Here is a clip of the criticism that had Berthold Reimers steaming. He could have avoided this and so much more if only he learned to tell the truth and live in the real world. That this man is allowed to keep his job goes against all reason.
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.
Emmanuel Goldstein: Walk out on them. Continue your show on the internet with far fewer problems. They think you cannot exist without them, so they stick it to you, besides the fact that you are white, so call their bluff and walk away.
ReplyDeleteKGT
They said on the air that they want to be on the radio. They don't want to be just another podcaster. I hope they can stay. I don't necessarily agree with them on a few things but that's the point. Its a different point of view. We need more shows like this on the air at WBAI.
DeleteIt just looks like Reimers wants them out, once and for all. I don't think he likes OTH nor understands it. The problem is that I think the OTH guys are kind of naive about Pacifica & WBAI internal politics and don't really understand how it all works.
DeleteSDL
Perhaps they will be replaced by an exciting series: Landscaping in Afrika.
DeleteI have added the offending OTH segment.
Sadly, much of the rest of the show was pitching for wonderful WBAI and how important the station is. I guess they switched gears because they were threatened, and you know how much people don't want to lose their shows. It's dear life to be on the radio.
DeleteSDL
In some way, I agree with Reimers. A broadcaster should not criticize the station management on the air. It is morally wrong. One can do it in a subtle way, but wholesale condemnation on the air legitimately carries with it the threat of being removed from the air.
ReplyDeleteKGT
The degree to which on air criticism of management is morally wrong pales in comparison to the morally wrong acts of this management.
DeleteI used to encourage criticism of my management as well as the station. Often agreeing with it, but that's what an honest Report to the Listeners was designed for. You can do that when you have nothing to hide; everybody benefits from an honest across the microphone dialogue.
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”— Harry Truman
ReplyDeleteHarry Truman also said, "I know that God says that the Jews are the Chosen People, but I think God has better taste". Are you going to quote that one too?
DeleteKGT
Where does that quote come from?
DeleteHere's a 1945 entry from Truman's diary: "I never thought god picked any favorites".
A sensible thought, especially since "god" is but a figment of man's imagination.
Harry Truman told that to David Susskind who related it to Presidential historian Michael Beschloss.
Deletehttp://first-thoughts.org/on/Michael+Beschloss/
Thanks. I wonder if, starting with FDR, we have had a President who didn't have a streak of anti-Semitism in him? Probably not. Ditto, racism. consciously or not. But we are getting off the subject: the absence of truth at WBAI.
DeleteIs someone talking trash about Truman? Truman had more integrity and more guts than our last three presidents combined.
DeleteI liked Truman, but he was not without flaws. Hiroshima, remember?
DeleteYeah. I remember how he saved millions of lives on both sides by not having to invade Japan.
DeleteYou're upset by Hiroshima. Did Pearl Harbor and the Bataan Death March upset you equally?
DeleteKGT
(JustAListener)
DeleteHmm,
Truman, FDR, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima...
I know Alec, "What is history unlikely to be heard on WBAI"!
@KGT "You're upset by Hiroshima. Did Pearl Harbor and the Bataan Death March upset you equally?"
DeleteNot equally—I believe the positive result (ending the war) could have been obtained by dropping the A-bomb on an unpopulated area. Truman knew that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were cities with large civilian populations.
I have no position as to the decision to drop a nuclear weapon on Hiroshima and then, in turn, in short order Nagasaki. I will point out, however, that at the time the principal argument against a ‘demonstration’ was that there were only an extremely limited number of devices in existence, and that as Trinity had of course been a carefully controlled detonation at the site, not the drop of a complex and in many ways delicate apparatus from an aircraft, there were concerns that any attempt at a ‘demonstration’ faced both the real risk of successful Japanese attack and that the device might prove to be a dud.
DeleteThere are legitimate arguments on both sides, and I have no opinion other than to point out that such choices are complex and subtle, of necessity involving clashes of opinions amongst decision makers, and that the decisions in question have to be made at the time within clouds of uncertainty and doubt, and absent historians’ luxury of knowing the final outcome and to some extent the consequences of the decisions made and action taken.
~ ‘indigopirate’
A war is not a morality play, and there are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ sides – only sides.
Delete~ ‘indigopirate’
So the Nazis were just a side, as good or bad or neutral as any other? I don't think so. But if we take the morality out of it, then what remains is just sides with no consideration as to what they would implement if victorious.
DeleteThe Islamofacists are no better or worse than anyone else. I don't think anyone who reads or posts on this blog would want to live under their form of government.
If war isn't a morality play, then no one is ever guilty for any abominations in war.
SDL
If you have the need to see it as a matter of morality, that’s your privilege.
DeleteWe differ.
~ ‘indigopirate’
Tea time with Tojo...
DeleteSDL
I think the PNB meetings and LSB meetings (particular to each station) should be mandatory simulcasting on Pacifica stations, so the idiot listeners can hear the scum.
ReplyDeleteSDL
Wouldn't that be obscene programming?
ReplyDeleteBut obscenity is often entertaining...
DeleteSDL