Knight's nightmare?

Given his obsession with bringing President Obama down (sometimes by making things up, nearly always by exaggerating) I wondered how Robert Knight was going to react to the Democratic National Convention. It was being covered by Pacifica, so it was natural to conclude that the "chief national correspondent"/"network anchor" (and whatever else he calls himself) would feature prominently in the coverage. The question on my mind was: will we hear him gasp for breath as one pro-Obama speech after another pours forth from the podium?

Here's what I heard on the air last night. No mention of Knight or WBAI in the intro. His anti-Obama rant fell on deaf ears the night before, so might they have decided to exclude WBAI altogether this time around? They should have, but didn't; engineer (and he is so much more) Max Schmid eventually popped in what sounded like a pre-recorded, scripted screed by Knight, who—again—was neither present in mind nor body, so what we heard was an off-the-rack commentary on protests in the street and surveillance above.

Knight likened the Charlotte DNC to the one that took place in Chicago in 1968, a shameful event in America's political history that was dominated by Mayor Richard Daley and his police troopers. Knight's analogy was absurd, but fully in keeping with his practice of coloring news events with broad strokes of his own biases. It was a misleading, irrelevant prepared statement that I'm sure listeners dismissed as readily as did Knights own on-the-spot colleagues.

What rant will Knight run tonight, or Thursday, when the man he hates so much takes the spotlight and produces the inevitable deafening positive response? I am not saying that Mr. Obama is without fault—far from it—but neither is he Ares' gift to man.

If Mr. Hatzis harbors any doubt about Robert Knight's suitability to be on WBAI's air for five and a half hours a week (salaried, at that), he should pay close attention to how he wastes the station's time and money to spew out his predictable myopic personal agenda. There is no place for personal vengeance in news coverage. This is not what a Pacifica station should be funding and airing—it is a sure-fire audience repellant.

As for my general impression of last night's Pacifica convention coverage, I did not find it as curiously refreshing as it had been the night before, but neither was it a disaster. I realize that not every speech can be aired from beginning to end if there is to be commentary, but I think some of the speakers (including Tammy Duckworth, Deval Patrick, and Lily Ledbetter) ought not to have been interrupted with chatter.

P.S. Someone should tell moderator Margaret Prescott that it was Mussolini, not Hitler, who made the trains "run on time."

DNC Knight III - Sept. 5, 2012

Knight was not even mention on last night's Pacifica DNC coverage. which was a wise but nevertheless odd decision. Of course, it was Wednesday night, so his by now worn out earthwatc[h/i] show was scheduled for midnight, but would that not have been a golden opportunity for this self-proclaimed "senior Pacifica correspondent," "network anchor," and "brilliant" mind to deliver an analysis of the evening's event?

The truth is that Knight is all smoke and mirrors, a fraud who wants us to think that he thinks even deeper, but actually is more interested in pursuing a vengeful personal agenda at the expense (financially and otherwise) of WBAI's reputation and listener-supporters.

Putting aside the fact that Knight is incapable of expressing an objective opinion, one has to wonder why he again chose the easy way out and filled his time slot with a 90-minute rerun of the coverage from which he had been excluded. We can speculate on the reason for that. It may have been a reaction to the biased prerecorded rant he submitted on the second night of Pacifica's DNC coverage, but that's just a guess on my part. In fact, it would not surprise me if Knight's typically opportunistic and largely extraneous venting is the reason why WBAI was only given a single peripheral mention by the Pacifica crew. What does that tell us?

We will never know for certain why Knight chose to click on a "play" arrow rather than air his views of the speeches and general tone of the third DNC evening, but it is probably something that anyone concerned with WBAI's image ought to be thankful for. Running Bill Clinton's 48-minute speech would have made some sense, but it probably brought Knight too much discomfort.

Another waste of money and air time by the pompous faker.

In closing, was I pleased with what I heard last night? Mostly, but not entirely. I will still give Mr. Obama my vote, albeit with serious reservation, but I will never view with anything but disgust the outrageous, rigged procedure that popped two irrelevant items into the platform in order to placate GOP lemmings and garner votes from two segments of the population. I believe that "God", a figment of man's imagination, is a fantasy that has no place in politics, and that no government has any business approving or disapproving of another's capitol.