Is Gary Null an intelligent man?
Most would agree that he is and that, consequently, my question is a dumb one.
Well, if you know that Kathy Davis and her pseudo spiritual blather is now also being carried by Null's online station, you surely experienced a moment of doubt regarding his judgement. Taking that a step farther, you may have wondered if there isn't an ulterior motive lurking beneath the smooth surface of our soft-spoken stuff maker.
If you do have doubts, and they are of the lingering variety, you might lend an ear to a call Null made to Haskins' show this morning. If you have listened to Haskins for any length of time—an hour, perhaps—you may have concluded that he is a thoroughly unprofessional misfit who, despite spending decades at WBAI, has yet to grasp the fundamental principles upon which Pacifica was founded. You may also have noticed that he aims his fumbling, superficial twaddle at an audience whose intellectual level—like his own—has barely risen above grade school.
A Michael Haskins would barely have qualified for a janitorial position in WBAI's earlier years. Yes, we did have a janitor back then, a man who had admirable ambitions and appreciated the station's raison d'être. I think it is obvious that Haskins' idea of "community" radio translates into a station that very narrowly focuses on an ill-informed segment of our area's black population.
Of course, that has not escaped Gary Null, who claims to be a regular listener to the AM propaganda show, but listen to him here. Do you think you are hearing the sincere words of a true admirer, or is this a part of Null's scheme. Does Michael Haskins really represent "the best that WBAI can be?" Do you think Null means that? I don't. Mr. Null sells a lot of his own products and benefits further from hours upon hours of free advertising. That makes WBAI a golden goose, of sorts, one that it behooves him to keep alive.
Sweet Lord Above, I can *feel* the love!
ReplyDeleteSo Haskins will move on? Further heartbreak!
When, oh when, oh when, Oh Lord, will it End?
The travail! The sorrow!
The sufferings of Job visited upon these Good People!
So... when *will* The Lord put them out of their misery?
~ 'indigopirate'
Gary Null is a man of exceptional intelligence, persistence and Machiavellianism. He is a self-made millionaire, if not multi-millionaire, "health" cult leading guru, complete with a compound upstate, for the Feds to one day come into guns blazing.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I don't trust the man for a minute. I think he calculates every move he makes for his own ends. If he said, "I have to go to the bathroom," I'd seriously wonder what he was up to. Ulterior motives are his way. Just look at how he uses Haskins as a microphone when he needs to reach morning people. Haskins is his tool, probably hoping for a PRN job if he loses his WBAI gig.
I think Null would like to get control, if not ownership, over WBAI. We all know that if he had 50,000 watts of power in the center of the FM dial, he would become the leader in the "health" cult field. All the chains like Whole Foods, Vitacost, etc. would kiss his ass, he'd get his survivalist agenda aired at will, push his own products, etc. His power would increase manifold. Sweet…
The fact is that Null, due to an increasing percentage of listener donations being for his products, is gaining an unseen power. When he will strike and make his Machiavellian move is unknown, but he will. If he can get rid of the Blosdale infomercials and replace them successfully with his own, he will bring in 70%-80% of all WBAI money. At that point, he can make any demand he wants.
As for having Davis on PRN. Didn't she work for him at some point? Anyway, she fits on his cybercast station for the more "spiritual" loons out there. He also has crackpot Utrice Lead, WBAI's ex disaster of a general manager. I guess he hits the black militant sphere covered with her. Maybe he can nab Geoff Brady..? We can dream...
I'll bet you that PRN has more listeners than WBAI. I don't care for PRN, but it is more professional, without sounding too slick, has more variety in it's themes and topics, etc. WBAI personnel used to want to move up to NPR in the old days. Now I bet they want to move up to PRN.
Anyway, if anyone hasn't heard the Alex Jones radio show, I highly recommend going to youtube and finding an episode. Why? Because you will think you are listening to a hyper version of Null. I think the similarities in thoughts and views are very eye opening. One is right wing, one is left wing, but both talk about the same things, have basically the same answers, sell powdered health supplements, are organic fanatics, ramble about social breakdown and preparedness, etc.
Just don't underestimate Null. I think he believes his own canard and isn't a fake in the dishonesty sense. That is what makes him truly dangerous.
SDL
It's 12:21 AM and I have NO idea what this crap is on Radio Unlistenable. Is this for real or a parody?
ReplyDeleteSDL
It's the parody now known as "Radio Unnameable," taken the next step. They got rid of the 60 cycle hum. Now they have to get rid of Fred. Then, I think, it's time to get rid of the program. Next, of course, they need to get rid of WBAI in its present state of decay.
DeleteGary Null is a crafty man, but is uneducated and intellectually undisciplined.
ReplyDeleteI've made a game of his show over lunch. Null's no longer capable of free-form riffing for an hour, so he's taken to filling the space by reading (mostly leftist) online articles over the air. Sometime he credits the article's author(s), sometimes not. He usually interjects his own opinion, often mid-read, without ever admitting where the author ends and Null begins.
The fun is comparing his live read with the source material (easy to do, just google a partial sentence he reads). Listen to Null skip over any complicated scientific terminology, mangling the "save" in the process. Even better is when he actually tries to pronounce scientific terms - he never gets them right. Hear him unable to pronounce any person's name referenced in the article, making it clear he has not bothered to read it before airtime. Then listen to his asides, usually off-topic, often paranoid, always self-serving. I especially loved the time when he was reading an article about marijuana laws, bragging about his unprecedented level of "scholarship", then, seconds later, he could not pronounce the word "sativa".
So no, Gary Null is not bright. He's simply "sharp" in the same manner as any successful con artist. As for his smarmy conversation with Haskins - he's simply lying. Very important to keep those hours of free commercials alive - and integrity be dammed.
Valuable observations, Mr. Waters. Thank you for lifting yet another veil.
Delete@Logan Waters: Excellent observations. Intelligence is different from education, knowledge and intellect. Null is intelligent or "sharp," indeed. However, educated or knowledgable? Not in my opinion.
DeleteA good example of Null's selective presentation of information is in his HIV=AIDS denialism. I was checking into this a few months ago and found the accusations against him intriguing. It seems he loves to talk/write about people living with AIDS without mentioning that many of them were long dead and buried. Yes, Null would take quotes that served to make them sound like they were healthy and alive but not mention that they died, often, years ago.
Null is very good at taking useful quotes while leaving behind useless to his purposes information. His followers won't contest it.
Null just said that he has about two million listeners per day. Well, not on WBAI he doesn't. I wonder how many he has on PRN.
SDL
Null -- like many of his ilk -- misrepresents and lies about many things. Since he speaks of so much, there is always a grain (organic of course) of truth in many of his rants.
ReplyDeleteCase in point: today Null threw out the statistic that 4.5% of the US population subsists off of *less than $2 a day* -- he extolled how this is tens of millions of people - including millions of children - who basically live in poverty comparable to that of the poorest third-world nations. He mentioned that the stats are for what those unfortunates "earn" in a given day.
Given these stats, one would have to assume that these people are starving, living in the streets, dying of no medical care, the children would be too weak to go to school, etc. Really? Null says nothing about the amounts of government subsidies that would go to people this poor -- section 8 housing, foodstamps, ssi, aid to dependent children, free medical care -- on and on and on. And, of course, this stat doesn't include any possible cash monies that people earn off the books.
This is not say that there aren't poor people in America -- duh. But to infer that America does *nothing* for these people is a lie, pure and simple. The kind of lies that Null and his ilk propagate by twisting statistics and facts.
A smarmy man indeed.
rj