Monday, April 13th, 2009
No Rude People Before 6am
I have volunteered my time for a year and half at a local radio station here in Madison, Wisconsin called WORT 89.9 FM. I currently host a show for entitled Other Voices which emphasizes women’s contributions to classical music. And those contributions are myriad. There are women composers, performers, conductors, technicians on classically-based electronic music, librettists, and the list can go on. I absolutely adore classical music. It is my life’s passion. And I am a total feminist. So being a host on this show seemed fantastic.
Did I mention I have to get up at 4:30am every other Monday to do it? Whew. I only have a couple of things to complain about on that one.
First, if I don’t go to sleep by 10pm or before, my sleep is completely out of whack the next day.
Second, I should expect to receive no negativity, snobbiness, pretentiousness, and/or belittlement at this ungodly hour. I wake up at 4:30, start the show at 5am, and then go until 8am. I enjoy doing it. I get to sit back and read, listen to lovely music, and get the occassional call about how nice it is to listen to beautiful classical music as one is getting up for work. Thank you callers. Now, for all you haters. I don’t know what’s it’s like to call a radio station, or anywhere else for that matter, at 6 in the morning just to get attitude with the host about how they’re not doing something exactly right. I would feel embarrassed and like I had no life. But no kidding, I receive a call now and then where someone feels it is completely acceptable to belittle a stranger trying to provide them with a public service.
Ironically enough, when I have hosted Other Voices, every single man that has called the show in the past year and a half has either been extremely friendly and chatty or neutral and all about the business of what he is listening to. Now, every single woman that has ever called the show has either been friendly and curt, or extremely rude and patronizing. Go figure. A show about women, and quite a few women (absolutely no men) have personally attacked me and caused trouble. You would think women would be more encouraging, and some men would be rude, but this has not been my experience at all.
You can go to my husband’s blog and read about a lady who was a real character when she kept harrassing me on the show.
But this morning, a caller who has normally been very nice and cordial with me decided to be completely unprofessional and patronizing when she called this morning. Now, do not misundertstand me. I appreciate a legitimate criticism when it is called for. This caller did give me a few good criticisms, but she was so impolite about it that I often wonder about callers like this.
Apparently, I had pronounced the orchestra St. Martin on the Fields as St. Martin in the Field. Did you notice the difference. Maybe when I was breathing I forgot to make it plural! How nitpicky and stereotypical of a classical music listener is that?! Then, I had pronounced viola incorrectly, like how one would pronounce the begining of violin. Then, due to a mistake with the manufacturing of a particular Mozart CD I was playing, I announced the conductor incorrectly. The CD did not label it clearly and I had to go tooting around in the booklet to finally find the condcutor in small print! Aahhh. But, this person couldn’t just tell me nicely that Sir Neville Mariner wasn’t always the conductor of St. Martin in the Fields, but that a Ms. Iona Brown was also a conductor of the large orchestra. Which would have been great to know right away as it is a show highlighting women’s roles in the classical music world. But this caller kept asking me (rhetorically) WHO is the condcutor of St. Martin in the Fields? I told her that I was having a hard time finding the information because the front of the CD did not list Neville Mariner as the condcutor. Exasperated and giving me no answer, I finally found the answer. Ofcourse, I corrected myself on the air. But while I was talking to this person, she knew the answer all along and wouldn’t just tell me politely and move on with her life. She had to yank me along, ask me in a most patronizing way, and not give me the answer. She was then like, Duh, of course it was Iona Brown. Sorry, I didn’t know that was well known public knowledge.
I got off the phone with her as quickly as I could. Her parting words were, “Aren’t you glad you have me to call you so I can correct you on these things so that you can be on public radio?”
I guess? Umm, thankyou?
This person apparently worked for public radio and thinks it is within her godly duties to inform us mere mortals when we are wrong about a classical music fact. But not just tell us. Noooo. We have to find it. we have to search and go on a Joseph Campbellian hero-like path to find the right answer so we can be redeemed! Then we can become whole again and life can go on. All within the strictures of rudeness.
Next time a listener calls me and has the nerve to be rude to me while I am hosting a show on a community radio station, I shall say, “Hey, why don’t you get up at 4:30am every other Monday, do what I’m doing and shutup!” If only I could do that. I have to be cordial, though, and vent on my blog! 