13 Comments on “Arlene Engelhardt’s cell phone number”

1. jerk move! but funny

2. wow does she ever seem like a real peach! can’t believe they pulled this kinda stuff. wow, just wow. it’d be one thing if they floated this idea – but to just pull it like that, essentially in the middle of the night, with no review – shows the kinda dastardly plans afoot.

3. …and Iain Boal at CounterPunch (“The Two-Percent Putsch”) weighs in:

   “In spite of the tough economic times, KPFA raises enough money to pay for itself—it just doesn’t raise enough money to pay for Pacifica as well. Pacifica is demanding the station hand over $800,000 of KPFA listeners’ money in the coming fiscal year and has flatly refused to make any of the recommended cuts. The Pacifica National Board refuses to reduce the number of its famously expensive—and dysfunctional, as a search of YouTube can attest—quarterly board meetings. KPFA’s union has asked Pacifica’s executive director, Arlene Engelhardt, to disclose her own salary (which should be a matter of public record) but she has refused. Austerity is just for the workers, after all.”

   “The only hope for the long term health of Pacifica is to scrap as soon as possible the fatally flawed governance structure and start over. This means collecting approximately 800 signatures of current subscribers, that is, one percent of the membership, to begin the process of revising the bylaws. A national “Salvage Pacifica” campaign must be initiated as the immediate priority. So once again I invite concerned readers and the silent majority of actual listeners to contact salvagepacifica@gmail.com, and the business of reconstitution can begin.

   “‘The crisis’, Antonio Gramsci wrote from Mussolini’s prisons, ‘consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.’ We’ve seen the morbid symptoms on display. It’s time to move ahead to rescue—and revitalize—this invaluable resource for the left.”

   http://www.counterpunch.org/boal11042010.html

4. But… but… “Dr.” Gary Null’s back on WBAI. Surely having an HIV-denialist multimillionaire marketing huckster on the radio every weekday, will be a boon to WBAI’s credibility.

   You know, even worse than bogus non-science and paranoid fear-mongering, is the Lifestyle Programming. The privileged “you can live forever” messaging.

5. im glad they pulled the morning show with its middle of the road democrat politics.the show was a poor copy of n.p.r. so what if it made the most money.that is just a reflection of how middle class and n.p.r. loving the bay area liberals are.kpfa should remain radical

6. Better to be marginal and authentic, right Stephen?

   There’s nothing like two decades of exposure to Pacifica to sour one on the left.

7. if pacifica has devolved to crank theory promotion, that’s very sad, but no sadder than a devolution to nation-style politics – they can’t think critically, either.

   i never listened to the am show, but doug does not seem to dispute a characterization of it as npr lite.

   if that’s what it is, then it would necessarily stink like npr. authentic, yes, is always better – if it wasn’t, why not just be a nice npr Democrat? (hint at answer – see last 40 years of left moving right, and the resultant atrophy of all muscles involved in fighting back; see obama; see obama rein down death on your neighbors.)

   on the other hand, against the grain is a really, really excellent resource. where will they go?

8. As long as we’re clear that “stephen on November 10, 2010 at 2:01 pm” is not me with a capital S. As a lefty queer, I’m used to being marginal – particularly in my old southern and rural haunts – and there should be marginalia on Pacifica, but the fact is there had to be room for a variety of voices, and some of them will sound like NPR.

   One of the issues I encountered with my brief CAB time was people who thought the radio was their own personal sonic wallpaper – they insisted that WBAI was their soundtrack 24/7. Instead of listening to this program or that and paying up, people – some of whom give $25 or zero to the station each year – insist that they have wide-ranging vetos. I can think of only a few lines that shouldn’t be (routinely) crossed by hosts: holocaust denialism (and not just the Nazi one), HIV-denialism and dispensing quack medical advice/products. Well, WBAI has lost a gem of a listener and occasional volunteer (pledge room, mailing premiums, the CAB): 42 years old, $200 a year in credit card donations and never once asked for a gift… and I listened to 3 or 4 programs a week, maybe 8-10 hours at most. Now, it’s going to be all about infomercials and branding (Null, Null, Null!) for the wanna-live-forever set. Such a disgrace.

9. Anyone who would classify KPFA’s The Morning Show as NPR Lite, has never listened to either and is simply comparing stereotypes.

   I live in Pittsburgh, PA and never missed an episode. Brian Edwards Tiekert was always prepared and well informed for every interview. Both hosts led with questions that NPR would never even dream of asking.

10. Brad’s right about The Morning Show.

    The idea of NPR Lite is pretty funny. The damn thing is already so Lite.

11. my remarks on the morning show, to which i stipulated i have not listened, was reasonably based on the following exchange :

    “im glad they pulled the morning show with its middle of the road democrat politics.the show was a poor copy of n.p.r. so what if it made the most money.that is just a reflection of how middle class and n.p.r. loving the bay area liberals are.kpfa should remain radical”

    By: stephen on November 10, 2010
    at 2:01 pm

    and doug’s response:

    “Better to be marginal and authentic, right Stephen?”

    …with no disputation of how it had been characterized. i am glad tit’s now been disputed, and to know the show doesn’t stink. so i guess it’s authentically left?

12. JP – KPFA’s The Morning Show was unique: listener supported and truly progressive. In my opinion, NPR is neither progressive nor hard-hitting.

    What makes it even harder to swallow is the person apparently behind its demise. Personally, I think Doug is being too generous in calling Arlene Englehardt the “head maniac” as it implies psychological or physiological pathologies are the reason for her actions.

    I think assassin or saboteur are more appropriate. She also sounds uneducated and unprofessional. Just my $0.02

    My progressive lifeline to sanity now consists of the following podcasts:
    Behind the News with Doug
    Flashpoints
    FAIR’s Counterspin
    Peter B. Collins
    Tom Dispatch (only 5-10min)
    ProPublica (also short)

    Doug – if you leave us I will hang myself by my earbuds!

13. I think publishing people’s phone numbers in a context where people might call them up and harass them isn’t really very nice.

    Why not encourage letters and publish contact info for that?