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| R. Paul Martin's despotic monitoring of the BlueBoard is a subject of some discussion on the PacificaRadiowaves list these days, putting him on the defensive and conjuring up all sorts of images. |
An unvarnished blog that dips into the past and comments on the present of WBAI-FM, a once significant, intelligent New York radio station that for years has suffered chronic abuse from within and now nears extinction. Your comments are welcomed and will not be censored.
That R. Paul Martin feels the need to censor the BlueBoard is evidence that WBAI is in its death throes.
ReplyDeleteSo sad.
Between his ill-advised use of the BlueBoard to feed his own need for power (such as it is) and his shameless, consistent defense of WBAI's destructive management, The saddest aspect of R. Paul's association with WBAI is that there is an association at all.
DeleteGlad that you are finding out what many have know for a long time - R. Paul Martin is a fraud!
DeleteI have long suspected it, but sometimes I concluded that he was just a very bad program host who somehow got in and Velcroed himself, like so many others. Apart from his pathetic power play on the BlueBoard, It was when he started his baseless one-liners in defense of Reimers, et al that I realized there was no integrity there.
DeleteWho is R. Paul outside the blue board moderation?
ReplyDeleteGary Null was interned with a Canadian, an Englishman and a Frenchman. All were sentenced to die. Each was given a final request.
ReplyDeleteThe Canadian was allowed to sing "O Canada"; the Englishman, "God Save The Queen" and the Frenchman, "La Marseillaise."
Then Gary got his turn. "I can tell you who killed JFK," he intoned.
The other prisoners dropped to their knees. "Shoot us now!" they all cried in unison.
The more I listen to Null, the more convinced I become that he is a fraud. As I enter this reply, they are re-running Null's "Fascism, Inc." pitch. It was about a week ago that I heard him say on the air that there would be no reruns—his shows would be live. The man is s chronic liar—his figures are inevitably grossly inflated. One does not have to be a mathematician to figure out that time alone would make it impossible for one man to write all those books, produce/direct all those films, do all his radio and internet shows, give lectures, etc.
DeleteI don't have actual evidence, but I have heard more than once that Null often takes credit for the writings of others—this is quite plausible.
Finally, I was told today that Kathy Davis will have her own show on Null's internet "radio." Par for the course, considering that he now proclaims Reimers to be brilliant and that he last week referred to Robert Knight as an extraordinary, Polk Award-winning investigative reporter, and WBAI as the most important radio station in the world.
I used to think of him as a fear monger, but he is really of the HACKENSACK WOMAN GIVES BIRTH TO DINOSAUR ilk, a living supermarket tabloid. Very disgusting.
I once heard him claim on his show that he only needs 4 hours sleep/night, due to his superior health.
DeleteThere is a tragic paradox in our country today. You can work very hard, risk your life as a drug dealer on the street and earn about 40K a year, all while qualifying for a "Kingpin dealer" label with law enforcement. By comparison, an apprentice union carpenter working for the New York City earns about $25.00 per hour, after taxes. If you study hard, work hard, and become a specialized RN or a maintenance electrician in the corrections system, you can clear 100 K//year easily. You are working class, and still in the 99%, as they like to call the proletariat these days, but 90-95% of people in the US earn less than you. As of 1992, you needed 87K/year to meet all your needs to raise a family in the US, without sinking into debt, and anything over 87K can go into savings. This is according to an IRS-sponsored economic study, publicized as a book, "Who Becomes a Millionaire and Why". This book also accurately lays out the middle class and professional upper middle class economic trap. Why do I go off on a tangent like this? Because just as some street kids fall into rags to riches illusion of selling drugs, and end up risking their life and liberty for less than 20 grand illicit extra income, there are middle class kids in America who hope for rags to riches of the entrepreneurship. Of course, the dangers are not life and liberty, but vulnerability of being exploited by others, working for little or no money, having to wade through lies and deceptions, and finally, becoming a liar, schemer, and a back-stabber yourself just to make ends meet. This life is made even more unbearable by having to lie for a living, having to walk and act as if you are multi-billionaire, when you are not. An entrepreneur's equivalent of keeping up with the Joneses so as to maintain an appearance of professional success, required of bankers, lawyers, and other corporate types.
ReplyDeleteNulls, Blosdales, and probably others at BAI, have fallen into the entrepreneur's trap for whatever reason and ended up doing it for a reason. It is not a coincidence, that Summer Reese comes from, or has tried to work in film industry, Monica Guile is a minor actress, and Gary Null can be considered a film maker and a film producer, and Christine Blosdale worked in the film industry as a production assistant. Can we consider BAI and Pacifica to be a Superfund waste site for the commercial film industry?
For a long time I considered the Entrepreneurs to be the Fourth Estate of the BAI and Pacifica. You have your Afro-Centrist intelligentsia, your Latino journalists, your mainstream left wing journalists, and finally, your entrepreneurs marketing their wares to the audience, Hollywood exiles, as the latest analysis shows.
Gary Null is most likely a struggling businessman. I know that he is gourmet chef. If I was Howard Hughes or had a banana republic at my disposal, I'd hire him as my personal chef and dietician. He talks about four vegan restaurants that he owned, including the Fertile Earth. There is a foundation in Miami made up of local executive chefs doing charity work, but I am not sure if they are connected to Gary Null. At any rate, I did not find any restaurants on the internet, vegan or otherwise, associated with Null. He has posted a lot of photos on the internet, and there is a photo of him and an associate of his, standing in a restaurant. This looks dated back to the mid 1970's. I don't know if Null's restaurants have failed, never took off, or if he sold them. He talks convincingly about food preparation, and I believe that he is honest about it, because of the food pictures posted from his friends and family only retreats. I never bought any of his content, or his nutritional supplements. He owns a health food store and he owns his own marketing company. I am guessing that the BAI/Pacifica audience is his number one account and marketing venue. The quality of his journalism has dropped over the years, and his anger seems like a sign of his growing desperation. The one thing that I don't understand, is why he is failing. I don't think that he is as wealthy as he projects himself, but neither could he be considered poor. He owns an upscale health food store. If he hasn't done so, he could PROBABLY operate a five star restaurant. Is there any money in this? I know that it is a LOT of hard work. The interesting question is his anger - is his failure a result of his hubris and unachieved fame and recognition, or are his businesses actually shrinking and failing to thrive? Why hasn't he expanded beyond the BAI audience in the 40+ years? I heard Null talk about his vegan restaurant of yore, where the service and food prep was slow and guests were encouraged to mingle with each other. I realized that Gary Null was reminiscing about an imagined or an idealized time and place. Maybe that's what his retreats are like. I wonder what part of Null's deception is him living in his own world and deceiving himself as well?
ReplyDeleteLast night -- probably a re-run pitch -- Null said that Sheldon Walden had "one of the most intelligent minds in the country." This reminds me of the 80s when Null was doing business with Jerry Rubin -- JR at that time was doing business networking parties in discos -- Null was in some businesses with him. Null repeatedly said on-air that JR "was the most *conscious* person on the planet". Oh, the humanity...
ReplyDeleteA couple of weeks ago when pitching the 'have dinner/show' premium, he said that he walks from his office - 83rd/Bway - down to Union Square at least 4-5 nights a week. Really? I mean, these little things about him have always set off alarms. He's *always* finishing up a dozen hard-hitting documentaries, books...having done a four hour lecture the night before, healed the sick and then having late night meetings with civic leaders, etc. etc. Then he's off 'on assignment' in the barrios of Miami, the hills of Appalachia, the streets of South Central or some secretive mission to investigate the CIA.
Last week he went on a a diatribe about how everything he speaks about and publishes has been researched, vetted and approved by a 'team of scholars' he has working in his office. These 'scholars', according to him, make sure that absolutely everything he says and writes, etc. is the unvarnished truth.
Caught a piece of his show today where he was ranting about how people could get rid of any psychotropic they're taking -- all they need do is exercise. Guess his scholars approved that.
Too bad that they already devoted two theatrical films to Walter Mitty. :)
DeleteI read on the WBAI listener site they were having an emergency meeting tonight about. I wonder how that's going. Thank you Chris, and commentators, for all of the info on this site.
ReplyDeleteThose meetings rarely accomplish anything beyond increasing the polarization. That said, if something noteworthy does come out this one, we won't ignore it here.
Delete