The Pacifica board, which has been hijacked by a bunch of corporate sharks, has two main bases of support. In NYC's WBAI, it consists of porkchop nationalists who take their cue from station manager Utrice Leid while at Los Angeles's KPFK it consists of Nation magazine liberals. Two smaller stations in Houston and Washington, DC also line up with the board but have generally kept a low profile in the battle, except for Houston's station manager Garland Ganter who had a protester arrested for leafleting in front of a fundraiser. In a gesture reminiscent of East Asia cronyism, Ganter hired his wife and the two reputedly make $80,000 each. The only station that has eluded the board's grasp is KPFA in Berkeley, which mobilized 10,000 people in the streets after Ganter seized control of the station on the behest of national program director Bessie Wash. The hijackers, which were forced to back down in Berkeley, are now on the defensive after 6 months of militant and massive protests. Some of the hijackers have resigned, while one board member named Ken Ford is threatening to turn over protest letters to the FBI. Such is the state of a "progressive board" that has the full backing of people like Marc Cooper. One of the few on-air but non-paid hosts in NYC who has gone along with the Leid gang is new age health food and vitamin guru Garry Null (http://www.garynull.com/), who has launched an "investigation" into the crisis on his noonday show "Natural Living". The show is usually devoted to Null telling listeners how vitamin C can cure AIDS or cancer, or how the medical establishment is out to "get him". Null also appeared for hours at a time during the local PBS TV's fundraising marathon last year. If you became a subscriber to the station, you'd receive a copy of one of Null's ridiculous books. He is a tall, handsome fellow about my age but there is something a bit "off" about him, most especially his head full of coal black hair that shrieks "dye" as much as Ronald Reagan's head used to. Null must be a bit self-conscious about his dye job, since he kept pointing it out to his fund-raising co-host. "See, Sally, that's what a good diet of soybeans and cabbage will do. It will keep you young. Not only is my eyesight 20-20 but I don't have a single gray hair." Right. He painted them all. On today's show, he interviewed Bernard White, the fired popular African-American host of the morning show that he shared with Amy Goodman. She is still at the station but under extreme duress. White, Goodman and Juan Gonzalez form the central leadership of the struggle to regain Pacifica. To Null's credit, he gave White a full hour to air his criticisms. None of this sunk in on Null at all who despite his new age unctuousness can explode with frightening rancor. It appears that Null has it in for the opposition because some of them, including Goodman apparently, thought his new age bullshit was an embarrassment to the station, even if it raised something like 25 percent of the funds. Listening to Null trying to persuade White of the merits of the board's new directions was a genuine culture clash, with Bernard, an overweight, mellow-voiced, laid-back fellow trying to parry the thrusts of the febrile new age hustler who thought that Pacifica had to be "tolerant" of board members who were in business. As an example of the direction that the station should be moving in, according to Null, was the development of an endowment like the local PBS station had. Null, his voice raising, said, "Don't you see. Channel 13 has an endowment of 150 million dollars and only 5 percent comes from listener contributions." When White pointed out to him that the other 95 percent came from sources like Archer-Daniels-Midland, Mobil and Mercedes-Benz, Null grew excited and changed the subject. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
