The fund-raising marathon Hallock refers to was our first. It was born out of desperation and it offered only a healthy WBAI, which is what our listenership wanted and found well worth contributing to.
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.
Very different times, very different people, very different principles and objectives.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing.
~ 'indigo'
What we have are people who either haven't a clue or simply never grasped why Pacifica/KPFA was founded. They are small-minded, desperately inept individuals who work solely for their own benefit, whether that entails using WBAI to garner personal income, feed overdoses of narcissism, or engage in racist propaganda. Their idols (the ones the "celebrate") are scam artists such as "Dr. Ben", Jon Henrik Clarke and others who idolize criminals like "mumia" and Marcus Garvey, the costumed scammer whose large-scale swindle resulted in jail and embarrassment. They also exploit the real accomplishments and legacies of important leaders like MLK, Robeson and Malcolm X as part of their efforts to fuel racism.
ReplyDeleteOf course they believe they have an audience for their schemes and propaganda—they do, but it is a very small fraction of the black population. Their oft-made claim to be educators for the latest generation of black people is as irresponsible as selling drops of water as a cancer cure—the truth is that feeding nonsense and lies to children does them a disservice and these WBAI numbskulls aren't doing their own people any favor.
I think we all know what the Israeli government has done to the Palestinians, with outrageous acceptance and financial help from our own corrupt government.
ReplyDeleteIn my firmly held opinion, Netanyahu needs to stand trial for the atrocities he has committed and the damn "settlers" should stop the occupation, abandon the land they have stolen, and try to remember rather than emulate what Hitler did to Jews, Gypsies, gay people and protesters.
Frankly, I am as disturbed by Netanyahu's followers as I was/am by Hitler's, but the WBAI racists have no detectable moral compass and very little to work with in their head, so I cannot take anything they say seriously.
Although I disagree with much of what the Israeli government has done,I disagree with your description of Netanyahu as being like Hitler, and the settlers as being like Nazis. These descriptions are excessive, to say the least. This is not the place to discuss the issue, but, if I were to bandy about the accusation of "being like Nazis" (something I try to avoid), I could app!y that phrase to Hamas, which is dedicated to eliminating every Jew between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. However,I would prefer to leave this sort of unhelpful and hyperbolic rhetoric for the producers on WBAI.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking of mindset and unbalanced measures of human worth.
ReplyDeleteI am old enough to remember the underground—its members were our heroes and their deeds were done sans the media attention global communication generates. Netanyahu tries to justffy Israel’s theft of land and inhuman treatment of its rightful owners. There can be no acceptacle excuse for that nor for much of what Hamas does, but the distinction between power-fueled agression and survival-based defense.
As you suggest, enough of that—back to the Pacifica/WBAI situation.