Juggler Vain attempts to wrestle with the issues around the KPFA shutdown; Big-time wrestling ensues.

"The medium is the massage." - Marshal McLuhan, cool messenger

"The play's the thing." - William Shakespeare, playwright

"There is but One God, and Mammon is His Name." - Josef Cardinal Pauli, Church of No Damned Good

"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." - various peddlers of libertyware

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For decades Loyal Listeners (first to KPFA, then) to Pacifica Network's (PN) "alternative voice" Pledged their Support to Keep the Message Alive. With each pledge-drive, mounted with increasing urgency, the stations' budgets and opportunities grew and grew...

... until the folks saw the burden of financing grow so unwieldy that they decided to compose a Special Friend to manage this Special Need and ensure uninterrupted delivery of Quality Product, even to enlarge both the programming and its audience.

And so, Pacifica Foundation (PF) was born. Born. As in child. Not "parent corporation", as per reports from corporate media.

<sideshow> Culture-sculptors select terms with artistic precision. "... California's legislature is considering bans on 'Saturday Night Specials', also known as 'Junk Guns'...". These affordable weapons are cast into semantic concrete, and contemptuously cast overboard. As it happens, pending legislation makes specific exception to permit Peace Officers to possess them, even employing them in their professional duties. ?Junk... hardly. ?Saturday-Night Specials... well, there's compelling imagery there. <~sideshow>

While the handful of stations' staff continued to concern their selves with Pacifica's Mission, PF gradually attracted the interest of folks concerned with, ummm... responsible stewardship of Pacifica's resources... of putting the day-to-day broadcasting into context... of guiding the stations' narrow focus towards The Big Picture. Big Picture as coloured by accountants' green shades.

Blah-blah... Reagan, de-funding... blah-blah... "independent funding", donations from corporations' "non-profit" foundations... blah-blah...

... infection... intellectual germ-plasm migrates from corporations, through their non-profits, into PF...

... until now there's an assassin in the house.

As in Patricide. As in New Vision.

Recently discovered email reveals that PF's national board -- recently cleansed of the Distracting Influence of local stations' representation -- intends to market the broadcast-licenses of PN to commercial owners...

... so that -- for its own good -- PN's program-content should adapt to a mass audience.

After all. Pacifica's programming is Very Important. The More Folks who hear its message, the Better. Commercial boadcasting reaches More Folks. It's Very Important to get PN onto the commercial stage. A stage out of town. Out of their minds. ?Did somebody say: "Doublethink".

Adding insult to injury, PF timed its provocation so as not to miss out on hundreds of thousands of dollars of support from KPFA's Loyal Listeners during its latest (?last) pledge-drive.

Many of these listeners were v.anxious about firings of respected veteran staff at KPFA; and they annotated their pledges with Protests... but they gave, anyway. Out of Love of Pacifica's alternative voice. Out of Fear of losing that voice. Out of Duty, they paid their taxes... ahhh... they continued to support the station in the only way they knew: financial support.

<sideshow> The thing about money is that it's an anonymous claim upon a share of society's collective wealth. There is no "blood-money"; there is no drug-money (except, it seems, that most all our currency carries traces of cocaine... (... and don't get me started on the War Against Drugs... well, o.k... but wait a few weeks). There is only money-money. You don't know where it's been, but you put it where your mouth is. <~sideshow>

The Loyal Listeners' Love Offering bought them no loyalty from PF. No time. No slack.

The Vigil at the (now redundant) studio at KPFA will peter out. In time. In time to sell out.

KPFA may survive as memory. As a cautionary tale.

And that's not a bad thing.

If a few Loyal Americans make the connexion and realise that "paying taxes" does not preserve The Republic... that citizenship -- not the National Security Council -- is the fountainhead of liberty... that might be a good thing...

... unless they get uppity, and start to Make Trouble.

And the Vigil... the Marches... the Street Theatre...

... they're entertainment; they're Film at Eleven.

And the play massages the players. They're making connexions of their own. And looking past the rubble with New Vision.

?Did somebody say: "Pirate Radio".

- Juggler Vain's House of Dung, Frisco Liberation Radio (93.7), Mondays from four to six (16h00-18h00)

<next time> KPFA, Big-Time Wrestling, Kerista, and the Exploratorium. <until next time>

burton@pigdog.org