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By Becky O’Malley (07-24-07)

...Barbara [Dane]’s show was a dramatic contrast to my encounter earlier in the day with another icon of my youth, KPFA. Here I must confess that I haven’t been able to listen to the station very regularly in the last 20 years, partly because of the tales of bickering that always emanate from it and partly because my own busy schedule doesn’t include auto commute time. But the bush telegraph was active on the weekend—I must have gotten 10 calls and e-mails telling me to listen to the talk show at 10 on Sunday when the mayor of Berkeley would be interviewed, so I turned it on while I sorted socks.

Big mistake. I knew that Larry Bensky, a reliable if sometimes stodgy known commodity, had retired, but I hadn’t ever heard his replacement, one Peter Laufer. Laufer’s Googled credentials and the summaries of his previous shows seemed fine, up-to-code on national and international topics, no problem. But his interview with Mayor Bates was an embarrassing series of softball pitches, leading off with the host’s riff on how he’d loved Telegraph Avenue when he’d been in school here for two years in the sixties, but now it seemed excessively—ahem—seedy to him. Perhaps that’s what living in Marin does to you....

He provided Bates with ample opportunity to express his well-known distaste with individuals to be found on our Berkeley streets. I won’t belabor my own opinion of Bates’ attitude toward the poor one more time, because a couple of our readers got right on him with letters which will appear in this issue.

But the attitude of the KPFA host definitely needs adjustment. He was lucky enough to get calls from several authentic residents of South and West Berkeley, the most neglected part of the city, who tried valiantly to pose their own hard questions to the mayor, but they were cut off in the most peremptory manner. One poor woman started to ask why nothing much was being done about crime in her neighborhood, but was able to get out no more than half a sentence before being squelched—it might as well have been Rush Limbaugh at the controls.

Bates, on the other hand, was allowed, at not just one but at least three junctures, to get away with claiming that he has no power to control what callers regarded as excessive development in their neighborhoods in Berkeley’s Flatlands because it’s just “The Free Market” at work. That’s the same lame excuse George Bush uses to deny climate change and the Democratic Leadership Council uses to explain why we can’t have single payer health care.

Two different people in the audience at the Freight on Sunday night approached me to gripe about the show which they’d heard that morning. I had to agree with them.

Since when have KPFA talk show hosts sat passively by while guests pitched the inevitability of unbridled capitalism? I have absolutely no idea who’s on top these days in the local board faction wars, but does any of the factions want the host of the prime time Sunday talk show to diss listeners who call in, while rolling over for neo-liberal politicians? I doubt it. My guess is that most KPFA listeners and activists are still the kind of people who appreciate Barbara Dane’s continued efforts to point out what’s wrong with just leaving “The Free Market” to operate as it pleases, regardless of who’s injured in the process. And I imagine they expect the same kind of critical thinking from broadcasters.

Ms. O’Malley's Point, Peter Laufer's Counterpoint, Richard Phelps's Point, Doug Buckwald's Point, and Tracy Rosenberg's Point.

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