Thursday, November 19, 2015

Kicking the can... kicking the gong?


A Cold Open... or A Cold Close?

A concentrate to set the mood.


A coda, a code, or a never-ending epitaph…?

Death agonies have been long-studied – Nelson’s for example, prior to that temporary interment in the rum-barrel of legend.

WBAI’s, and Pacifica’s, are likely to be rather less long-remembered.

A long slow decline. Episodes of ugliness. Refuge in cant, ideology, and racist errancy – above all, refuge in mindlessness and irrelevance.

A bit of delusion in the mix – ‘formal accounting’ v Pacifica’s private realities, largely confined to ‘executive session’ – a child’s chickenshit version of Star Chamber, albeit, unlike Star Chamber, impotent and absent so much as a single star.

A fact or two:

WBAI is out of control and bankrupt.

Pacifica is out of control and bankrupt.

For the senescent spirit of progressive regression, however, facts, as always, as the wider world itself, are beyond comprehension – which lack of comprehension is self-cast as ‘idealism’.

May the heavens forfend… and, indeed, it seems they have, albeit on the same slow schedule as a station manager who spends his time ‘terribly busy’ with his feet up, shoeless at his desk, sipping a beer as he works his outside scam hustles of ‘multi-level financing’.

Of course. Of course.

Pickled long before final pickling, final plucking, as reality slowly, slowly, ever-so-slowly, sets in…

At WBAI, Empire State is owed well-north of $600,000+, mounting fast, $43,000 per month $516,000 per annum fast.

No worries.

A minor fret or two from the chair of the finance committee, shut down swiftly by an executive director sitting in for an executive director who fled the sinking ship after five months replacing in turn however briefly an executive director tossed out in yet another of the endless coups that constitute executive authority at Pacifica.

Ah, Pacifica…

An ideal as so many squandered, shattered, spat and shat upon.

Nothing new, slowly twisting in the winds of reality.

As listenership collapses, financial support collapses…

A dreary death watch if ever there were…

Their own voices speak all-too-clearly if only one listens… but why, really, trouble to lend an ear?

Only morbid curiosity remains.

Only gloom and despair, rancor and spite, spittle and venom.

Nothing else.
~ ‘indigopirate’

With only minor internal editing (extraneous noises, routine roll and vote calls) here is the full relevant session of the November 18 PFC meeting. If you wish to hear the entire session, this is the address to Pacifica Archives, where it rests in one piece.

My thanks to indigopirate for the audio clips and poetic frame. — CA

10 comments:

  1. Remember how Reimers says the ESB negotiations take up much of his time? Didn't he say here that the last meeting with them was in the summer? That doesn’t sound like much time to me. You know there are NO negotiations going on. There is an agreement about minimum payment at the moment and the rest accrued. When you think about it, it's a pretty good financial risk by the ESB owners towards getting a choice radio license in the NY market on the cheap, probably for resale, or so they may think. The rest of this matter we can discuss in executive session.

    SDL

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    1. Reimers' life, it seems, is a succession of lies, and cronies like Mitchel volunteer to aid and abet. I think it's all catching up with him now, however.

      Yes, let's have an Executive session! :)

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  2. I don't know if this will mean anything to anyone that isn't Dutch, but 1960s protest icon Armand died yesterday. All my older Dutch buddies are in mourning today.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armand_%28singer%29

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  3. I finally finished listening to this crap and have to laugh at something - Reimers is full of expected income. He sounds like a corporation and projected income nonsense. They're going to hold events where they expect to make money, regardless of track record, huge donations, etc. All this expected income will be flowing in. There's a saying, "Dreams are for tomorrow." It's obvious Reimers doesn't believe his own crap because of all the pausing he does trying to come up with BS. The truly amazing thing is how no one in power even questions his competency.

    Anyway, let's vote: Who is more annoying and incomprehensible? Berthold or Adriana? I vote for Adriana.

    SDL

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    1. Reimers isn't of this world. He will say anything to get himself off the hook, but it's no longer working for him. I fully understand why tally figures—and bottom lines, in general—are such a secret... it's because he makes them up. It behooves his WBAI cronies to go along with it, because they either ned the salary, the air time, or both.

      I don't know if any of you have noticed, but there i a slight personnel change going on. Tony Ryan still has his weekend show, but he is no longer Operations Chief, or whatever they called him, and the telephone installation does not appear to be happening. Murillo, too, has faded away. If you listened to Haskins this morning, he was clearly trying to make that absence sound temporary.

      I would say that Adriana is more annoying, but that is mainly due to her volume and verbosity. Reimers is the drunk at closing time. Both are incomprehensible: Reimers. because he mumbles gobbledygook, and Adriana, because she just doesn't get it. I think she means well, but he surely doesn't.

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    2. You describe human rats, Chris. Watch them in action. When the real heat comes down, you'll see the snitches sing. I really wonder if Reimers can even count.

      Who said the telephone lines would be operational? I only heard that they would have phone lines installed, not in working condition.

      SDL

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    3. I guess the pæoner are from the props det.

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  4. I happened to tune in this afternoon in the nether-hour between Gary Null's and Harry Allen's shows. (Talk about night and day!) Much to my consternation, Robin Morgan was holding court.

    I listened because she was interviewing Billie Jean King. Ms, King showed her usual strength, intelligence and humility. (Those qualities, of course, disqualify her from becoming a BAI host.) My emphasis is on her humility: She is clearly living in the present and looking to the future. Robin Morgan, on the other hand, sounds like someone whose time has passed. She didn't voice it on today's show, but she is a TERF (trans-excluding radical feminist) in the mold of Janice Raymond. No one takes a TERF seriously anymore, except perhaps for another TERF.

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    1. I heard that, too, Justine. Billie Jean King was terrific, so much energy in her voice. Never heard of a TERF before.... we live and learn.

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    2. I know about the TERF thing because an ex-girlfriend used to go to the lesbian BDSM parties around town sometimes. They pretty much all allowed trans women entrance. Some of the bi and les women didn't like that and wouldn't go or would go but be snobbish.

      SDL

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