Ain't No Mountain Too High

Pacifican's are talking about another dramatic move made by the Executive Director—this one was physical but the aim  was the same:  to keep a rusty ship afloat. Okay, so it was less imaginative than Werner Herzog's up-the-mountain steamboat trek, but that's what it brought to my mind.

The comments I have seen are mostly laudatory, but skepticism has not yet died. Dr. Stephen D. Cohen, our West Coast optometrist, honed his 20-20s and jotted down the following.  

I believe Pacifica has a people problem. And it's a really big problem.

Like the Mobius strip question of untangling the primacy of the chicken and its egg, this PacificasPeopleProblem is intimately intertwined and circles the drain with the desperate financial problems of the organization. Each of these two problems feeds into the other.  Flip sides of one coin, if you prefer.

Here's Classic Pacifica style:  The Financial problems were recently papered over with loans, after which came an apparent emotional collapse of the leadership of the troubled network.  An utter torpor and listless drift has descended over the exhausted organization-- in terms of any type of meaningful progress, or finding ways to bridge gaps, how we gonna make the first payment on the loans, etc etc.  

A very talented CFO was driven out by the mismatch between Pacifica and the reality of  sound, honest, accounting practice. Quit in a huff over the prospect that, in 6 months, he better get ready to lie.  A lot.  Often.  Repeatedly. Convincingly.  Start boning up on 3 card monte and the like. 

 An iED is pathetically reduced to trying to impress with heroic stories of moving electronic gear up and down the DC<-->NYC corridor. In hopes of being thrown a Pacifica Brand Milk Bone.  Or an ALL CAPS!!! pat on the head.   Livingston is shrewd enough to know that he must comport himself as a very weak leader.  He'll tell the story of having been warned not to get on the wrong side of "The Factions."  He was scolded and retreated like a scorpion for suggesting Pacifica might model itself after the infinitely better run NPR.  He's a servant. A weather vane in a hurricane.  Not a leader.  Easily flummoxed, whipsawed.  A human invertebrate.  

He can move a generator into position, but doesn't have the foggiest as to how to improve the truly poor, narrow, hyperspecialized, factually inaccurate, fantastical,  and unattractive product that that very generator is burning fossil fuel with in order to put sonic detritus into the air. No worries.  The signal largely dies a quiet sonic death. Beaming over the heads of folk who long ago turned their back on Pacifica, after Pacifica defrauded them and turned their turned its back on them.  Along with turning their pockets inside out one time too many. For merchandise they didn't even have the integrity to send to the purchaser. 

I ask you.  Would the sanctimonious broadcasters at Pacifica tolerate late government checks to the needy for greater than 24 hours.  Or would they sneeringly cry foul.  And see it as a sort of shock troop on the road to a Trumpian branded Fascism. 

Livingston is docile, meek--the last to speak. He is either that way to begin with, or quickly adopted the style to survive and collect his 6 10K checks.  When he shows the gall to speak, it is in a comically sad lingo of an organization wonk about process and assessments. He can drone on as good as the greatest Senator Foghorn.  And say nothing. And his overlords love it.  

 Everyone who speaks before him at a meeting has made "an excellent point" to that neutered shivering process-drone.  He knows that many of the points are utter garbage and classic Pacifica power jockeying.  That's all.  Pathetically, if one of the curs on the PNB barks at him, he cowers in fear and speaks of what an honor it is to work among mongrels, brutes and zealots such as these.

PNB barely meets anymore.  That's because the two factions know of the bloody civil war that looms ahead.  Gettysburg redux.   This time with liberals.  Radio style.  Night of the Long Power Cord Cutting Scissors is still before them. In the front view mirror.  

As usual, both sides are in a desperate, high stakes, wary standoff.  A game of chicken where both sides are likely to turn into the same direction.  In contrast to Larry's notion of a cooperative coming together, I believe Pacifica is poised for the mother of all faction wars.  I hope I'm wrong. 

But I'll guarantee this:  there will need to be a "programming death toll" to sort out Pacifica.  Sonic winners and plug pulled losers.  "There will be blood" as one person's fingers are pried loose from the microphone-- a la the notorious right winger Charlton Heston's fingers from his gun-- and the microphone is given to other untrained tyros to have a fling at broadcasting. 

The people problem relates to the fact that there are many different types of folks gathered under its big tent.  They vary widely in their psychological balance. I've posited that, over the years, Pacifica has attracted a significant number of very loud, and psychologically wounded, disturbed, regressed, stuck people. They found a welcoming home at Pacifica that they could find nowhere else. 

As a shorthand I'll call them PacificaBrandAtypicals.

As such one winds up with a brew of people who are pursuing Pacifica and its radio airwaves with all kinds of disparate agendas.  Pulling it to pieces in so many impossible directions.

The problem is compounded by the one common belief among virtually all Pacificans:  distrust of authority, distrust of centralized authority, tolerance of "managers in name only"  and only if they are willing to function on a very tight tether.  And a great deal of (admirable) empathy for the walking wounded, psychologically speaking.

That's a perfect storm.  Right there.

You see the two factions at Pacifica are not as they are usually cast.  Try asking anyone to outline the policy differences and outlook of the two factions.  They are tongue tied.

The two factions are not based in that at all.  The two factions are split along psychological lines. Between the normopaths and their opposites.  On the one hand, there are the reasonably psychologically well balanced Pacificans, and on the other hand--the other faction--the PacificaBrandAtypicals.  RadioWavesters clearly buy into this.  You see it in the invective and personal attacks they make on one another.  I'm willing to bet that one side looks at the other and thinks they are craven and insane--sociopathic. 

The fault line in Pacifica exists along a mental health divide and they switch their labels. Depending, of course,  on which side is writing the script, or reviewing old history on the RadioWaves of Pacifica. 

The people problem is the number one problem at Pacifica. 

But maybe I'm wrong.  In which case you can disregard everything I've written.