Sunday, January 07, 2007

A Note to Our Readers

Hey --

Another Sunday. If you read the "Hey --" and thought we'd forgotten to write the note, we hadn't. C.I. had held this morning's entry at The Common Ills to note our content and, if we'd post something with the title "Note," it could be included as well.

Well my (Jim) plan was that we'd finish as soon as Ava and C.I. did when they helmed the edition two Sundays ago. Didn't work out that way. But it did work out better than planned. We're early for us thought three and a half hours behind what Ava and C.I. accomplished. Maybe next week.

The following helped on the writing of this edition:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and, me, Jim;
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude;
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills);
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man;
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review;
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix;
Mike of Mikey Likes It!;
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz;
and Wally of The Daily Jot

We thank of all of them and we thank Dallas for locating links and more and we thank Rebecca for photo shopping the illustrations. We thank Flyboy for his contribution to the roundtable.

Let's talk about what we've got.

Highlights -- Cedric, Mike, Wally, Rebecca, Betty, Elaine and Kat picked the highlights thank you all. (They also wrote this entry.)

10 CDs we listened to during this edition -- A quickie but a requested one. We tried to include a little more than a list this time.

Green Party: "Alternative Views on the State of th... -- we'll continue to note the Green Party (Jess is a Green). We even tried to do a illustration for it.

The New York Times snubs Coretta Scott King one la... -- how many times are they going to refuse to honor Coretta Scott King? (Our guess? Many, many more times. They don't like the King family.)

How to throw a civil war -- we actually planned for this to be longer but the usual "short pieces" cry grew louder from Dona once we started outlining the topics for the roundtable.

Democracy Now!'s sense of perspective -- so how much time was spent on the 3,000 mark/milestone and compare it to celeb news broadcast on the same program.

The Nation's sense of perspective --The Nation didn't do any better.

Rush Limbaugh has lacatation envy -- This was a short piece that had an illustration idea the second we heard of it.

Roundtable -- yes, yes, rejoice. A roundtable. We think Brandon's e-mail all but insisting on one turned the tide when we read it Friday night. It felt like the longest we have ever done. That can't be true, can it? But that's how it felt it. (If it is the longest one we've ever done, that would be why it felt that way.) What do we cover? What don't we cover? Race, Obama, music, Iraq, Vietnam, Gerald Ford, Watergate, you name it, it felt like it was in there. Even the show death. Mid-way through Dona began noting the time repeatedly but we went ahead and stayed with it until a stopping point could be found. This is the longest feature this edition.


Only the Dumb Asses Love Patti -- the original plan was a TV review and this piece. What happened? Ava and C.I. (who wrote this) were under the impression that we (and readers) saw it as a short piece. They wrote three paragraphs and were about to start the TV review. We said, "No!" They hadn't read the e-mails that had come in. Earlier last week, C.I. had noted at The Common Ills that this would be addressed. After that went up, e-mails to this site began noting how much people were looking forward to it, how it was going to cover this and that. When we told Ava and C.I. about that, they (wisely) told us, "We can't do that and a TV review."
So we told them to do this. It is about TV, it's a fallen non-star landing on hard times. We love it and think it turned out wonderfully.


Editorial: Ehren Watada stands and independent media heads for the bathrooms -- we did the roundtable and then went straight to this. Some portions were cut and we had heated debates about it. In the end, everyone gave a little. If that had not happened, it never would have been finished.

Hopefully, there's something you enjoy this edition. We'll see you next week.


-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.