Thursday, July 5, 2012

Hissing into the wind, again!




If you have visited the Blue Board since midnight, July 4th, you will have noticed that the usual disrupters, the ones most responsible for all but putting that forum out of business, are up to their old tricks again. It didn't take much to get them riled up, just a suggestion from yours truly that doesn't sit well. You see, I dared to disagree with Frank LeFever's suggestion that WBAI hand out promotional leaflets at a OWS-affiliated protest that the station has nothing to do with. Here's a direct link to an exchange that ensued:

My suggestion is just that, a suggestion—it expresses my thoughts on the matter and, if anything, invites pro or con comments. Instead, the old trolls assembled and (some posting anonymously, others under various IP addresses, to give the illusion of number). The malcontents are Pamela Somers (the original hare-brained poster who followed me to that board 2 years ago), her boyfriend, Robert Knight (who tries to hide his identity, but isn't very good at that, either), Frank LeFever (who is miffed whenever anyone disagrees with his pedestrian "ideas" and, regrettably serves on a WBAI advisory board), Wendy (a foul-mouthed, singularly naïve out of state woman who doesn't even listen to the station), Pam Cooke (a literate woman with a Jekyll and Hyde strain who could contribute positively, but chooses not to, and a couple of anonymous posters with a recent history of resenting any attempt to repair WBAI's tarnished image. These are old hissing snakes that the majority of us were happy to see either straighten up or wriggle out of the pit.

They not only want WBAIt to stay as flawed as it has become (with minor, self-serving adjustments), they feel that it ought to be promoted just the way it is. I regard that approach as an act of folly—something akin to selling a carton of sour milk and promising that the next one will be fresh.

Of course, I don't expect everyone to agree with my thoughts on this, but posting trollish nonsense (here's an example) is not only infantile but also destructive as far as the Blue Board is concerned. Why not welcome the fact that the old forum has been given another chance? I count myself among those who thank R. Paul for taking on what—as we 
now so sadly see—is a thankless task.

It has been a little more than two years since I became aware of the low levels to which WBAI has been taken, intellectually and professionally. When I first voiced my concern, Pamela Somers revealed her bias towards anyone who has the audacity to find Robert Knight's work and personality less than perfect. She hadn't been pouncing long before a couple of other trolls (including Knight) emerged from the cracks. She did her best to belittle my  earlier contributions as WBAI's GM and went so far as to dig up "dirt" where none existed. That did not deter her or Knight, they simply made up what they could not find—slanderous, baseless fantasies inspired by supermarket tabloids. You can hear Knight (who fancies himself as being Pacifica's "investigative-reporter"-in-chief) in action at this link to an earlier post: Secret Agent Albertson.

I have to wonder why someone like Frank LeFever, who serves on a WBAI advisory board, waited all this time before voicing his disapproval of fund raising "premiums" such as the double helix water. It was just as fraudulent when Kathy Davis and Tony Bates introduced it, a couple of marathons ago, but he did nothing about it. Absentee GM Reimers could have stopped it, but he gave it the nod instead, and this board member likes to brag about his zero degree of separation from the GM. Given his direct involvement with WBAI and his mingling privileges, I find his failure to act particularly egregious.

If I was so off base in my observations, why could they not come up with a valid argument against them? I believe their time would be better spent arguing that point in a civil, reasoned manner. They somehow cannot see the folly of trying to preserve rather than improve a failed, nearly bankrupt radio station.

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