A Note to Our Readers

Hey --

We're early for us! Let's note who worked on this edition:

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

And of course Dallas. Rebecca also photoshopped illustrations -- we thank everyone.

New content:

Truest Statement -- we don't usually run a photo but Monday, Law and Disorder didn't air in its usual time slot on WBAI. We thought a picture might give the strong words a face and maybe add to some curiousity as a result. C.I. has a friend who burns the show (which is how we hear it and how Mike hears it). Ruth swears by it and has Rebecca addicted to it. Cedric hears it on a pirate station and, we should note, Law and Disorder makes the program available free of charge. If you have a community radio station in your area or a public radio station (or a really cool commercial station), you can ask them to broadcast it and the station can't use the excuse, "Oh, we'd love to but we don't have it in the budget." Daliah Hashad is one of the four hosts -- Michael Ratner, Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith are the three others. All our practicing attorneys and, for one hour each week, they examine current events and issues from the legal standpoint. We think everyone will enjoy the show but if you're pre-law or someone thinking about becoming an attorney, this could be your study session as well. (It's not dry broadcasting. The hosts can be and are humorous when the situation calls for it. They are also deadly serious and calling things out when the need arises. (This is Hashad's second time to be featured for offering the truest statement of a week.)

Editorial: The shallow looking pond of the media -- Who's not getting Iraq? We'd argue the media still. Aguayo is out of the brig and that is better news, if not good. (He's not yet home.)

TV: Pigs and Prigs on PBS' NOW -- In the print edition there's a very funny addendum to this. We were offered it for this site as well and Ava and C.I. both said they'd type it up (they do the reviews in longhand on legal pads). We were trying to finish before the sun came up. (Flickr delayed us but we were so far ahead that, except for the Christmas 2006 edition that Ava and C.I. steered, this may be the earliest we've ever had things up at the site.) We read the first paragraph and, honestly, didn't get it. As we were waiting on C.I. to finish posting at The Common Ills, a friend at our old school in NY who gets the print edition phoned me (Jim) to say, "This is too funny!" We read over it in full. It was a funny addendum. It'll run in the gina & krista round-robin and should run here but no one wants to type it (Ava: "You had your shot at it.") We didn't get it. It started off serious and we thought, "Yeah, it's been covered." We didn't read on. As many readers who have been lucky enough to get an e-mail from Ava and C.I. (a joint e-mail) can tell you, they do one paragraph straight and then hit the comedy. But what you have is a hard hitting (with some humor) look at a show that the left and pseudo-left refuses to call out. Ava and C.I. wrote this by themselves, everything else had multiple writers and, except for the highlights, all listed above worked on every other feature.

Precedent and privacy go out the window -- We probably worked harder on this than anything else. And longer. We ended up editing for space. During the edit we lost the aspect of abortion not being readily available everywhere and not being readily available to all. We're going to assume our readers know that. We've addressed it here before and, in our very first edition, we interviewed a woman about her abortion (see "Abortion: Why it matters still.") It's been touched on many times (here) and it was the most obvious thing to pull.

About those links (and other stuff) -- This was either the first thing we wrote or the second (it's all a blur). To be clear, we're not bothered by readers assuming we hate some organization or outlet they love. We read the passion as a good sign. But we're clarifying what was intentionally dropped and what we just haven't had time to get around to.


Accountablity for Media Big and Small -- Damn that CounterSpin! (I'm joking -- now, I'm joking.) Wednesday evening, C.I. heard The KPFA Evening News offer up the factoid that was wrong and ended up spending hours researching something, planning to post it that night at The Common Ills. (The focus is Iraq and the way that works is C.I. does three entries on Iraq each day, Monday through Friday, and anything else C.I. does at the site is bonus and can be on any topic.) We kept walking over to see how it was coming and started adding things and then we picked up the phone and started telling Rebecca and Mike about it. They had somethings to add. At that point, C.I. said, "Let's make it a feature for The Third Estate Sunday Review." Due to so much interest and everyone being ready to pitch in. I usually scream "no" on that. I'm always telling C.I. not to save stuff for this site, to use it at The Common Ills. I went along on this readily and when CounterSpin aired Friday, that's probably why I was so mad. But, as C.I. pointed out before hearing CounterSpin, "I'm finding it really hard to believe the piece is dead because I'm finding it really hard to believe that CounterSpin addressed media big and small. I'm sure they focused on CBS but who else?" In the words of Betty, true that.

Pee & B.S. -- PBS? No, Pee & B.S. Read it and grasp why.

The Nation Stats -- 4 men for every woman. True when we started this regular feature, still true today.

The summer reads -- A nightmare. Jess offered this last week. Readers e-mailed saying it would be useful. Some e-mailed complaining about our archives. We had no idea what they were talking about. The template switch has pretty much destroyed the archives. (2006 and 2005 are a joke to hunt for stuff -- you need to Google.) Dallas cried, "Help!" (Never happened before.) We tried to. We couldn't. The archives are a mess (repeating). C.I. finally remembered two titels of the 2006 edition and we were able to locate that via Google. We've also taken away Jess' ability to make promises here anymore! (Joking.)

Highlights -- none of us wrote this. Mike, Elaine, Betty, Rebecca, Cedric and Wally wrote this. They picked out most of the highlights as well unless they've noted otherwise. We thank them for that. They answered a few questions in this feature too, so if you've asked something and don't feel it was answered, check out this before e-mailing it again.

And that's it. Ava points out that I shouldn't be so thrilled with the early morning finish, "We" she and C.I. "finished at four hours earlier than this when we were in charge." (She's joking. But the time part is true, they did finish early. I wouldn't be surprised to learn it was four hours early.)

That's it. We're going to bed. See you next week.

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