Tuesday, February 25, 2014


If you come here often, I hope you spend some time reading the comments left by other habitués. Brooser Bear, for example, has taken a close look at Facebook and how WBAI people make use of it. I think his findings are quite interesting, He posted them as a comment, but here is a direct link. Let us know what you think.

17 comments:

  1. Today at about 1:30PM or so I once again heard the miracle cancer cure premium being pitched. This is at least the 2nd time I have heard it on so they must be making money with this kind of thing. Like I said before I guess that there is an audience for this and the other crap at that is the audience that most of what is on BAI appeals to now. That said there still are a FEW decent programs on so maybe we have to tolerate the garbage for that.

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  2. I heard that one too. Earl Caldwell with his wealth of journalistic experience pitching cancer cures, and recorded from prior broadcast, I might add. How pathetic. When society collapses, when real medical care and social services, especially if there HAD BEEN a better social safety net, THEN people tend to become superstitious, and turn to alternative medicine, faith healing, and miracle cures, that cost less than the true high quality care. It is sad that the increasingly impoverished listeners are being exploited in that fashion.

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    1. I used to read Caldwell's column, but he has turned into a very different person—a pathetic one. This is old stuff, as you point out, and it is rebroadcast by the morally bankrupt WBAI.

      It is the funeral director handing out his card to grieving relatives, and if it isn't criminal, it ought to be.

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  3. I do come here often. I love when I see new comments. I am glad that I am not the only one who despises what this station has become.

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  4. Chris--I agree with you. Caldwell has gone down the same road as Robert Knight, whose work I used to like a lot. They're just a couple of bitter, pathetic old men.

    Is it surprising that whatever listeners they still have are looking for "miracle cures" and such?

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  5. That's the part I don't understand - they are both talented and reasonably successful journalists. Caldwell is a veteran of the civil rights struggle and is a witness to historic events, has worked in Daily News and is an academic to boot. Why on earth would they go down the bitter & pathetic route?

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    1. Caldwell was indeed reasonably successful as a journalist, doubly so, because he was among the very early black reporters to made it into the very white world of main stream media. I worked in radio back then, as a dj on a Philly station (WHAT-FM) whose owners were decidedly white racists. I was on the all white FM, the AM was all black, and the owners were adamant about keeping it that way, they even had a white dog named FM and a black one named AM. No, I am not making this up, but I bring it up, because there were no on air jobs for blacks in radio back then, unless the station was catering to blacks. I will always remember a booming, reverberated voice that periodically announced, "People like you prefer Negro radio...and WHAT is Negro Radio in Philadelphia!" This was 1959, and I don't think any of the Philly papers had a black reporter.

      I believe Caldwell, more than anything else, is suffering from old age, and that his interest in those alleged cancer "cures" either grew out of or was heightened by his sister's recent death from cancer. I think Null and those other quacks may have convinced him that his sister was killed by the pharmaceutical industry.

      As for Knight, I don't think one can call him successful by any measure. He has been with WBAI on and off for some forty years, or so he claims, and where has that taken him? He goes on the air imagining himself being a New York-based "anchorman" for a network, feels a need to mention his own name every ten minutes, speaks a mannered, artificial form of English, tells his make-believe PR shill, Pamela Somers, that he might be MLK's love child, and contributes nothing new to the station. His "shows" comprise downloaded audio from the Internet, and the occasional phone interview in which he asks loaded question of people who already share his opinions. He is infantile with his vengefulness and has no problem making things up (he said I was a secret agent for the US military!). I keep hearing that he used to be "good," but I doubt if he could ever hold a candle to, say, Chris Koch or Dale Minor, neither of whom ever felt it necessary to speak of themselves, much less inflate.

      Yes, I know he once received a Polk Award, but did his work deserve it? Having received undeserved awards myself (including Grammys) I can attest to the politics that go into these trophy selections. I had dinner with pianist John Lewis shortly after he and fellow jury members voted to give the Pulitzer Prize to Wynton Marsalis for a very inferior extended composition. "Why Wynton?," I asked, pointing out that his work was amateurish and that Duke Ellington was among the composers who never received one. "Politics," John replied, sheepishly, shrugging his shoulders.

      Getting back on track, I think Robert Knight is bitter and caught in a trap of his own making, because he thinks so highly of himself and yet is stuck at a failing radio station few people listen to anymore. I don't get the impression that Earl Caldwell is bitter, his rambling often seems repetitive and astray, but he has lucid moments (not so much when he it pitching) and something positive to look back on.

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    2. It's called race hustling shakedown.

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  6. It might have been a race hustling shakedown, had the victims not been the black and brown elderly, at whom BAI aims marketing of these so-called premiums.

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    1. sorry, don't think that's the demographic they're going after...

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  7. Then, which demographic? You had Sojourner Truth screaming that BAI is the last black radio station, and if BAI dies, there will be nobody broadcasting Wesley Cook (convicted cop killer from Philly). Support the BAI if you want the black radio. At least that is the theme of the current fund drive.

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    1. The other day, I heard a caller refer to WNAI as "the best black station in New York>" It is also not uncommon to hear hosts and staff announcers exclude whites and Asians when speaking of the listenership. When they realize that they have made a slip, they correct themselves. The same thing happens when pledges inadvertently become "purchases." It is no coincidence that a random tune-in to WBAI is 95% likely to be something that is black/brown-oriented, or quacky.

      I don't think they are following a directive from Reimers, just that we are still feeling the ripples of collective wishful thinking. Remember, many of these WBAI cling-ons are just now beginning to glimpse the real world, and they have nowhere to go but down with the result of their handiwork.

      WBAI's demographic has for many years been the one that is stalled in the minds of these misfits.

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  8. Yes, but the money comes from the demographic of old-line progressives who have always thrived on a good dose of white guilt. They also have a nostalgia for their self-perceived racial camaraderie of 'the good old days' of the civil rights era. And, they fear their impending death so they seek healing nostrums and snake oil. Also, they have disposable income to give to BAI.

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  9. Anonymous, I used to think so myself, but I have revised my thinking for several reasons. Initially, I thought, that it was Hippies and Deadheads versus Afro-Cuban Marxists. Then, I realized that the Justice and Unity Coalition was battling ACE, who wanted the Truth in Elections. ACE was not hippies but the Steven Brown and Null, and at the time, Brown had more money. Justice and Unity is fairly representative of its ideology, but ACE was nothing but Null and his followers. ACE has put up a store-front in Long Island, but it was empty and lacked any sort of ideology.

    For a time I thought same as you - that a bunch of Afro-Cuban Marxists were subsisting was off premium dues paid for by the white liberals, but now I am thinking that it is not so much the white liberals, but Gary Null clientele, and aging (67 years old average), African American intelligentsia, retired teachers, etc. For years in the beginning, Gary Null used to coach running pro-bono, and sell his expensive supplements (I couldn't afford them) from the back of his car. His dedicated followers were people dealing with chronic conditions, who were improving through diet and exercise and got off some of their medication, who swore by Null.

    As to the current premium run being conducted by Haskins, he is pitching to his target Afro-American audience in order to convince the Pacifica, that BAI still has target audience that responds to BAI local brand of ideology.

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  10. Are some of these postings by Null lackeys trying to discredit this site?

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    1. Which postings do you refer to? Which ones do you feel might discredit this blog? The only people I know who might be described as "Null lackeys" are Robert Knight, the wannabe "network anchor," and his shill, Pamela Somers, an aging cheerleader who shares (or feeds) his fantasies. They run a blog with a ripped-off name similar to this one, which they started for the purpose of discrediting me and diverting traffic away from my blog.

      Neither is of any consequence, so I am not bothered by their petty games. :)

      Could that blog be what you are talking about?

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