4507 WBAI Radio

The late Steve Post of WBAI and WNYC. He could make you laugh at the weather, famous composers, society in general and himself. And he could make you think.

WBAI radio has long been a bad college radio station without a college.  Strictly speaking, it’s a non-commercial broadcaster with a juicy commercial-level dial spot, 99.5, with a powerful signal that covers close to 20 million pairs of ears in the New York Metro area.  No one is listening.

It’s financial woes and internal strife are legendary in the industry.  No one else cares. Probably no one else should.

Buried lead:  the owners, the California-based Pacifica Foundation has fired the staff and is running its own syndicated mostly left-wing stuff until it can “recoup and refocus.”  It can’t. Not now.  And not at any other time during the past umpteen years.

They try to run this thing as a listener supported democracy.  That kind of worked in the hippie era that gave the station birth.  It doesn’t work now.  What it does is slow the money to such a small drip that WBAI had to abandon its transmitter perch on the Empire State building, pay off an enormous back rent and hide out in the outer boroughs.

They really don’t have to hide.  Their loyal following, also a small drip, knows where to find it and no one but the bill collectors are trying to locate it.

Even in a depressed radio market, the station is worth a fortune.

The “fired” air staff went to court and got temporarily un-fired.  That’s not a long term solution.  What might help, is a reprofessionalizing.  WBAI wasn’t always the kiddie corner. In recent years they’ve had more former managers than the trump cabinet.  They’ve had attempted coups, actual coups, endless fundraisers and programming that’s about as dull as the pen knife the TSA confiscates from you when you go to board flight 234 from Butcher Hollow TN, non-stop to LaGuardia.

Listener-supported radio stations manage to do very nicely everywhere, including New York City and vicinity.  Granted they mostly run programs from American Public Media and National Public Radio, much of them semi-to-non-political.  But survive they do.

WBAI wasn’t always a hoodlum occupying a 5th Avenue section of the dial.  They had exciting and funny show hosts like Steve Post and Larry Josephson long ago.  

The place has always been in trouble.  They broadcast the famous ribald “Seven Words You Can’t Say…” on the air by George Carlin. That brought the feds down on them.  They gave plenty of time to hippie era radicals like Abbie Hoffman. 

But they also taught computers to clumsy geeks.  They did news you wouldn’t hear anywhere else.  There was plenty of that.  Money was always tight. Beg-a-thons were always obnoxious (there and everywhere else they’re heard) but the station wasn’t yet suffocating. 

Now it is. 

Can the Californian owners save them?  Well, they have similar money woes out there. But they also seem to be keeping at least the cold water running.  So, maybe.  But don’t hold your breath. 

There’s room for a left-wing radio station in a city like New York.  But it has to be run right.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2019

4506 Product Placement

Have you ever noticed that practically every computer you see in the movies or on TV is an Apple?  Have you noticed that movies that use a lot of cars or trucks tend to use one brand or another in particular?

There’s a reason for that and it’s called product placement.  There’s a whole industry dedicated to setting those things up.  The deal works like this: United Truck Makers pays Placement Unlimited decent bucks to get its brand on screen and then supplies all the trucks you’ll see in the movie.

That puts United Trucks into your mind and you’ll likely think of them first if you’re buying new wheels.  But it’s not just cars and trucks and it’s not just computers.  It’s everything.

Are they drinking Coke or Pepsi?  Are they smoking Marlboros?  Do they have GE appliances?  If so, dollars have changed hands. It’s not big bucks.  But it’s something. And it sure is cheaper than commercials during the Superbowl or the World Series.

The question came up when a college football coach held a routine news conference the other day.  Coach Bigly is sitting at a table wearing a Fenstermeister U logo warmup jacket. In front of him is a plastic water bottle. The water bottle has a big name brand label and that label is facing the camera square on.

Without saying so, the picture tells you on some level that Coach Bigly and the boys on the team, the Fenstermeister Roaring Wombats, drink Aquafina. (Note: Aquafina did not pay for the mention. But we’re open to a negotiation.)

The Wombats have yet to lose a game this season.  That could change if they start playing powerhouse schools.  But so far, so good for Coach Bigly’s fellas.  Nevertheless, when a team wins half a dozen games in a row and loses none, it gets the attention of warmup jacket makers and bottled drinks.

Hold on, coach.  Before the news conference begins, make sure that label faces the camera.

Shrapnel:

--It sure looks like trump is going to make Rick Perry the scapegoat for the Ukraine mess.  Someone has to take the fall. Shame, though, because in the regular American underworld, the fall taker gets his family taken care of during his stint behind bars, and that ain’t gonna happen with poor Rick.

--The first lady made a speech the other day in which she called for the banning of vaping.  Good idea. The Wessays research department can’t find a similar speech given by Michelle Obama, so Melania must have found a less obvious ghostwriter.

--Cheers for Dick’s Sporting Goods, the store chain. It turned five million dollars worth of assault rifles into scrap rather than returning them to the manufacturers when it decided to stop selling these weapons.  That’s called putting your money where your mouth is.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2019

4505 Tailgating

A body of moving beer? Move over, Grand Coulee here come the football fans.

Why do football fans have an oligopoly if not a monopoly on tailgating? Fall weekends in football towns find as many people out on the open grounds as there are where the game is being played, usually an ungainly building that looks from the outside like a shipping crate for a flying saucer?

They are in tents and intense.  Also, in those travel vans that are actually house trailers on their own wheels and which masquerade as something else by calling themselves Recreational Vehicles.  Ever drive one of those?  Without a Teamster card, it’s nothing close to recreational.

All you need for a good tailgate is three pounds of unhealthy food per person and a body of moving beer about the size of the Columbia River.  So why restrict things to a sport that’s played for only part of the year? In fact, why restrict it to sports at all?

There’s no reason you can’t have a tailgate at the opera house or the movie house… or even your own house?  And there’s no need to restrict things to weekends.  

“Mommy, Tony and I want to tailgate after school today. May I please have the keys to the RV? And is there any beer in the house?” Jeanie, you’re not tall enough to reach the brake pedal and besides its a school night.  And no beer for you until you pass the 5th grade. I’ve told you that a hundred times.”

Weekday tailgating at the opera house would take a lot of pressure off the roads and make things easier and more profitable for the wing and brisket shops that border on the parking lots.

A little Tabasco to go with your Tannhauser?  A little Rheingold with your Das Rheingold?

And when “The Irishman” opens at a select theater near you, and the lines are too long, you can relax with a little Motor City Brew just like the star, Jimmy Hoffa might drink in secret. (He was a teetotaler, at least for the record.)

Tailgating scholars might ask if there is a difference between a tailgate and a plain, old neighborhood barbecue. And of course there is.  Like any academic, they will give you all the minutia that goes with their field of PhD-ness no matter how microscopic.  But the main difference is the drunks attending don’t flop into a corner to sleep it off at a tailgate.  Instead, they make noise.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ® 

Comments?  Send ‘em here: wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2019

Mini 009 The Third Party

Yes, Republicans are members of a third party, or perhaps a third major set of voters.  Latest figures show 31% of America identifies Democratic, 24% identify as Republican and 42% are independent.  That makes the GOP a third party even though the independents are not evenly split between the parties they lean toward (most are Dems, though.)

So for a minority party, the Republicans are doing pretty well. After all it’s been a long time since a third or fourth party candidate won a presidential election. 

Well, at least on paper, Americans are good about minorities.  So at the moment, the minority party controls the White House, the Senate and the Supreme Court.  It also controls most of the state legislatures.

In fact, the idea that the “majority rules” is just part of our mythology.  What rules is money, influence and loudness.  But the money types are starting to see they’re backing a bad horse in the upcoming election.  

Wal-mart knows more about the average American than any government agency with the possible exception of the NSA.  Evidence?   Well… they raised employee wages, increased corporate giving and cut back on ammunition sales.

Big deal?  Yes. They know which way the wind is blowing.  It’s a small wind at the moment, but it’s wind, nonetheless.

When it comes to impeachment and trial, forget about Schiff and Pelosi, forget about Moscow Mitch. There are two guys who can get rid of this poison snake: Rupert Murdoch and Charles Koch.

If the former turned Fox News against the president and the latter yanked funding from his think tanks… problem solved.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2019

4504 People You May Know

We all know the internet spies on us.  It knows more about you than you do. And it’s always willing to listen.

The big reason: The more it knows about you, the more it can target you for ads you’re likely to respond to.  This can be worrisome.  Especially when all this highly touted technology gets things consistently wrong.

The best example is when Facebook suggests “friends.”  This is a two part process.  First, they look for people you’ve connected with.  Then they find the connections’ connections and “suggest” them as “People You May Know.”  The system is imperfect. To the point where six isn’t a large enough degree of separation.

It’s possible that retired BART train operator Bart Bartley of San Francisco and I would like each other or at least have something to talk about.  About what?  Maybe subway cars?  Or we could debate whose ocean is better.  We have a possible connection only in that we’re two retired guys from cities that have famous names and oceanfronts. 

Then there’s Sally Weatherby, freshman at Mercer County, West Virginia Community College, and a hairstyling major.  Sally can’t be a day over 18.  Does she have grandpa issues, or what?  Would she want to practice cutting my hair?  Sorry, I’m all out of that.

Maybe Bart, Sally and I can get together on line and try to figure out what practical joker of a computer algorithm suggested us to each other. 

But we’re unlikely to form a conclusion that’s beyond reasonable doubt.  That’s because we don’t understand how these machines work.  Neither do the people who design, build or run them.  But if you use techno-speak or at least the word “technology” often enough, people will just assume they know stuff you don’t.

The word technology is overused to the point of meaninglessness.  Tech in new cars? Sure.  Tech in modern diagnostic medical equipment? Of course.  But technology in tooth brushes, shoes, cooking vessels and utensils?  Gimme a break!

Facebook and Google (and Amazon if you have one of its robot bugging devices) know how many times a day you go to the bathroom, what you had for breakfast and which advertiser’s products best suit your bathroom and mealtime habits.

So how do they get the “friend” thing wrong?  Possibly because people lie when they write their profiles.  Bart Bartley may have been a broom jockey, not the train motorman he says he was.

Sally Weatherby may have confused Facebook with a dating site like Cozy Coalminers or Beauty Operators.com.

The big mystery that springs from this post is simple: Do we want Facebook to improve its mastery of our biographies or are we content to let them screw things up and scroll through the pictures of all the guys and dolls we never heard of, would never meet in real life and have no interest in knowing.

It’s kind of an organic or accidental version of 21st Century privacy.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Comments? Send ‘em here: wesrichards@gmail.com

We will never sell, rent or otherwise “share” your personal information.

© WJR 2019

4503 The Medical Office

Patients patiently waiting for their 9 o’clock appointments

Patients patiently waiting for their 9 o’clock appointments

 The guy who designed the interior of the Mountainside Medical Center Building deserves a special place in hell.  The halls are twisted. They are contra intuitive. They are pedestrian unfriendly and confusing.

Mountainside is not the only medical place like that. Time was you got to sit in the doctor’s waiting room where you could catch what everyone else jammed in carried. The waiting room was right next to the exam room. Open the door, turn right or left and there you were.

Not so today. First you check in.  They ask do you have your insurance card? You say yes and wait.  Then they ask you if they may see it.  You comply. They look at it. They look at you as if to check if you’re the person in the photo ID, but there are no photo IDs on most insurance cards.  They check anyway. 

And then, they tell you to take a seat in the waiting room and “someone will be with you shortly.”  This never varies. It’s like you need to memorize the line during your first semester at Famous Medical Clerks’ Institute.

It’s like the waiters who always ask to clear your dinnerware by saying “let me get these out of your way,” and who respond to your order by saying either “no problem” (class of ’18 at Famous Table Workers’ University or “perfect!” (class of ’19.)  This provokes one of two possible questions:

1.  What WOULD be a problem? Or

2. Have you tried the Fryed Oysters and Broccoli with chocolate sauce?

Back to Mountainside.  You sit and wait. Finally someone shows up carrying paper work and calls your name. First name if you’re a woman, Mr. so-and-so if you’re a man. 

You follow her (it’s almost always a “her) through a labyrinth that leads to a maze that leads to a group of exam rooms from which, eventually, you’ll need a St. Bernard with a cask hanging from his neck to lead you out.

Then, the medical third degree.  While Kindly Old Doc had your records on a pack of dog-eared 3x5 cards, it’s now on a computer.  And there’s never a day when the nurse or aid can’t say “sorry for the delay, the computer is running slow today.”  Three by five cards never “run slow.”

“Any change in your medicines?”

You mean since two days ago when we were most recently here?”

You go through your litany of medical complaints and then the data entry clerk tells you “The doctor will be with you shortly.”  It’s plain that data entry clerks have also attended Famous Intake Clerks’ Institute.

Again, you wait. Then, there’s a knock on the door and enters… you thought I was going to say the doctor. Think again. It’s a student in the Physicians Assistant school.  Surprise! Even more of a surprise, he or she is personable, attentive, sympathetic and as thorough as any MD who ever has looked you over.

The student takes notes. That’s what students do. Then he consults with the doctor who eventually shows up, examines you – often less thoroughly than the student assistant and confirms the diagnosis.

He says “Hmmm.”  Every doctor says “hmmm.” There’s a course in hmmm at every medical school from lofty Harvard to Ace Autobody U.  He says he’s going to give you the new wonder drug Gladex that you see advertised every ten minutes on TV. Gladex is a pill to make you feel happy.  And he gives you the prescription, but not the medicine.  That, you have to pay for.

Actually, he doesn’t even give you the prescription. He sends an electronic version to your drug store.

Then you go to checkout. If you can reverse your way out of the maze and then the labyrinth.  They no longer allow St. Bernards in medical facilities.

Your parting thought is “where did I park.”

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Comments?  Send ‘em to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2019

4502 Enough!

4502 Enough!

“Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day, accept this ... as a gift on my daughter's wedding day.” -- Fictional olive oil importer Vito Corleone.

It’s time to impeach president trump. We’ve put up with this un-elected madman long enough. It’s going to take forever and a day to undo the damage -- if ever we can.

And, yes, yes, the Senate will never convict and remove and that doesn’t matter. Why? Because the Republicans in the Senate will expose themselves as the cowards and unindicted co-conspirators that they are.

McConnell? Enjoying the quadrupling of his net worth over the last two years? How’d THAT happen?  Someone should form an Internal Affairs Division like the cops do.  The question is how does a Senator on a salary in the $200,000 range live the kind of lifestyle Moscow Mitch does.

Romney? The supposed voice of traditional republicanism? ‘C’mon. He waffles like box of Eggos and does nothing.  The best he can do is call all this stuff “troubling.”  Mitt! Tripping over an untied shoelace is troubling.  A moderately long power failure is troubling. Psoriasis is troubling. This is not that. It’s worse.  It’s much worse.

Those are two Senators whose names everyone knows. But kick over any rock and you’ll find some worm you haven’t heard of but whose support empowers, enables and facilitates the damage that’s done to America and to American values with every breath the president takes and with every Twitter tweet.

As with Nixon, the corruption is in the coverup. In this case, trump is said to have frozen promised aid to Ukraine.  Later, he and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky spoke on the phone and Mr. art of the deal at the very least allowed him to infer that the funds wouldn’t thaw until Ukraine investigated Joe Biden and his son Hunter and came up with some dirt.

Biden is the opposition candidate trump most fears. And with good reason.  For all his flaws, he’s likely the most electable of the possible Democratic candidates.

So, what, here is an impeachable offense?  Let all those people with law degrees figure it out.

Enough of this madness.  Enough of embracing our enemies and screwing our allies.  Enough of embracing people with enough money to buy their own countries and screwing the working man and women that live in yours and mine.

Enough of breaking up families and caging the children.

Enough of the nominator of incompetent and unqualified cabinet secretaries.

Enough of nominating Supreme Court Justices who can’t keep their pants on.

Enough woman bashing.

Enough payoffs.

Enough lies.

Enough self enrichment extracted from anyone who wants an audience with his holiness.

Enough multimillion-dollar golf weekends.

Enough of the birther, the caller of names, he who rallies and riles the brain dead.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Comments?  Send ‘em here: wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2019