[Dryerase] Alarm!--Interview with Peter Werbe

[The Alarm!Newswire]

By Fhar Miess
The Alarm! Newspaper Collective

What follows is a recent interview with Peter Werbe, a radical left 
talk show host whose show was terminated at Santa Cruz radio station 
KOMY on October 6, 2001.  He has since moved to Detroit, where he now 
broadcasts his show.

Alarm!:  According to KOMY, why was it that you were fired?

Peter Werbe:  The Mom & Son show got on the air and said that they 
apologized to the people of Santa Cruz for allowing me to broadcast my 
criticisms after September 11 and that they were no longer going to 
make their radio station a medium for my criticisms of Bush—at one 
point they may have even called it pro-Taliban, which is of course 
ridiculous.  It’s just typical of (although that’s Mom & Son) “mom & 
pop” stations across the country.

There’s two facets to control of the media by conservatives and 
corporations.  One is obvious:  big corporate control by the Clear 
Channels and Infinities and what have you.  They have their national 
powerhouses that they put on their local stations.  But then there’s 
also this range of very conservative individual owner-entrepreneurs who 
have this lock—very frequently—on sectors of the country that aren’t 
served by any other station.  Some of them, they’re the one station in 
town.  It’s ridiculous to have a station in Santa Cruz that has no 
left-of-center programming given the politics of that city and how 
liberal that city is.

But it’s no different in Detroit where I broadcast from.  There’s no 
liberal talk show host in a city like Detroit.  The city of Detroit 
proper voted ninety-five percent for Al Gore and the surrounding three 
counties voted the majority for Al Gore, and I’m just talking about 
liberal Democrats.  So, it actually is a testimony to people’s capacity 
to think independently with this complete strangle-hold that the Right 
and corporations have on the media, that people still—to use voting as 
one index, which isn’t the greatest one to me—but still, Bush still 
loses.  No matter what kind of kid gloves the media use toward Bush—I 
mean they knew that he had lied about serving in the Air National 
Guard, that he was AWOL for a year, which is really desertion.  They 
knew, they had tips about his girlfriend having an abortion, about the 
drug use and all that and they just kept hands off and they allowed him 
to define himself as a uniter and a centrist when obviously, as we’ve 
seen since he got in, he’s far right wing.

But even with all that, whenever you take a poll, people generally come 
up with what I’d call social democratic, progressive views of 
tolerance, generosity and what have you.  And the reason they have to 
keep people like me off [the air] is that, God, their whole house of 
cards would collapse if the Left got an equal shot at speaking to the 
American people.

A!:  How much do you think the political climate had to do with it?  Do 
you think you would have gotten the same treatment if the attacks on 
the World Trade Center hadn’t just happened?

PW:  Oh no.  He [owner Michael Zwerling] was OK with it [the show].  
And one of the things that was so weird, on the one hand it was all 
ideological that they couldn’t let an extreme leftist on the air.  On 
the other hand, he said that my show never had any advertisers.  Of 
course, this little station doesn’t have an advertising department, and 
shows in radio don’t have advertisers, stations have what they call 
“run of the station” ads.  In other words, if you wanted to advertise 
The Alarm! on KOMY [fat chance, ed.], you’d get one in the morning, two 
in the midday, two in the afternoon, two at night.  That’s what you’d 
pay for.  People can specify.  But, apparently, all of his patriotism 
would have completely evaporated if I could have bought him.  
Essentially, he runs it like a tyrant.  He’s known for getting people 
to work for free.  He has all sorts of complaints lodged against him 
with the State of California Wage and Hours Board.

A!:  How have you been received since then?

PW:  Oh, good.  One thing that does happen in syndication is that 
stations come and go for any number of reasons.  Half the time you 
never even find out.  They just say, “we’re not taking your show 
anymore.”  You say, “Why?” They say, “Well, we just decided, goodbye.”  
They’ve gone country & western, they’ve replaced you with somebody 
else, they’ve cut some other deal.  In some regard it’s not that 
unusual.  There were a number of cases after September 11th where 
editorial writers were canned, a couple of them in small towns, but in 
the main, people have been able to express themselves I think fairly 
well.  I don’t want to make it a rosy picture because a lot of people 
were subjected to threats and what have you in the academic community.  
Dick Cheney’s wife and some little academic group started naming names 
like it was Joe MacCarthy.  But the Right—this was a God-send to the 
Right.  You may know that Bush as it was—lucky me, I hit the 
trifecta—Bush is the only person in America that personally benefitted 
from September 11th, but in a sense, the whole Republican party did.  
They were down the drain probably by November of 2001.  I mean, Bush’s 
popularity was plummeting, and people caught on to him real quickly.  
Now, everything is submerged behind the imperial war machine and this 
fight against terrorism.  And they’re having difficulty because these 
pesky terrorists—they just won’t strike again!  And they can’t find 
Osama bin Laden.  So, like in Orwell’s 1984 they had the three-minute 
hate where they’d project the photograph of Big Brother’s enemy, so 
Osama bin Laden—remember how many times we used to see his face on 
television, if you watch television?  I don’t even watch television and 
I must’ve seen it 250 times.  So, I think if you do, you must’ve seen 
it 2,500 times.  And now, when’s the last time you saw a photograph of 
Osama bin Laden?  Now it’s “Target:  Saddam!”  It’s repulsive, but I 
think that there’s a critical mass growing.  People are so dissatisfied 
with life in Bush’s America.  You know, he’s wrecked the economy, they 
stumble from one crisis to the next.  They’re gonna catch Osama bin 
Laden dead or alive?  Where’s he?  Now another major war.  Corporate 
criminals?  You know, he [Bush] and Cheney are corporate criminals.  
And in all of this, he’s just hoping to keep one step ahead by rattling 
everybody’s cage so that we don’t think about all of those things.

Endnote:  Peter Werbe’s nationally syndicated radio show can be heard 
from 9a.m. to Noon, Pacific Time, at i.e. America Radio Network:  
http://www.ieamericaradio.com/ or Sundays from 11 pm to 2 am Eastern on 
WRIF in Detroit:  http://www.wrif.com/
 
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