[lbo-talk] please pledge (cont.)

[ravi]

On May 13, 2009, at 1:57 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> On May 13, 2009, at 1:44 PM, ravi wrote:
>
>> I couldn't agree more with you about the state of WBAI, but wasn't  
>> JUC a response to whats-her-name's Christmas Coup?
>>
>> The Googles says: Utrice Leid, that's her name.
>
> Yeah, that's her name. She had a lot to recommend her at first.  
> She's very smart and a good talker (which is important for radio,  
> though there are plenty of people at WBAI who don't think so). But  
> power went to her head.
>
> The JUC did arise as part of the plan to undo that "coup." (That's a  
> funny word in this context, because Pacifica does own the license.  
> It's their radio station, then and now.) Bernard was initially a  
> popular fellow. He was an amiable co-host of the morning show, and a  
> nice antidote to the rather non-dulcet tones of his then-sidekick  
> Amy Goodman. But he started firing people he didn't like, among  
> them, the health nut Gary Null (I think he's a quack, but he's got a  
> big following, and raised lots of money), mainly because Null was a  
> rival power center, and reporter/analyst Robert Knight (among his  
> offenses - being black but playing too much "white music"). Bernard  
> was close to firing the host of the Sunday morning classical show,  
> Christopher Whent, because classical music is, you know, the  
> colonizer's music. The shows Bernard introduced were mostly  
> disastrous. But anyone who criticized him got denounced as a racist  
> enemy of black management.
>

Doug,

I appreciate the details, but I have to disagree with you about Null,  
and perhaps also classical music. Null was not merely a quack but a  
waste of [political] time (I have roughly the same opinion about the  
guy who was a DEA agent, the various geeks discussing computers and  
the phone phreaks show -- by which I mean no disrespect to the latter  
groups, but their value to WBAI is highly questionable). Give me  
Deepak Chopra any day ;-). And there is enough classical music on NPR  
for all the white people in the world to tune into, so I am with White  
on that one ;-).

	--ravi