About that letter section . . .

We are writing this on Saturday afternoon -- plenty of time to do a letter section.
But we've decided not to.

We're fighting and splitting into factions over what to run. There are a few that we all agree should run (such as women who were victims of incest and shared their views on Karla's story from our fist Third Estate Sunday Review). Those five e-mails were the only thing we could agree. One of us (Jim) wants to run smart ass e-mails and reply in kind. Another of us (Dona) thinks that's wasting space on people who don't deserve the space. There are seven e-mails that are hysterical (to Jim) as they rant and rave about we all belong in a gulag or something similar.
Two of us (Ty and Dona) feel that there are some serious criticisms that might be brief or not written in a funny manner but should be aired. One of us (Ava) said an hour ago, "Forget it if you think I'm typing any of this because I've got a final on Monday and we should have started it already." Which leaves one of us (Jess) to play peacemaker and he finally exploded, "Junk the letter section then!"
We're not used to hearing him angry, he's a quiet person. So after we got over our shock, we agreed that it was useless at this point.
There's not going to be a letters section. If you'd like to submit something as an op-ed (no payment, people), we'll consider running it.
We went with Rebecca Winters of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude for an interview this week because we had so many people e-mailing and asking, "What is Rebecca like?" We didn't know. We've never met her or spoken to her until she agreed to a phone interview.
We found her hilarious and informed.
A number of you have e-mailed about Karla and Mike's stories and we'll continue to spotlight students whose voices might not be heard in the mainstream media because the interviews are worth conducting, the stories are worth sharing and your response has been very positive.
The response to the TV story (on Joey) last week prompted us to explore another TV show, Will & Grace. We'll continue to cover TV but no promises that we'll do so next week. (Ava wants us to address Mutant X which requires two of us becoming instant experts.)
We're also posting an entry by Rebecca that she posted on Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude. We enjoyed that entry and wanted to spotlight it and she was kind enough to give us permission.
We're arguing over the draft of the editorial right now and if that gets firmed out in time, we might be able to squeeze in another entry. Otherwise we'll have six entries. Considering that there are five of us and that we only wrote five entries (Rebecca wrote the post we spotlight) that might end up being the standard number.
We thank Rebecca and we thank CI of The Common Ills for, as usual, reading over our drafts and offering input. A section of Rebecca's interview was added when CI asked to see the notes on that. Adding it into the piece gives you a stronger sense of Rebecca and where she's coming from. CI is our sixth set of eyes and has assisted us the last two weekends. That's meant all nighters for CI as we scrambled on our end to get our entries through various drafts.
(CI won't see this unless CI visits the site. Our opening statements are always roughed out only by us.)
Rebecca makes a strong point in her interview that the antidote for an increasingly limited discussion isn't a framework or talking points, but more voices. We agree and urge anyone who wants to blog to get started. Let's flood the web with freedom and voices. (And if you have something you want to say but don't want to start your own blog, you could consider jotting it down in the form of an op-ed and submitting here.)