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The Blueboard exchange continued today:
R. Paul Martin
The person posting as SDL wrote:
You remember the saying about not learning from the past. Maybe Pacifica will be condemned to repeat it...
But in this case Pacifica did break with its past behavior. Lawsuits were referred to as the severance pay/pension plan for clods fired for just cause in Pacifica. A whole long line of idiots filed lawsuits against Pacifica, and then got their lawsuits settled out of court. The plaintiffs and their attorneys knew that all they had to do was to file suit and Pacifica would fold, giving them plenty of easy money.
But for the Bernard White lawsuit it was handled differently. Bernard White clearly thought that he was going to take a ride on the same gravy train. Didn't work out. His lawyers, looking for a quick and easy buck, didn't get paid off either.
So this is a case of doing something different, and right, but having it cost a lot of money too. The big screwup was by the lawyers whom Pacifica had hired allowing Bernard White's lawsuit to name Steve Brown as having an ownership interest in Pacifica.
I hope that Pacifica continues to fight these sorts of phony baloney lawsuits, that's the only way to insure that they stop, at long last.
My question is why isn't Pacifica suing Bernard White in an effort to get back the money it spent on this frivolous lawsuit?
SDL continued
Yes, why? If you get a frivolous lawsuit tossed out you should get your legal costs reimbursed. Oh, wait. Through it all Bernard White is an angel. Hey, he's even so celestial he gets to come back on the air. Can't someone on the PNB make a motion to have him banned from all Pacifica properties and air? Should I even bother to be logical?
I'm afraid Murillo has made many eyes roll.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't just an insult to WBAI listeners, but. maybe even moreso, to listeners of Pacifica's other four stations, who will have to help foot the bill for a frivolous lawsuit filed by someone they don't even know. This may seem like a strange comment, but White cost the station all this money yet Charles Pitts is banned from WBAI? Pitts is odious, but he didn't cause WBAI (nor other Pacifica stations) any money or problems.
DeletePriorities? We don't need no stinking priorities..!
SDL
Haskins and David Rothenberg were among those I heard welcoming White back. when he made his first reappearance. I would have thought David wiser, but I guess the idiocy is contagious.
DeleteApropos that, have you heard the promo for an upcoming panel discussion to be held in Harlem, next week? It was arranged by one of the black experts Haskins surrounds himself with on that awful show, and the gist of the discussion is the gentrification of Harlem, which these fools are likening to "ethnic cleansing"! Murillo is somehow involved, I believe, and WBAI will carry it live.
There is no end to this nonsense. Perhaps I am just suffering from TVBS (Traumatic Viking Barbarian Syndrome), but I thought I had finally gotten over the hatred once aimed at my Nordic ancestors. I keep telling people that those horned helmets were but a Wagnerian fantasy, my people never sported horns... nobody believes me!
I never really listened to Rothenberg enough to be able to make a comment. He goes back to the 1960s, no?
DeleteI heard that promo and had to laugh at how insulting it is to people who have been victims of real genocides. Oh, wait... Can we say Rwanda? Yeah, I know, it was really done by Belgian paratroopers in blackface...
Really? The black people of Harlem have been wiped out? I don't recall them all being rounded up and shipped off to a death camp. Arbeit Macht Frei, you know. Just insulting.
Seriously. Go do a panel on police racial based abuse. That makes perfect sense. But trying to be shocking and extreme makes you seem silly and marginalizes you. However, I guess it's more fun than a march on City Hall for better education or better maintenance of public housing. Sad how self-serving extremists are able to sucker these people.
When I was younger, I studied The Vikings a bit. Evidently, no horned helmet was ever discovered. It seems the horned helmet thing is a Christian invention. You know, equating the "fury of the Norsemen" with demons and all that.
(sung to Meghan Trainor - All About That Bass) "It's all about that fear, about that fear, no logic..."
SDL
Gothenburg came to WBAI when I was the manager. The play he produced, "Fortune in Men's Eyes," was running. I saw it twice and enjoyed it, though it was by no means comedic. I took my old uncle, who had written several volumes of Icelandic history and was the Icelandic UN delegate, to see it. He did not understand it.
DeleteThat "genocide" inference is as embarrassing as the Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome crap Joy DeGruy goes around selling. That sort of thing is almost tailor-made for the dumbed-down BAI audience and staff.
As you say, it is an insult to intelligence and people who actually experienced such horrors.
Obviously, WBAI is not going to come close to its goal, so it's either a powder cure for poverty and senility or another extension of another failed fund raiser.
Ultimately, you have to wonder if Murillo is trying to get Bernard White into the PD position when he leaves, or is that IF he leaves. iPD isn't seeming so interim anymore.
DeleteSDL
Despite his off-air shenanigans, Bernard could do a reasonable show, when he wanted to- and still could. Those whom he bullied off-air were often-times schmucks and whiners, like Mike Feder, Robert Knight and Gary Null. So what!? I'll settle for a good show on-air.
ReplyDeleteKGT
The problem with those "off-air shenanigans" is if someone sues and gets a big settlement or wins the case. Then WBAI and/or Pacifica could be stuck with millions of Dollars, it can't afford, to pay out. The other alternative is a simple complaint to some government commision over an unsafe working space, discrimination, etc. that could lead to fines.
DeleteWasn't it Amy Goodman's getting a little shove into a wall by Utrice Leid that led to Goodman getting full ownership of DN or something like that? That cost Pacifica lots of money in the long run.
You simply can't permit abuse of any sort at a work place.
SDL
@ KGT Who is Bernie Fleshkin?
DeleteA lucrative shove. I wonder if Amy will cover the Harlem Genocide? Yesterday, Haskins and Murillo had Bob Law on. He is the tabloid-minded opportunist who so stupidly refined gentrification. He never saw a white person who wasn't filthy rich... his favorite color appears to be black. The sooner these idiots take their misguided agendas far away from WBAI, the better for people with honest concerns.
I think you're right, SDL, it looks like Murillo isn't going to let go of WBAI--he's playing Reimers well, although that isn't really a challenge.
I'll tell you who Bernie Fleshkin was - one of the most unfunny idiots that ever did a "comedy" show. He did a voice like a muppet (Bert & Ernie style) and called himself something like agent to the stars or some such shit. I remember him once doing his radio version parody of Emmanuelle (the famous 1970s Just Jaeklin Euro softcore film). Talk about an atrocity. They guy was just the worst.
DeleteSDL
So this is the ONLY online reference I've found to Bernie Fleshkin. I always wondered who was the man voicing this character in the 1980s on WBAI. I was inspired by listening to some recordings I transferred of his call-in show, where because he wasn't a big fan of the 7-sec delay, it was easy for many of us to sail profanity over the air. Hey, I was a teenager back then.
DeleteThen why did he make me laugh?
ReplyDeleteKGT
I have caught myself laughing when I hear Berthold Reimers or Mitchel Cohen forecast WBAI's future. Similarly, I have felt enormous pain listening to the CCCP attempt humor.
ReplyDeleteSo, don't feel bad!
Randy Credico is not funny. Ask Johnny Carson (seance). John McDonagh is an angry, frustrated Fenian.
ReplyDeleteKGT
I am in complete agreement with you re Credico, he tries to be funny, but I have yet to hear anything he does that even comes close. There is nothing more painful to experience than a strenuous attempt at humor.
ReplyDeleteI had that experience for an entire night, walking around in the city with, of all people, Richard Pryor. Now there was a man who was funny as hell, but he tried too hard that night, and all because he wanted to be on my WBAI midnight show! Tactfully getting out of using Richard is one of the most stupid decisions I made in my broadcasting career. Like he said, "You win a few and you lose a few." :)
Yeah, Mitch Cohen is a funny guy, indeed. But I think Bob Fass is even funnier, and he doesn't even have to try. Haskins is pretty funny, too. His "Our station" is like Henny Youngman's "Take my wife, please." It's all in the delivery, not the content.
ReplyDeleteSDL
The funniest thing is that they are unaware of being players in a farce. The scenario has morphed into a situation so unreal that it is simply impossible to take anything they say or do seriously.
ReplyDeleteI hope the worthy are already looking around for a real radio station to take their show to, even if it means having to deal with commercials. I'll take a good soap powder over a phony cancer cure, any time.
Non-commercial WBAI hasn't been that in many years.
For 100 points. Give a dishonest question to this answer: We have sent out all premiums from the last pledge drive...
ReplyDeleteSDL
Why are we receiving thank you cards and letters from thousands of grateful, fully cured listeners?
ReplyDeleteWe have a winner!
ReplyDeleteSDL
Oh, did I have some laughs at the Nullster's expense. I was in the kitchen and had his passive-aggressive ass on to hear a stereotypical, right wing anti-porn tirade. all the while tossing about the word "progressive." Funny how most of the women I have known in my life worked in the sex world and enjoyed their jobs. After this utter bullshit, he took a call from a man who dared questioned his royal king of kong. Wow, did Null launch into a tirade worthy of Daulton Anderson. One mistake was not turning off the guy's pot, so we could hear him laughing at Null. Great stuff.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of anti-porn nonsense, I saw a documentary last night that was essentially a left wing pseudo right wing anti-porn film. The one thing was Richard Wolff doing his socialist reasons why porn is bad, all based on state control of sex type thing. Another laugh fest.
SDL
You have just made me go off to the archives!
DeleteAh yes, the anti-porn lunatics - typical WBAI fare. No wonder BAI has no listeners. Probably they are listening to Fran Luck(ugh!) and Sandia McLaughlin(yuck) and the Women Against Porn. They should be called the Women Against Sex because one look @ them, you will be against sex!!
DeleteDo you remember an ugly as hell little redheaded woman who used to have a table on the streets of Manhattan and a petition against porn? She was around in the 1980s until, maybe, the mid 1990s. I used to run into her now and then, and we'd get into some good cursing matches. I would always ask how much money she wanted for that picture she'd hold up in the air featuring a tied up woman. She used to be on TV here and there, and always came off as an ass.
DeleteFor a while she had a girlfriend who joined her, named something or other Ramos. After a while Ramos was gone. One day I see Ramos on TV saying how she isn't aligned with people who have tables in the street and hold up pictures of tied up women. I guess they had a lovers quarrel and split...
SDL
I don't recall seeing this woman, but that's a funny story.
DeleteRamos?? You mean Norma Ramos, Gary Null's long-time girlfriend. Heard they have been lovers for over 10 years. Yes, Gary Null is human...
DeleteYes, that's her, indeed. For a little while she manned the table with the redhead. She seemed to be the more intelligent of the two, and just stood there watching as I insulted the redhead. Interesting that Null is hooked up with her and is anti-porn. You have to wonder if she influenced him or he was already in the mindset or both.
DeleteRemember Richard Bey and his afternoon channel 9 talk show for bored housewives? She was on there once with some guy whose wife shot him. She simply would not get off the idea that his wife must have had a reason to shoot him, even though she knew nothing about the story at first. As it went on, she looked more and more like a fool.
SDL
A little bit interesting, maybe. Pacifica broadcast syndicated shows are popping up on the Global24 indie shortwave station I recently mentioned. Heard Michio Kaku's Explorations and Democracy Now in the past couple of days. Looks like the station's political leaning in general is tilting to the left. There hasn't been a left wing indie shortwave since Radio For Peace International based in Costa Rica back in the 1980s, although owned by a USA concern.
ReplyDeleteSDL
That's very interesting. I guess Kaku and Goodman gave the go-ahead, if there was such a thing.
DeleteHave you checked PacificaRadiowaves today? Tony Norman (DC station) posted the names of the five candidates for Pacifica's ED position, as well as his choice (whose name, ironically, is Proffitt).
Apparently, this was a grievous sin on the part of Norman, who either didn't know of the required secrecy, was playing a game of his own, or presses the wrong key on his TRS-80.
I asked why there was such secrecy, but Nalini said she would remove my post and any reference to it that reveals the names. Can you tell me what is going on?
I posted that I would put this info up on this blog if I learn that there is more skulduggery involved. Btw, I never heard of any of these five guys.
I just looked. Accidentally publishing the names? Not buying it. I don't know who the candidates are, so can't say anything about them. However, you can probably guess I would say that Pacifica needs to cough up some money and get a real radio person as ED. Hiring politicos will just leave us with more of the same old same old.
DeleteThere must be some left leaning, out of work experienced radio person out there who understands the business end of a non-profit.
Secrecy? Eh, can't blame her. I don't think she should end up in a position where she gets blamed for influencing a vote. When the shit hits the fan, fingers will point every which way to deflect guilt.
Indie shortwave stations act as leased time stations. Hence, they get paid, not pay, to air programs. My guess is Kaku and Goodman have third parties paying for airing or a deal giving the shows for free.
SDL
To hell with it! Here are the candidates.
DeleteDavid J. Baronfeld
Sean A. Heitkemper
Victor A. Hogstrom
John M. Proffitt
Craig Quick
Any of them ring a bell?
Never heard of them myself. Did a quick google and here are a few articles, but don't know if they are for the same people.
Deletehttp://www.laobserved.com/archive/2009/07/kpfk_loses_another_genera.php
http://www.usu.edu/ust/index.cfm?article=48579
http://houston.culturemap.com/news/city-life/10-31-11-14-05-john-profitt-and-john-hesse-dismissed-at-houston-public-media/
Too bad Berkeley Kid isn't up for election...
SDL
If they want to keep their Pacifica aspirations secret, I would wonder what further aspirations they won't want us to know about once (and if) they become Pacifica's ED.
DeleteChris, it's all a joke that speaks volumes about the hypocrisy of the left. They are always in favor of transparecy for corporations, exposure and support for whistle blowers. However, when their own public radio stations corporation has it's candidates for ED exposed, the rules change to match those of any capitalist corporation seeking to hide its malfeasance. Sorry, but it's a public radio corporation, and, hence, the candidates to run it should be public knowledge. If the candidates have a problem with that, they shouldn't be candidates.
DeleteRemember how Haskins tells us it's "our station" ever day? Yeah, Pacifica and Pacificans, stop doing things behind curtains.
SDL
That's a good observation. The hypocrisy within Pacifica and its stations is something they can't keep secret. Audiences sensed it and distanced themselves; the people involved at the core of Lew Hill's shattered dream know it, too, but they seem to have lost any values they once might have had--sinking deeper as the they attempt to justify what they have done.
DeleteNalini labeling my motive as "revenge" and/or a ploy to attract blog hits tells me that I have greatly overestimated her levelheadedness.
I don't know Nalini at all, so can't say anything about her. One thing I do know is that she is in the center of everyones' bickering, which is a position I don't envy. Few would be as patient as she seems to be. So far she seems OK to me, overall.
DeleteI always believed that once something is put into a public forum, everyone has a right to comment on it. I have had fights about this in the past on other lists. When you make something public, it's fair game.
The only person who should be accused of anything is the original poster. No one else should be accused of any motives, since once exposed it is public knowledge.
SDL
Nalini is usually cool and she contributes mightily by being the unofficial keeper/retriever of lost records. She just isn't as cool (levelheaded) as I thought she was. Few people are, I guess.
DeleteGary and Michael are on pitching his green crap instead of Mimi and Ken. I don't believe it. I miss Mimi.
ReplyDeleteThis is nothing more than another airing of a Null scam that Haskins buys into. The two of them are a shameless disgrace. Null, of course, is conducting his business, but Haskins is just trying to keep his job. Neither belong on WBAI. Reimburse is desperate, so he is running some of the worst, most dishonest and annoying misinfomercials the station has in its bag of dirty tricks: Natalie and Scott (still lying about the "exclusivity" of the latter's DVDs); once respected journalist Earl Caldwell, selling out and dissipating the integrity he once had; hypnotist Chris Howard, the most recent film-flammer, etc.
DeleteA penny donated to WBAI these days is a penny wasted.
If you miss, aim better...
DeleteSDL
Didn't Gary almost destroy his kidneys a half-dozen years with his glop? Where does that factor in?
DeleteKGT
Yes, and how many of his listeners is unknown.
DeleteI wonder if the Gary Null mask will make a good Halloween costume. Can you only accept organic vegan treats? Think people will think they saw a spaceman. What will he hawk next?
Null claims he loses $150,000 - $500,000 per documentary he makes. Well, if true, that tells me that he must make a multi-million Dollar per year living to absorb those loses.
SDL
Re/ the anti-porn woman with the petition, that summons interesting memories. I recall a pale, thin individual--I don't recall her hair-color, and I'm even, erringly no doubt, remembering her as blonde, and I don't necessarily remember her as "tiny"--who (wo)manned a table at Columbus Circle. She indeed displayed notorious magazine covers, whilst calling out phrases like "porn that degrades women--SIGN THE PE-TI-TION!" I don't recall a second woman. What I do remember is that the last few times I saw her she sat at a similar table with a new Cause (and new horrifying pictures): Animal Rights. Thus she now cried out things like "laboratories that torture animals--SIGN THE PE-TI-TION!"
ReplyDeleteChris.
ReplyDeleteIt is common for job applicants to remain anonymous. Especially if they are still employed. Many employers think nothing of getting rid of someone if they hear they are looking at another job. I had a friend who had it happen to her and she was solicited by the prospective employer (Clear Channel) , word got back to her current employer (Cumulus) and her "resignation" was immediately accepted, even though she had no such plans. And of course the Clear Channel folks never hired anyone. She filed for unemployment and it took her six months to get it, because Cumulus were fuckers and claimed she quit.
Thanks, that makes sense and I see now that I probably over-reacted to what I saw as an over-reaction. This is, however, a board whose majority faction's behavior is highly suspect. That said, I have to wonder if anyone applying for the ED job at this time doesn't also have questionable motives.
Delete