Dan Price on LinkedIn, explaining what Rush Limbaugh got wrong
Too few remember Paul Harvey now. In some ways that’s good — his columns for southern states of the old Confederacy were not the often-cheery dispenser of news and wisdom we heard at noon on ABC’s national radio network. Meaning, I found the columns too often-racist, and too seldom supporting freedom and civil rights. But Harvey hit on a good story-telling format that he marketed as “The Rest of the Story,” and selling hope, he was rarely racist and often informative.
“The Rest of the Story” was a five-minute insert, syndicated by ABC or someone else, often run in the afternoon on AM stations. Harvey would tell about a person who encountered a problem, and describe how the problem was solved and how happy it made people. Something like, ‘As an adopted immigrant child, young Steven didn’t take well to academic settings, coming close to flunking out of schools and finally dropping out of college, though sticking around campus to learn design, a topic the school didn’t have a major in.’ Then there’d be a lot more about things that sounded like failures, until young Steven started tinkering with building computers but got hammered by other computer makers in the market place, though people said they liked his machines. Then one day another worker at his company convinced him to build a phone, even though it was likely Steven would lose big in a market dominated by other legacy companies. But he introduction went well, and someone asked him what they’d call the phone to distinguish it from others. “‘We call it the iPhone,’ Steven said. And now you know the rest of the story.”
Harvey never used the format to criticize or denigrate anyone, which surprised me considering his newspaper columns. I wish someone had used the format recently when Rush Limbaugh died. You hate to say bad things about someone who recently passed; but Limbaugh was a special case. He created anger and division with his radio program, and he profited and reveled in that anger and division.
On LinkedIn, someone posted this story; and it fits the Paul Harvey format so well, and doesn’t really criticize Limbaugh that much.
Dan Price took the astonishing action of slashing executive compensation and dramatically raising pay for workers in his company. It was news for a couple of weeks. During that time critics of equality, like Limbaugh, lambasted Price and his company, and the idea of equity and equality in pay for workers. Then the story fell out of the headlines — except perhaps for snark from critics like Limbaugh.
Here’s what Price said in his Linked-In post:
Dan Price • 2nd Founder/CEO, Gravity Payments 1w •
1 week ago
I grew up listening to Rush Limbaugh 3 hours a day as a home-schooled kid. My parents idolized him.
5 years ago my parents called me: “Rush is about to talk about you!” I was in the news for slashing my CEO pay to raise our min wage to $70k. I excitedly turned on his show.
Rush said: “I hope this company is a case study in MBA programs on how socialism does not work because it’s gonna fail.” I was devastated. My dad said Rush got it wrong. But it led to a flood of hate-mail against me.
Rush was right: we were a MBA case study. Harvard Business School concluded the $70k min wage was a huge success. Our revenue tripled. Retention & productivity skyrocketed. We were featured as success stories in the BBC & NY Times.
Rush incorrectly said everyone would make $70k when only me & a few new employees do. It’s a min wage. It’s not socialism; he knew that. He never agreed to have me on to give my side or do an updated story on our success.
His listeners still assume we failed. A top auto-complete search for our company is “out of business.” I’ve had 5 years to tell our story & prove him wrong but most people crushed with misinformation don’t have that luxury.
I’m sad he died & my thoughts are with his family. But I’m not sad his show is over. He hurt a lot of people with his words.
Price was victimized by Limbaugh. But Price was right, and his company and workers won.
Now you know the rest of the story.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Al “Jazzbo” Collins at the microphone of WNEW AM radio in New York City, undated. Metromedia photo
I don’t know where they came from, or who in the family bought them. I think they appeared before 1956 and our move from Overland Avenue to Conant Avenue in Burley, Idaho.
There were two discs, 78 rpm as I recall. Fairy tales, told by a guy with a great baritone and cool jazz playing behind him. Four stories, right out of the nursery rhyme/fairy tale books — but with the conscience of a beat raconteur thrown in.
My favorite: “The Three Little Pigs.”
“Cream of Nowhere!”
Al “Jazzbo” Collins told the stories, according to the label. I think I was in my teens before I noticed the name of Steve Allen, polymath genius, as author. And I assumed that the narration was Allen in one of his characters, and maybe the jazz piano, too.
Later I discovered there really was an Al Collins, who went by the nickname Jazzbo. Two discs by a guy using Steven Allen’s writing . . .
I wish I had those discs now.
It’s almost impossible to do justice to the great beat twists in the stories, from memory. The music was good, and that can’t be retold. To tell the great good humor and joy of those records, you gotta have the records to listen to.
Then I stumbled across “The Three Little Pigs” on YouTube. Brilliantly, this video features an old record player playing the thing. It’s almost like we used to play it, set the needle down on the record and watch it spin while we listened.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
August 26 is the anniversary of the first television broadcast of professional baseball, in 1939; the future-legendary Red Barber called a doubleheader between his Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds from Ebbets field.
Both games were carried on experimental television station W2XBS, which evolved into New York’s NBC affiliate Channel 2, WNBC. Two stationary cameras were used, in contrast to the several used in modern broadcasts — and it was in black and white. About 3,000 people are estimated to have watched.
The Reds won the opener, 5-2, but the Dodgers roared back in game 2, 6-1.
Ebbets field is gone. The Dodgers absconded to Los Angeles in the 1950s. Baseball games are in color.
Red Barber is gone, too. We have great play-by-play guys, and wonderful color commentators. There will never be another Red Barber though. Below is an old post noting Barber’s ways with typewriters.
The great Red Barber, when his hair was still red, working at his typewriter, with a volume of Roget’s Thesaurus close by.
Many of us knew Red chiefly through his weekly chats with Bob Edwards at NPR’s Morning Edition. The biographies say Red died in 1992. That was 19 years ago — it seems more recent than that. (Edwards left Morning Edition in 2004.)
It may be ironic to show Barber at his typewriter. He would be more accurately portrayed, perhaps, behind a microphone at a baseball park.
From 1939 through 1953 Barber served as the voice of the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was working for the New York Yankees when he retired in 1966. Barber had the distinction of broadcasting baseball’s first night game on May 24, 1935 in Cincinnati and the sport’s first televised contest on August 26, 1939 in Brooklyn.
During his 33-year career Barber became the recognized master of baseball play-by-play, impressing listeners as a down-to-earth man who not only informed but also entertained with folksy colloquialisms such as “in the catbird seat,” “pea patch,” and “rhubarb” which gave his broadcasts a distinctive flavor. (Radio Hall of Fame)
1958 Publicity photo of Groucho Marx from the television program You Bet Your Life. NBC Television-NBC Photo/Photographer: Elmer Holloway
36 years ago? Grouch Marx died on August 19, 1977?
The man became an icon, though too few know the great history behind the icon. “Self-made caricature of Groucho Marx” Wikipedia image
That means that not only have your high school history students probably never seen much, or anything, of Groucho Marx and his comic genius; it means their parents don’t know him, either.
What a great tragedy.
Groucho Marx brought genius to American comedy films, to radio, and then to television. His genius was of a sort that does not age, but remains fresh to audiences of today — get a group of teenagers to view Duck Soup or A Day at the Races and you’ll find them laughing heartily at even some of Marx’s more cerebral jokes. It is symbolic that the films that brought writer Norman Cousins to laughter, and a lack of pain, were Marx Brothers movies (in the day when one had to rent a projector to show the film, long before VCR). Cousins went on to a grand second career talking about hope in healing, starting with the book, Head First: The Biology of Hope and the Healing Power of the Human Spirit.I recommend these films to anyone seriously injured or ill, or recovering. We got VHS, and then DVD copies of several of the films when our kids were ill, with great effect.
Groucho Marx should be in the pantheon of great Americans, of the 20th century, if not all time, studied by children in high school, for history and for literature purposes.
Groucho’s been gone for 36 years, and we are much poorer for his passing.
Tiny Desk Concerts provide a lot of fun in live performance in the offices of a radio network. To document the move, musically, Tiny Desk called in OK Go. OK Go is a favorite here at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub — regular bathing music, you might say.
And in 223 takes, they recorded the move.
I’m especially fond of the elevator ride with Carl Kassell. (At least, that’s who I think it is.)
Who else can you recognize from NPR’s famous voices?
The Tiny Desk has moved, and OK Go has helped make it so.
Earlier this year, we needed to figure out the best possible way to move my Tiny Desk from NPR’s old headquarters to our new facility just north of the U.S. Capitol. We wanted to go out with a bang and arrive at our new space in style, so our thoughts naturally turned to a catchy pop band we love: OK Go, whose unforgettable videos have been viewed tens of millions of times on YouTube.
Bandleader Damian Kulash used to be an engineer at an NPR member station in Chicago, so we figured he’d be up for helping us execute a simple idea: Have OK Go start performing a Tiny Desk Concert at our old location, continue playing the same song while the furniture and shelving is loaded onto a truck, and finish the performance at our new home. In addition to cameos by many of our NPR colleagues — Ari Shapiro, Audie Cornish, David Greene, Guy Raz, Scott Simon, Alix Spiegel, Susan Stamberg and more — this required a few ingredients: Number of video takes: 223; Percent used in final version: 50; Number of raw audio channels: 2,007; Percent used in final version: 50; Number of microphones: 5; Number of hard-boiled eggs consumed: 8, mostly by bassist Tim Nordwind; Number of seconds Carl Kasell spent in the elevator with OK Go: 98; Number of times Ari Shapiro played the tubular bells: 15; Number of pounds the tubular bells weighed: 300; Number of times the shelves were taken down and put back up: 6; Number of days it took to shoot: 2; Number of cameras: 1
OK Go played “All Is Not Lost” from Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, with words tweaked by the All Songs Considered team. And so begins a new era for the Tiny Desk, after 277 concerts (counting this one) in our old home. — BOB BOILEN
FEATURING
Dan Konopka, Damian Kulash, Tim Nordwind, Andy Ross
CREDITS
Producers: Bob Boilen, Mito Habe-Evans
Directors: Mito Habe-Evans, Todd Sullivan
Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait
Assistant Producer: Denise DeBelius
Camera Operator: Gabriella Garcia-Pardo
Supervising Producer: Jessica Goldstein
Editor: Mito Habe-Evans
Assistant Editor: Gabriella Garcia-Pardo
Production Assistants: Lorie Liebig, Lizzie Chen, Gabriella Demczuk, Marie McGrory, Andrew Prince
Executive Producers: Anya Grundmann, Keith Jenkins
Special Thanks: OK Go and our cast and crew of volunteers.
OK Go at the Albany Tulip Festival. Wikipedia image
The great Red Barber, when his hair was still red, working at his typewriter, with a volume of Roget’s Thesaurus close by.
Many of us knew Red chiefly through his weekly chats with Bob Edwards at NPR’s Morning Edition. The biographies say Red died in 1992. That was 19 years ago — it seems more recent than that. (Edwards left Morning Edition in 2004.)
It may be ironic to show Barber at his typewriter. He would be more accurately portrayed, perhaps, behind a microphone at a baseball park.
From 1939 through 1953 Barber served as the voice of the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was working for the New York Yankees when he retired in 1966. Barber had the distinction of broadcasting baseball’s first night game on May 24, 1935 in Cincinnati and the sport’s first televised contest on August 26, 1939 in Brooklyn.
During his 33-year career Barber became the recognized master of baseball play-by-play, impressing listeners as a down-to-earth man who not only informed but also entertained with folksy colloquialisms such as “in the catbird seat,” “pea patch,” and “rhubarb” which gave his broadcasts a distinctive flavor. (Radio Hall of Fame)
To complain about the horrific defense of the child maiming, rape-sowing, war-crimes committing “Lord’s Resistance Army” made by Rush Limbaugh the other day, I sought out the Dallas-Fort Worth station that carries the program. Limbaugh’s show is carried on WBAP-AM in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. So I dropped an e-mail to the station to ask if they support Rush’s views, and asking how they will try to rein in the rogue talker.
No answer, yet, of course.
But on the way I ran into something that made me laugh, even if you don’t find it funny.
WBAP-AM 1320 was one of the early “clear channel” stations in the U.S., a 50,000-watt powerhouse whose signal could cover from San Francisco to just west of the Appalachians on a night with the appropriate weather. 25 years ago truckers used it as a beacon (and may still for all I know — I’ve not ridden with the long-haul truckers since I got to Texas). It’s a famous station, and Rush Limbaugh should be flattered that they would carry his excrement program.
So I found “Texas,” and I found WBAP listed in Fort Worth (no one else in Dallas). Here’s the line the listing was on, copied from Limbaugh’s site; click on “WBAP” and see where you go:
It says “WBAP-AM” in Fort Worth, Texas; but it takes you to WBAB, 102.3 FM on Long Island, New York. WBAB 102.3 is a rock ‘n roll station. It ain’t WBAP-AM 1320 in Fort Worth, not by a longhorn steer’s horn spread.
I wonder how long the Limbaugh show has had the wrong URL for the station in Fort Worth, and I wonder if it has made any difference in listeners getting through or advertisers. I wonder how long it will remain with the wrong URL, and whether anyone cares at WBAP, WBAB, or the Limbaugh show.
Maybe I should just write directly to the “license renewal file” at the FCC.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
3:30 p.m. Central Daylight Time. In Barcelona, Spain, London’s Wembley Stadium, Manchester United and Barcelona(Spain) tangle for the Champions’ League trophy.
BBC News? This is the order of the stories:
In Afghanistan, the national police chief was murdered by a suicide bomber
In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak was fined $90 million for interfering with business by cutting phones and internet
Yemen’s got trouble
Palestinian independence got support from the Arab League, meeting in Doha, Qatr
U.S. President Obama ended his tour of Europe in Poland, with a pledge of friendship
In Moscow, Russian, gay rights demonstrators were attacked by a mob led by people who said they are members of the Russian Orthodox Church
Barcelona leads Manchester, 3 to 1, with minutes to play
I’m not usually one to complain, but doesn’t it appear BBC News has its priorities wrong in this order of stories?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Some say the success of conservative radio can be traced to 1987 when the Reagan administration put an end to the Fairness Doctrine, making it easier for broadcasters to be one-sided. Others cite the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which led to mega-chains of stations and the widespread duplication of successful formats – including conservative talk radio – which gradually took over the stronger radio outlets in most markets.
Peter Funt, of Candid Camera
But such arguments really overlook the simpler truths of the matter: conservative broadcasters serve an audience that is often angry and easily stirred, that wants to be reinforced more than challenged, and that doesn’t always feel compelled to slavishly adhere to the facts of a matter.
More importantly, conservative broadcasters across the dial are vastly more entertaining than their liberal counterparts. Limbaugh and Beck are polished performers, with enough shtick in the tank to keep truckers engrossed over the long haul, or to rouse tired shift workers on the drive to and from home. Indeed, the daring diatribe of the right is so compelling that it often seems as if the most dedicated listeners of conservative broadcasters are their progressive competitors.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Contrary to a widespread assumption, global warming is unlikely to expand the range of malaria because of malaria control, development and other factors that are at work to corral the disease.
So concludes a team of scientists including two University of Florida researchers in a paper set to appear May 20 in the journal Nature.
Scientists and public policy makers have been concerned that warming temperatures would create conditions that would either push malaria into new areas or make it worse in existing ones. But the team of six scientists, including David Smith and Andy Tatem, faculty members with UF’s biology and geography departments and both at UF’s Emerging Pathogens Institute, analyzed a historical contraction of the geographic range and general reduction in the intensity of malaria — a contraction that occurred over a century during which the globe warmed. They determined that if the future trends are like past ones, the contraction is likely to continue under the most likely warming scenarios.
“If we continue to fund malaria control, we can certainly be prepared to counteract the risk that warming could expand the global distribution of malaria,” Smith said.
The team, part of the Wellcome Trust’s multinational Malaria Atlas Project, noted that malaria control efforts over the past century have shrunk the prevalence of the disease from most of the world to a region including Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and South America, with the bulk of fatalities confined to Africa. This has occurred despite a global temperature rise of about 1 degree Fahrenheit, on average, during the same period.
“The globe warmed over the past century, but the range of malaria contracted substantially,” Tatem said. “Warming isn’t the only factor that affects malaria.”
The reasons why malaria has shrunk are varied and in some countries mysterious, but they usually include mosquito control efforts, better access to health care, urbanization and economic development. The banned pesticide DDT was instrumental in ridding the disease from 24 countries in Southern Europe, the former Soviet Union and elsewhere in the world between 1955 and 1969, Smith said. Researchers debate how the U.S. defeated malaria, but the reduction of mosquito breeding grounds, improved housing and reduced emphasis on agriculture that comes with development — and the reduced risk of bites that accompanies urbanization – probably played a role, Smith said.
“There is no one tale that seems to determine the story globally,” Tatem said. “If we had to choose one thing, we would guess economic development, but that’s kind of a cop out” because the specific mechanisms may still remain unclear, and controlling malaria might also help to kick-start development.
In any case, current malaria control efforts such as insecticide-treated bed nets, modern low-cost diagnostic kits and new anti-malarial drugs, have proved remarkably effective, with more and more countries achieving control or outright elimination. Unless current control efforts were to suddenly stop, they are likely to counteract the spread of mosquitoes or other malaria-spreading effects from anticipated temperature increases, Smith said.
Simon Hay, an author of the Nature paper and one of the chief architects of the Malaria Atlas Project, noted that modern malaria control efforts “reduce transmission massively and counteract the much smaller effects of rising temperatures.”
“Malaria remains a huge public health problem, and the international community has an unprecedented opportunity to relieve this burden with existing interventions,” he said. “Any failure in meeting this challenge will be very difficult to attribute to climate change.”
Key to controlling malaria is the treatment of the disease in human victims. Malaria parasites must spend part of their life cycle in humans; if medical care can cure humans, mosquitoes have no well of the disease to draw from, to spread it.
This paper says that global warming won’t spread the disease, so long as medical care and local health officials can keep effective treatments — a complete cure for human victims — coming quickly.
KXT is a sister station to public broadcasting KERA-FM, 90.1. In the past 20 years KERA’s outstanding music programming slowly gave way to talk and news — good talk and great news, but the music suffered.
KXT is a new radio station found at 91.7 FM in North Texas, and at kxt.org worldwide. It’s an incredible selection of acoustic, alt-country, indie rock, alternative and world music, hand-picked just for you – the real music fan.
KXT features between 9 and 11 hours of local programming each weekday, bringing you an eclectic variety of artists and genres, including a number of performers from North Texas and elsewhere in the Lone Star State.
Gini Mascorro will host the KXT Morning Show, Monday through Friday from 7 to 11 a.m. Joe Kozera will take listeners home weekdays with the KXT Afternoon Show from 3-6pm and the KXT Evening Show from 6-8pm.
90.1 at Night with host Paul Slavens, which appeared on KERA-FM for a number of years, has moved to KXT and is now known as The Paul Slavens Show.
Dallas still lacks serious rock and roll broadcasting, being mostly a city in the shadow of Clear Channel music censorship. One step at a time. KXT is a great big step. Or maybe more accurately, KXT is a great, big step.
Help broadcast the news about the broadcast music:
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Walter Cronkite in the last decade - Texas Parks and Wildlife photo by Richard Roberts
Along with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on NBC, Mr. Cronkite was among the first celebrity anchormen. In 1995, 14 years after he retired from the “CBS Evening News,” a TV Guide poll ranked him No. 1 in seven of eight categories for measuring television journalists. (He professed incomprehension that Maria Shriver beat him out in the eighth category, attractiveness.) He was so widely known that in Sweden anchormen were once called Cronkiters. (from the New York Times)
I’m saddened at the death of Cronkite. One of the things that saddens me is that he probably could have anchored for at least a decade past when he last signed off. Nothing against Dan Rather, at least not from me — just that Cronkite was one of a kind. He won’t be missed by too many people alive today who never had a chance to see him work.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
5 years ago my parents called me: “Rush is about to talk about you!” I was in the news for slashing my CEO pay to raise our min wage to $70k. I excitedly turned on his show.
Rush said: “I hope this company is a case study in MBA programs on how socialism does not work because it’s gonna fail.” I was devastated. My dad said Rush got it wrong. But it led to a flood of hate-mail against me.
Rush was right: we were a MBA case study. Harvard Business School concluded the $70k min wage was a huge success. Our revenue tripled. Retention & productivity skyrocketed. We were featured as success stories in the BBC & NY Times.
Rush incorrectly said everyone would make $70k when only me & a few new employees do. It’s a min wage. It’s not socialism; he knew that. He never agreed to have me on to give my side or do an updated story on our success.
His listeners still assume we failed. A top auto-complete search for our company is “out of business.” I’ve had 5 years to tell our story & prove him wrong but most people crushed with misinformation don’t have that luxury.
I’m sad he died & my thoughts are with his family. But I’m not sad his show is over. He hurt a lot of people with his words.