[Peace-discuss] you can go across the street

[Jason Pitzl-Waters]

Susan,

Since much of your message is aimed at my comments I feel obligated to 
reply. Obviously I don't have the years of hands-on experience with life 
that Ms. Parenti has, but I will try to use my thirty years on this planet 
to craft as cogent a response as I can.

>"Did WEFT think I forgot the recruitment ads, and WEFT, in order to fair 
>and well-rounded, needs to add them in?"

No, but you are perpetrating a fallacy by treating WEFT as a monolithic 
entity. Each airshifter makes their own choices as to what PSAs they want 
to play and I wouldn't have it any other way.

>"Or that the section of the 'community'(a word that encourages muddled 
>thinking, as it
>always assumes there is one) who breathlessly waits by the radio to hear 
>recruitment ads, has no other station to hear them on?"

I doubt the 'community' "breathlessly" waits for any of the PSAs. In 
general the PSAs are those bits at the top of each hour that interrupt the 
music or talking of a particular program. Do you "breathlessly" flip 
through magazines to get to the commercials?

>"Hey honey you can just go across the street, any street, and get your 
>recruitment ads."

Really? There is a Baptist church across the street from me, down the 
street there is the IMC and Strawberry Fields. Funny enough I have yet to 
run into military recruiters in any of these establishments.

>"Let's have that played, if it's really the 'diversity' argument that's at 
>the core here. If the good people(and they are) who run WEFT use the 
>argument of 'including all parts of the community' (as Jason does) then, 
>to be consistent, they would need to include what Mr. King has written.
>And then that would satisfy me, who thinks WEFT is there to keep the 
>alternatives to the status quo open."

Consistent means that we make both the military PSA and Paul's PSA 
*available* to the airshifters during their shifts. We never *force* anyone 
to say any particular PSA to do so would violate our mandate to give each 
airshifter as much freedom as possible. Really though, how often to you 
think pro-military or even conservative PSAs get read on WEFT? From my 
experience it is the "progressive" voice that is aired far more often than 
a "pro-military" or conservative one.

>"(But I suspect Weft won't play what Paul has written as a PSA. I can 
>anticipate the argument against using it:that Paul's PSA will seem too 
>slanted, too biased, and make people think
>that this is what Weft supports. Or perhaps, sweet hopeful perhaps, I'm 
>wrong?)"

Again, you are mistaken on how WEFT works. So long as the basic guidelines 
for PSAs are followed they can have any "slant" they want to take. Whether 
it is read on the air is up to each individual. WEFT as I stated before 
doesn't mandate or force the reading of any particular PSA.

>"What's threatened are the spaces and contexts where we can hear something
>(oh please let us hear something) that provides an alternative to what's 
>going on constantly."

Perhaps the military PSA was out of context for DN! But then again, we are 
now making the assumption that all people who listen to DN! are against 
military PSAs. Someone could feasibly both enjoy DN! and want to play a 
military PSA. It isn't for me to say.

"So an Army recruitment PSA will be defended by the 'let's hear all the 
voices of the community..', and a PSA such as Paul writes, will be rejected 
as 'too extreme'."

Assumptions. You are as they say "building a man of straw". WEFT to my 
knowledge mostly rejects PSAs for not following the guidelines for PSAs not 
for their political content. If it isn't read it will be because no 
airshifter felt like reading it. Hardly a conspiracy of silence.

>"If Jason were older,"

He would possess more grey hairs.

>"he would have read the correspondence that flurried around initial 
>publications of MS magazine and other feminist publications, where the 
>same argument Jason uses, was used by people who felt the magazine should 
>represent 'all aspects and opinions of women's life', and thus include 
>articles about movie stars and beauty regimes and diets and how to have 
>the best sex life.  That argument was squelched very quickly, as we women 
>desperately wanted alternatives, wanted publications that took a stand 
>AGAINST, that made and guarded a space for alternatives to the status quo."

Very interesting, but this doesn't directly relate to the situation with 
these PSAs. This tempest in a tea cup for a military PSA played during a 
show that no other radio station in C/U would dare play. It amuses me how 
the progressive community feels the need to pick at itself. WEFT in 
comparison with pretty much every other radio station in town spoils us 
with riches. But instead of e-mails of praise the only time people talk of 
us is when someone feels we aren't doing enough. It can be 
quite  disheartening.

>"Jason, it's the value of the arguments you're using that I'm questioning, 
>not your value, not Weft's. I'm an old respecter of your persistence with 
>WEFT."

Fair enough. I'm pretty solid on my self-worth and appreciate discourse. 
For what it's worth I'm not questioning your value as a WEFT supporter either.

>"I turn to Weft for its implicit rejection of that language, that world view."

...and some people tune into WEFT to hear me play music with a morbid bent, 
we all have different expectations from our community radio station and 
sometimes it is hard to please everyone.

In respect,
Jason Pitzl-Waters
http://www.wildhunt.org/

"One cannot judge the value of an opinion simply by the amount of courage 
that is required in holding it." - George Orwell