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.
Dr. King was a plagiarizer. His Ph.D. thesis at Boston University of 1955 was lifted at 50%
ReplyDeletefrom a previous student's doctoral thesis. His "I Have A Dream" speech was lifted from the 1952 Republican convention invocation speech of Archibald Carey, Jr. For this reason, I ignore Dr. Martin Luther King Day.
KGT
Here is the aforementioned excerpt from Archibald Carey's speech to the 1952 GOP Convention in Chicago: Archibald Carey Jr 7-8-52 Republican National Converntion- Chicago.mp3
DeleteThere is a 1990 article from the NY Times which talks about this. The article considers
ReplyDeletehow much material was cited without footnotes in a thesis about theological concepts of God. It takes a big leap to get to plagiarism and even more so to arrive at a figure of
50% and one more leap of audacity to make the statement on MLK day. I choose to agree with the following quote from the article.
"Dr. King as a young fellow may have overlooked some footnotes," said the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was founded by Dr. King. "But history is caught up in his footprints, and will be hardly disturbed by the absence of some footnotes."
We all know KGT can be a bit dramatic.
DeleteKarm A
Who cares. WBAI should have more fun hawking stuff on May 19th, Malcom X's birthday. I think that's more in line with their few listeners' line of thinking.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget Marcus Garvey's birthday on August 17th, either.
Personally, I think they'd do better on May 3 with a James Brown birth-a-thon. They could buy a few CDs, burn copies and hawk them.
SDL
If they celebrate Marcus Garvey, perhaps they will dig up a tape by or relative of a KKK member who participated in the meeting with the costumed wannabe liberator.
DeleteOther birth-a-thon ideas:
DeletePaul Robeson, April 9
Richard Pryor, December 1
For some Hispanic dinero:
Che Guevara, June 14
Salvador Allende, June 26
Tito Puente, April 20
Celia Cruz, October 21
Feel free to add. Maybe they can have a birth-a-thon EVERY day of the year? Good excuse to always ask for money...
SDL
Anonymous:
ReplyDelete"and one more leap of audacity to make the statement on MLK day"... How do you feel every Columbus Day and Thanksgiving when the feather-dusters Horsedung and Co. bring out all the bad things 'we' did to them, like free education, etc. on BAIs airwaves which you pay for? Do you complain then? And who said this is MLK Day? he was born on January 15th. I have a first amendment right to say anything I want on any day as long as I can back it up. Joe Biden did half the plagiarizing MLK did but it derailed his 1987 Presidential bid. Is this affirmative action for plagiarizers?
KGT
Take it however you wish, but Biden blatantly lied/plagiarized and was rewarded with becoming vice president.
DeleteSDL
I suggest you look up the article. There is an open question whether he plagiarized the thesis at all. Even if you believe that, there is a question of degree and there is no way you can arrive at 50%. This is a thesis about theological concepts of God. Feel free to believe what you believe what you want but to choose the day of the federal holiday (in case you're wondering who said it was MLK day) to make these remarks is worth mentioning.
DeleteAs far as the other holidays, I know there are people out there (including on WBAI) who hate their own country but I don't lose any sleep over it. If they truly believed what they were saying, then they should go to work on Columbus Day and Thanksgiving Day but somehow I suspect they'll be home eating Turkey or the veggie equivalent and somehow justify it to themselves.
Let me get this straight, they think that by playing blackness EVERY show is gonna attract more listeners?
ReplyDeleteQuite the opposite i would say.
Imagine somebody just passing through the dial today , and hearing this .
Honestly , how many people are going say, wow i want to hear this .
Maybe 1 out of 100 , otherwise they are gone . Where as on regular black days there is a slight chance they may find something of value . So they probably lost even more potential listeners today.
Not saying anything negative about mlk . But really let's face it , this is old and BORING!
And nobody really gives a shit anymore about what mlk said .
For most people the best thing mlk did for them was give them a day off . Sad but true.
And this applies to any holiday , not just mlk day
I don't care what he lifted. He had balls of steel, and changed History. Btw I lifted nothing, and live in relative obscurity honestly. Btw most of the great masters didn't paint most of the stuff they're remembered for. Their students did the work...they touched up.
ReplyDeleteThis includes the modern so-called masters.
Warhol comes to mind. He had his sex-slaves do all the work at his so-called "Factory". Why do you think it was called that. All this while he did coke, and fucked rent boys. Mind you nothing wrong with coke or sex, but he didn't do hardly shit.
For heaven sakes he admitted as much.
Speaking of "artists". His name escapes me, but ya know the guy that makes millions from his "Poka Dot" stuff. He laughingly admitted on "Charlie Rose" he did the first one. However his assistants did the rest...he, and Charlie had a good laugh.
Well said Sydney!
DeleteDecades ago Ralph Abernathy wrote an autobiography and in it revealed MLK's sexual affairs.
Abernathy was interviewed on The Today Show by Bryant Gumbel who attacked Abernathy, questioning why he revealed such info about MLK. Abernathy replied it's important to know MLK wasn't perfect, he was a human being with flaws, yet was still able to accomplish so much good.
It's a message the Old Testament makes over and over - Moses was the greatest prophet yet he had a speech impediment and an anger management problem. The messiah/Jesus (depending on religious branch) is supposed to come from the seed of King David yet look what the bible relates what David did when he lusted after another man's wife.
If there is something divine in the Bible I say that message is it. And it's a lesson almost no Bible thumping (and non-religious) people understand. They insist on deifying their leaders.
And that sends the message that an ordinary person can't rise to do great things (and of course that a "great person" can be guilty of no crime).
What always bothered me was that Dr. King was not that sole important focus of the Civil Rights Movement. James Meredith, John Lewis, Goodman, Schwerner, Chaney, Viola Liuzzo,.....
Deletewere far more important than Dr. King, in my recollection.
I agree. Bayard Rustin, for example, played a far more important role in organizing the 1963 March on Washington. King--the star, if you will--actually had Bayard's name reduced to small print, because he was gay. That always bothered me and made me view King from a perspective less advantageous to him.
DeleteThat said, Bayard was a wonderful man and a good friend of WBAI. He once came to our studio and recorded several Elizabethan songs, accompanying himself on a lute... The idea was to play the tape telling the listeners only that he was a civil rights leader and to do so in a fund-raising effort.
I wonder what happened to that tape.
Chris, the post you just responded to wasn't me. I never wrote any of that. Someone is obviously impersonating.
DeleteThe REAL SDL
In case no one has checked the NY Radio Message Board in a while, I recommend doing so now. There are two topics of interest.
ReplyDeleteBoth can still be found on the first page at http://www.musicradio77.com/wwwboard/
The first one is about the change in music royalty rates going into effect soon. I would be curious if anyone knows if and/or how this would affect non-commercial stations, especially WBAI. There are two separate threads regarding this issue. The first starting about Live365 and their announced shutdown (as a subscriber, I will miss them, as they had many out of the mainstream station on there), and the second about the CRB ruling when it was first released.
The other is a recent thread where someone is talking about WBAI and dead air, like it's their greatest problem.
SDL
... Education at the crossroads .almost Nothing to do with education.
ReplyDeleteSports qualifier , samething , almost nothing to do with sports.
bai ... insulting your intelligence on an hourly basis. shameful
Now we see what was behind those masks—no surprise to most of us. Look at Berthold Reimers—is there a sorrier excuse for a man at the helm?
Deleteunrelated- I have to give the devil its due- this Rape Declaration Forum is very entertaining in an educational respect. It's not enough to make me give my shekels to them but I'll listen to the program for free.
ReplyDeleteKGT
KGT--I would give to BAI if I could be certain it would go to the program and Rebecca Myles. I actually called into her program once, during an episode about people who were raped/sexually assaulted while in the military. I am one of those people.
ReplyDeleteWhen BAI is swept into the dustbin of history, I hope the program finds a home somewhere else, and that Ms. Myles gets a job as a journalist. She is a very good interviewer: She listens. Too many other BAI hosts (e.g., Gary Null And Void) talk more than their interviewees. Worse, interviewers like Null only ask questions when they believe that the answers will re-enforce their opinions. I heard a particularly bad example, when Null asked his guest (I forget his name) whether the US has become a Fascist state. The interviewee didn't think so, though he was quick to point out that this country is less democratic than it was, say, thirty or fifty years ago. You could hear the blood pressure of The Man With The Perfect Diet rising, even though he no doubt took his Brown Stuff or Yellow Stuff or Whatever-Color Stuff before the program.