[Kzyxtalk] The right thing to do is still the right thing to do.

[Marco McClean]

Marinela emailed:

 > Marco, A while back you asked me to appear on your show. I considered 
it though I ended up declining at the time, saying I might in the 
future. In the last few weeks, however, you seem to be encouraging the 
person who’s been trolling our local discussion list [MCN Discussion 
listserv] to go beyond free speech and into harassment of a number of 
local people, not just myself.

 > I’m guessing that your silent encouragement of this troll’s behavior 
is in order to increase the audience for your show, using similar 
tactics to those of smut newspapers like the National Enquirer. I don’t 
know whether this will, indeed, gain you more listeners, but I won’t be 
one of them and will NEVER appear on it - not a big loss for you, probably.

 > You may assuage your conscience by stating that you’re supporting 
free speech, but I find your behavior of standing by and silently 
encouraging bullies just as reprehensible as his. Shame on you!

 >Marinela



Marinela, if you're talking about Zeke, and of course you are, all I 
encourage him to do is to send me his work so I can read it on the 
radio. Sometimes he calls on the phone to read it. So far on the show I 
don't think he's even mentioned the MCN Discussion listserv except in 
passing. He writes essays related to his gay advocacy, and 
science-fiction and private detective stories involving characters in 
his real life.

Your guess is incorrect. I have promised since at least 1985 to print 
and/or broadcast everything anyone sends to me to print and/or 
broadcast. If you want nothing to do with my current project, it's 
unfortunate, because often you have valuable things to say and I'd like 
you to think of it as something worth participating in, but I can't make 
an exception for you and shut out someone else from participating just 
because he irks you.

Zeke is clearly lonely and he's had a busy life of /real/ suffering, and 
/real/ harassment and violence and bullying all aimed at him and the 
group he identifies with, suffering that goes far beyond merely enduring 
a few harsh words in a newsgroup. It looks to me as though he's 
harmlessly showing you what he feels like in trying to make this point 
or that and it's going right over your head.

Use my show or don't; that's up to you. If you don't like Zeke, all you 
have to do to erase him entirely from your world is to make a filter in 
your email program for anything from him or containing his name, and 
/poof/, he's gone. I've said the same thing to everyone on the 
Discussion listserv in exactly these simple terms. And yet a half-dozen 
of you continue to punch yourselves in the nose about him, and no less 
than three of you have emailed me privately to order me to ban him not 
only from the air but from /my/ life, as if that will solve all your 
problems for you. I've been the target of whispering campaigns and bans 
myself (see KZYX); nothing on the level of what Zeke has endured, nor 
for so long, but enough to grasp the right thing to do here, and that's 
to continue doing what I promised, that apparently nobody else anywhere 
will, and publish what people write, whether I like it, or them, or not. 
Memo of the Air is mainly a literacy project, and Zeke's idiosyncratic 
work is a small part of the whole.

Speaking of which, Stuart Cohen, who's come to KNYO to play guitar and 
sing maybe a dozen times in the last couple of years, had surgery a few 
weeks ago to remove a tumor from his brain. He's in hospital in Santa 
Rosa. I went there two weeks ago and again today. He's doing well in 
physical therapy and can walk on his own using a brace; he'll be going 
home to Fort Bragg this Friday. They don't know whether the cancer will 
come back, but they can keep it away for quite awhile with medicine. He 
might even be able to play the guitar again. He'll certainly be able to 
sing. He's as witty and present and articulate as ever. Chipper and wry. 
Yay, science!

I'm finding and collecting the recordings of every time he came to the 
station and putting it all in one place. When it's ready I'll make the 
folder available on the web and tell you.


--
Marco McClean

memo at mcn.org

http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com