Media Madness THE GOLDEN AGE OF RADIO
"I don't need this pepper-spray shit!" the man howled as he stood outside the KPFA studio on Monday, tears streaming down his face. "The last time I got pepper-sprayed I was protesting Lyndon Johnson!"
Had the pigs rolled in and kicked ass? Not quite. As sixty demonstrators chanted outside the radio station, enraged at the latest head-rolling courtesy of Pacifica guillotine queen Lynn Chadwick, some two dozen protesters wandered into the first lane of traffic along Martin Luther King Jr. Way. An agitated Kaiser employee on his way home didn't appreciate the gridlock, so he bumped his Honda Accord through the crowd. An annoyed demonstrator pounded his fist on the hood, and Mr.Kaiser hit the brakes and flew out of his car, his OR scrubs a wrinkled, sweaty mess. Mr. Fist produced his own private pepper-spray stash and let fly, hitting the OR guy as well as a few innocent bystanders.
This was just one of the many colorful incidents following Chadwick's latest KPFA firing. Weekend DJ Robbie Osman, a 22-year veteran at the station, was fired after uttering a few tasty anti-Chadwick diatribes on his show, Across the Great Divide. Chadwick couldn't have picked a less opportune moment to flex her muscle; KPFA staff and volunteers had been arguing over strategy the last few weeks, and Chadwick could have made a case before the Pacifica board of the directors (who are meeting in Washington, DC this weekend) that things had died down. Now Chadwick will have to explain why fourteen people were arrested for blockading the entrance to her office, and why dozens and sometimes hundreds of people are picketing her office every day.
On Monday afternoon, a contingent of local bigwigs, including Berkeley City Councilmember Maudelle Shirek and Media Alliance executive director Andrea Buffa, led a crew of TV news cameramen up to Chadwick's office to demand an explanation of recent actions. Upon seeing the cameras, Chadwick draped a sweater over her head, turned to face the wall, and said over and over, "Get these people out of my office!"
Now, that's politics!