KPFK, as of late, starts to remind me of a bad old movie.

The fired General Manager of this station, a man named Mark Schubb, formerly of the Screen Actors Guild, refuses to walk off into the sunset. This is despite his gun being empty, and his horse being shot out from under him by his new bosses. While he is by all accounts a perfectly decent human being, if on occasion lacking a few people skills, it is regrettable that he continues to cause grief for himself and everyone concerned in what should be a healing time for KPFK and its parent Pacifica Foundation.

This show-biz scorched-earth tradition has caused a lot of history in Los Angeles. Many, perhaps too many, vast empires have come and gone in this manner, leaving only dusty pictures in celebrity-dish books, and a few oversize pink palaces in the hills, as reminders of the horrendous consequences of personal ego hubris and/or cynical capitulations to existential chaos.

How else can any thinking KPFK listener explain the awesomely paranoid waves of sheer spew emanating from the staff of this radio station, in a quantity vastly exceeding even the electrical pulsations of its broken transmitter? In a belated, and actually rather pathetic, attempt at siezing the moral high ground, the KPFK ruling circle has apparently chosen to set itself up as a "third faction," blaming all its problems on the fact that everyone else in the world sucks.





Grit and Determination?

To continue the bad-movie analogy, they have circled the wagons. Very little comes out of KPFK except sporadic rifle fire. "Trolls" post disruptive half-truths to a local Internet forum. On-air voices of doom intone grim condemnations of everyone else who ever worked for Pacifica, warning of the death of a great radio station and the waste of its listener-sponsors' money.

Within this little circle, the fiercely loyal, or at least fiercely scared, group of survivors of KPFK's five-year programming bloodbath keep the campfire burning. One can at least admire their true grit. They act as if they are rationing their food and ammo, and waiting for dawn to bring Act III and the final shootout with the enemy.

There's only one problem here. If you widen out the lens a bit, you will see that there is no enemy. KPFK's brave little circle is sitting, all alone, on an empty plain. The fight is all make believe. It's a fantasy. There's no there, there. The other actors and the crew wrapped and went back to the hotel hours ago. They're asleep. The shoot is over. It's off the clock. No golden time for you. They gave a war and nobody came.





Who's Running the Camp?

It's starting to look like Schubb's Last Stand may, in fact, have much to do with the continuous dramaturgy spun by Marc Cooper. He's a perfectly good journalist, evidently bearing some scars from his former experiences with Pacifica's awesomely self-destructive news department and its toxic politics. He appears to have attached himself to the right guy (Schubb) and wound up more or less running the show at KPFK. He's a very good writer, when he goes for it, and most of the on-air and Internet spew from KPFK is very well written, if a bit overwrought. It all drips, tellingly, with classic Cooperisms.

Now, I've made no secret that I like Marc Cooper. This makes it just the more disappointing that he won't do the right thing, and uncircle the wagons, and send the extras home with tomorrow's call sheets. Someone needs to straighten things out at KPFK. Cooper's the best candidate, but he has apparently chosen to go down fighting with Schubb, martyr to a dead elitist paradigm of listener-sponsored radio that nobody else left in the Pacifica organization wants.

Absent anyone who can wind down this phony war, things at KPFK could get pretty ugly. Cooper charges that a purge is in progress. If so, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is no purge, unless people go over the edge, WBAI-style, and set themselves up for one. There is no war, unless people start one. There's nobody out there. We have met the enemy and he doesn't exist.

I get a certain cognitive dissonance reading the venom being directed at Pacifica's new bosses. I have talked (via e-mail) with many of them. I have no doubt that they are bright, honorable, committed, and dedicated to the idea of somehow straightening out the financial mess and starting a healing process, at least as well as anything ever heals in this wretchedly contentious organization.

While KPFK's dissidents have done a few things I'd have preferred they hadn't, and pushed personal agendas at times, they have never, never, EVER, abused the awesome privilege and responsibility that is an FM license in the United States of America. They have never run voice-of-doom carts every half hour. They have never sent out ominous e-mail describing Visigoths at the gate. That's more than I can say for Schubb, Cooper, and the mysterious "Friends of KPFK."

It's time for everyone to give it up and heal the station. The war is over. I respectfully request that Cooper, Schubb, or whoever is responsible for this ongoing dramaturgy at KPFK stop it, before there is no radio station. The western's over. The projectionist has long since shut down and locked up. It's time to stop the movie and start the hard work.

Let's shake hands and get started.

FADE OUT

I don't know Schubb's "new bosses" personally, they might not be vegans, but absent proof, I don't believe they would shoot a horse.

As a complete outsider that arrived in LA a year ago knowing nothing about the Pacifica problems I learned to hate Marc Cooper through his own presence on the radio. He love to attack the old accepted enemies of the left but his analysis of any current events is consistently reactionary if they don't have any of the old bullseyes painted on them. The Nation (while it contains many good writers) has a similar tenor that is exemplified by Christopher (I hate Clinton and Republicans so I must be Progressive) Hitchens and Todd (bomb for freedom) Gitlin.

I stopped listening to Pacifica because it pissed me off with its total lack of radical programming. It was loaded with hideous new-agey pseudo-alternative shows about medicine. Truly awful late-night tapes of Alan Watts and other "eastern" religious thinkers. To top it all off they had a freaking CAR show on sundays. Consumer radio for cretins. If Pacifica doesn't get radical and spend a lot more time with wonderful people like Amy Goodman, Norman Solomon, Jim Hightower, FAIR, MediaLens, Chomsky then it can forget it. (Hell it can even have idiots like Arianna Huffington, Chris Hitchens, Marc Cooper and all the rest of the reactionary crew on as long as it INCREASES the participation of the former).

Note, I am in NO WAY involved with KPFK, Pacifica, or any other form of media. I'm a LISTENER and I want to like KPFK.

More Norman Solomon/Counterspin. Bring back Alternative Radio. Bring back Seditious Beats. Bring back the Larmans, or, better yet, have a somewhat more edgy folk show on Saturday evenings. (If you don't believe there's such a thing as edgy folk, ask Ani DiFranco.)

Chomsky is good for taped content. So is Zinn. So is (yuppies beware!) Mumia. Keep Watts as a link to the past.

Nothing wrong with Marc Cooper's politics that wouldn't be helped by his being the center-right of KPFK instead of the left. Though it's all up to Cooper whether he wants to stay around under a regime of people that really do not like him very much.

I had another radical idea they haven't tried in a while. It's called asking the listeners what they want to hear. I think KPFK will be doing a lot more of that now.

FUCK mark shubb in the face!!! Now we must dump his punkass

bitch marc cooper!!!!

I'm a longtime KPFK listener, although I've never been more involved than volunteering once or twice at fund drives. I've found the shift over the last few years to have some good stuff and some bad stuff. Here's what I'd like to hear:

More alternative News and Analysis shows. Democracy Now, Up for Air type analysis. Get rid of the wire news services that come out of Corporate Marketing Departments.

More underground/underreported news. Like here on Indymedia -- local news that gets ignored by the corporate press. Tell us what really happened at the demonstrations, police raid, or whatever.

About the same number of call-in type shows. I don't like all of them that are currently aired, but I think each is important to keep. Probably, the spectrum represented should be widened.

Fewer new-age/spirituality shows like Aware. I can get that kind of content just about anywhere, if I desire it. I have to admit, I'm kinda partial to Alan Watts since he reminds me of some good old days, but there's probably more pressing stuff that could use that time.

Music shows should stay about the same. Not all of 'em are my taste, but that's good too. In fact, maybe there should be a few more that *aren't* in my taste, like more rap.

"Foreign" Language radio. Being a typical 3rd-generation American, I'm basically monolingual. I can stumble around in a few languages, and generally make myself misunderstood. Still, it's important to have shows to reach out to the larger community. There may not be enough hours in the day, but having more programming in Spanish, Russian, Armenian, Chinese, Vietnamese, etc would be a good thing.

A few words about Revolutions, Purges, Western Roundups, etc.: KPFK has been an intensely political place (in every sense of the word) for a long time. The Left tends to feed on its own, and nonprofits, communication, and media organizations even more so. I can't remember a time when the movement wasn't as involved with internecine battles as it was battles with the Fascists.

That being said, I think the current Revolution has been, by and large, a good thing. I think that the struggle is far from over. I regret people like Marc Cooper, for whom I otherwise have a fair amount of respect, who feel it is necessary to draw out the conflict and further factionalize the community. Do I think he should be purged or fired for his views? Absolutely not.

Anyway, I've rambled enough at this point. In the end, it will all work out. It always does, given enough time. This too shall pass.

Nick.

Thanks for the considered responses. I'm happy for Cooper to stay on as long as he isn't the tone setter of the station. My main beef with the station is with what seems like space fillers like the Car Show. This is in a ridiculous weekend slot where it competes against Car Talk on NPR. I have never heard this show discussing which cars are less polluting or talking about car-sharing schemes like Flex-Car. It is just another consumer program. This type of business-as-usual attitude permeates KPFK. I just tuned in a couple of minutes ago and heard the PNN which included a 3 minute description of a book of consumer ratings about cars and how Mercurys were more stable than other minivans or something. Completely incredible, why isn't there a report on the best new Rapid Bus routes in LA? Or how about something about most pleasant routes to cycle and roller-blade?

The above rant is just about "lifestyle" issues which are overtly non-political.

My objection to Alan Watts and all that NewAge stuff is that it is on way too much. There isn't enough kick-ass Science interviewing on the dial. Where are the interviews with Marxist scientists like S.J.Gould or R.Lewontin? Where are the interviews with ecologists from UCLA? Where is the information that can help me make informed decisions about my world?

As it is I shall be tuning back in for Amy Goodman who is consistently good.

Meanwhile bring back Seditious Beats. More programming en espanol. How are we supposed to learn it if we don't hear it?