With all the bogus remedies and "cures" WBAI tries to sell its handful of listeners during Reimers' endless beg-a-thons, one wonders why they haven't come up with a cure for Metathesiophobia, a mental malady from which opportunistic WBAI inmates commonly suffer: Fear of change.
In this case, it is not so much change per se that has the JUCs and JUCettes scrambling—it is the fear of their own downgrading coming undone. A fear of change to their own change, as it were. I think most of you know what I am talking about.
In recent months, Linda Perry has worked hard to pull the station out of a morass of lies, misinformation and, by default, criminality. It is probably an impossible mission, but there is nothing more to lose, so any positive attempt to restore significance to WBAI should be encouraged and supported—even against the odds. The overwhelming majority of dedicated, thinking listener-supporters have already shown their dissatisfaction with what WBAI offers on the air these years. Unlike station management and the individuals behind this insurrection invitation, listeners once admired the principles upon which Lewis Hill and a few friends created Pacifica almost 70 years ago.
Remarkably, many of WBAI's current voices fail to distinguish between fact and fiction. In its early years, the station functioned in great part as an antidote to bland, misinformed blather and corporate/government spin. It offered honest assessments of current events and re-examined a past that continued to be distorted.
There continues to linger a splash of virtue at WBAI, but it is too sporadic to draw or maintain a dedicated audience, which is why upgrading the program content is an absolute necessity. Most of us recognize this fact, as does Linda, which is why she has begun the laborious process of wiping the slate where needed and bringing in listenable, intelligent programs. This, of course, means that the dross has to be flushed out and changes made.
Berthold Reimers, the figurative "General Manager" should never have been hired—it took him less than a month to demonstrate his uselessness, but that decision is solely up to the equally inept and miscast PNB. They must like the way he juggles the books.
So here we are, the bizarre effort to downgrade and sink WBAI while professing dedication continues. Instead of trying to give their shameful shows substance and ceasing to deceive whoever might tune in, the group that posted the letter below has opted for self-righteous, doomed rebellion. However, having told the erstwhile listener-supporters to go to hell, they obviously never stopped to consider why there is no longer sufficient interest in WBAI to keep it afloat—what matters mostly to these audio albatrosses is feeding their inflated egos and making a little money on the side.
They never ask themselves why the station's programming is being "dismantled" or they themselves "discarded." The answer is simple: they can or will not grasp the original concept of Pacifica. They have narrowed the station's "community" down to one that comprises a small fraction of a fraction—alienating thinking people of all races. Now they realize that the fire curtain, too, is finally coming down.
Let us hope that Linda Perry can cure their metathesiophobia.
The following note was submitted as a comment Sunday, December 2, 2018. Neither unexpected nor well written, but rather desperate and pathetic.
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| Click on Mimi's note to enlarge. |
By the way, the last beg-a-thon ended in November and despite the current on-air promo where a poor misled lady falsely claims it was a success, the next one starts tomorrow (December 4)!
