challenge to Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) . The good news is that Coleman won't need the help - and Franken will most likely still be gainfully unemployed.

Let Err Scumerica take the 875 grand out of AF's pay. After all, surely as virtuous a leftie as he will want to do something for the poor and downtrodden. Must be in his contract, somewhere.

UPDATE: Investors' Business Daily concurs.