To the Editor:
Excellent piece on Meg Whitman. If more voters knew Meg’s distorted views on critical issues facing Californians, she wouldn’t have a chance of being elected. I hope other readers of BeyondChron will take snippets of Randy’s article and use this as a guideline of sorts to respond to features about Meg in on-line commercial media rags (like SF Chron, LA Times) and political rags (like Politico, Huffington Post) everytime her name shows up. The campaign against Meg Whitman and for Jerry Brown needs to move into fast gear.
Kathy Berger
San Anselmo, CA
To the Editor:
The source of the campaign funds for Prop 16 were from PG&E shareholders, not rate payers.
Karrie Bick
San Francisco
To the Editor:
Pay me what the athletes in the NFL make, and you can hit me in the head with a hammer. I’ll take my chances. No one is forcing them to play, I’m sure they are more than aware of the risk they take and are grossly over paid for it. You should concentrate your efforts on seal clubbing, now that’s an unjust concussion.
Jon Hogle
San Diego
To the Editor:
The NFL is in bed with Big Alcohol. The Super Bowl was created as a marketing tool for the alcohol industry. Anheuser-Busch has absolute control over Super Bowl advertising. Marin Institute has been fighting to end Pro-Sports and Alcohol advertising for years.(See FreeTheBowl.com) Even Lance Armstrong is now the poster boy for Michelob Ultra Lite.
Alcohol and Football have a symbiotic relationship. Go to the NFL Superbowl 44 website — there’s a prominent tab linking you to all 8 commercials that Anheuser-Busch created last year. If you think Big Alcohol is going to let the NFL season be missed for one year, you’re dreaming. What’s a few brains or dead soldiers (I mean football players). I think it’s called “Collateral Damage,” or the opportunity cost of doing business!
Theresa Petry
San Francisco
To the Editor:
The word “professional” could refer to someone who is incompetent but gets paid, or to someone who produces work of such high quality that it is deemed “professional” even though they don’t get paid, or to someone who gets paid and does very high quality work, or to all of them — so I don’t think it’s terribly helpful in this debate.
I honestly can’t say I’ve seen a correlation between paid staff and high quality work at KPFA. Sometimes yes, sometimes no, and I will say that the most remarkable work I’ve seen was unpaid. The best example I know was the open mike speak-outs produced by late D6 resident Steve Conley, including the San Francisco Tenderloin Summit, which transformed my perception of both radio and of the Tenderloin.
I don’t think that management or paid staff in control at KPFA now are competent, because the station is in danger of becoming an anachronism as a result of its failure to understand the Web. More people now turn to the Web for news than to any other medium except television, but KPFA still fails to segment, tag, and post its news and public affairs segments to the Web.
Want to listen again to an interview about Prop 16, Afghanistan, or mass transit struggles in the Bay Area? Maybe post it to your website, campaign site, Facebook page, or Twitter, or e-mail it to friends, or maybe send it to someone who might play it on a Pacifica affiliate? Not possible, because no one will have audio edited it out of an hour or half hour long newscast, a two hour Morning Show, or an hour long Flashpoints because KPFA management doesn’t understand the Web or how much more interactivity news consumers demand because of the Web and the social networks.
And yes, I’m supporting the Independents because I think they understand what a serious problem this is better than the faux SAVE KPFA group, which really shouldn’t be heisting the name of a group that came into existence back in 1993 with very different goals.
Ann Garrison
San Francisco
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