A Note to Our Readers

Hey --

Sunday, Sunday. Our heads are killing us.

First, credit where it is due. The writing on this edition is by:

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

We thank them. We thank Dallas for links and being a soundboard. We thank Betty's oldest son for coming up with the idea for the only new illustration we used. (It did mean running to the grocery store at midnight, but we still thank him!) Other illustrations made it into the print edition. Flickr would not take them and we're not in the mood to play around with it this morning. We especially thank Ty's boyfriend who called while we were at the airport and asked, "Do you know you don't have anything up?" He'd already distributed our print edition (at our old campus). We gave him the password and told him he could post. What? The first two things that went up. (We weren't sure about the order.)

So let's note that it was great that everyone could be together this past week and the week before. It was a lot of fun. Some left early this morning and we weren't going to be rude and say, "Bye, see ya." So the plan is to see everyone off at the airport.

Delays, delays. C.I. delayed The Common Ills yesterday morning to make breakfast for all of us (wonderful breakfast) guessing that Sunday morning would be too hectic for us to enjoy a final breakfast (it was). But it was so much fun seeing everyone. And we need to do it again real soon and not wait for a rally or next summer.

Betty's oldest son and her daughter, by the way, do the illustration in the print edition that goes with this week's editorial. The drawing is by Betty's son, the "spots" are from her daughter.
If we're forgetting something, remind us. (We're noting Betty's son's illustrations because of the fact that last time he helped out, he told his friends and expected that we would have noted his help in the note. We rushed it and forgot it that week. That led to some of his friends doubting him. We don't want that to ever happen again. If you're reading this and you're his friend, he worked his butt off on this edition and anything he says he did, he did. Even if we forgot to mention it.)

So, onliners, what do you have this week?

Truest statement of the week -- our pick because of Cindy Sheehan. We didn't have time for a piece on Sheehan herself this week (and we're waiting to see if she decides to run) but we did want to be on record opposed to the attacks on her for considering running and C.I. said it best last week.

Editorial: Stop the Current Illegal War before the next one begins -- 2004 saw the peace movement co-opted by a presidential election. If it happens again, we'll call it out. IVAW, Tina Richards and Cindy Sheehan are taking and making the case to the people. More need to be doing so. Funding the war is killing American troops.

TV: Losers & Fools -- The epic . . . in a bottle? Sorry, I've got the Police on the brain. ("I" is Jim.) This is the promised return to hard hitting TV commentaries by C.I. and Ava (who wrote this piece and write all the TV commentaries themselves -- all other pieces were a group effort except Highlights). When they took the look at PBS, the attention freaked them out and they were lowering the profile. Dona explained that in the gina & krista round-robin back in May. She explained this date would be the return. She explained this would be the show. Now, of course, two Sundays ago, they ended up returning to epic. That wasn't planned (as explained that edition). Even so, I had my doubts. Partly because I know they know several working on this show. But they said, "It will be hard hitting." I shouldn't have doubted them. It is hard hitting. It's amazing. If there's any fault or weakness, it's in the title I added to their commentary. We needed to finish the print edition (so Ty's boyfriend could get it out) and I plugged that in thinking I'd have time to change it before it went up online. Time never emerged. Hopefully the title works. If not, it's the only weak thing about their commentary. I rank this as one of their all time finest.

Standing with the war resisters -- Print version is longer. Online version addresses several things and we think it makes the point. If you're going to support war resisters, do so publicly. If you can't, you're prolonging the war.

Iraq War Helper -- Betty's oldest son heard Mike and Wally talking about C.I.'s "Illegal War Helper" and said, shortly before midnight, "You should do a thing with the front of Hamburger Helper." Perfect. But C.I. doesn't eat beef. And there was no box in the house. Trip to the grocery store and, as Elaine can tell you, when everyone's tired, you don't go to the grocery store with C.I. (Rebecca and Elaine have a chips story from college about C.I. they've often told -- we believe blogged about too -- an hour on the chip aisle. Lost in the Supermarket, indeed.) Anyway, the piece works. (And in fairness, it was Mike and C.I. on this trip to the supermarket that knew they needed one thing but couldn't think what it was forever. It did provide Dona the time to realize that Betty Crocker's "warm" microwaveable desserts could produce the "war" for the illustration.)

Mailbag -- We planned to note more e-mails. Ended up with a mini-roundtable instead. Probably better that way. Three people did write that they had never had their topic or question noted in any forum here (in addition to the ones we were able to get to). We'll try to pick those three up next time.

Iraq reporting MSM style -- C.I. and Jess have tossed this idea around a couple of times. We've never nibbled before. This time, we got the point. Had we known the work required before writing it, we might have begged off because we thought this would be a quick, short feature.

Sweet Nepotism -- print version is longer. C.I. pulled some things (that were funny, even C.I. will say that, Rebecca and Elaine contributed those things). It's still funny. Unless you don't have a sense of humor. It's also true. And journalistically, there's nothing funny about repeatedly plugging a group you and your father are connected to without ever informing the readers of that. That's a journalistic no-no, in fact.

New York Times enlists in the clampdown -- We'd gone long on the Mailbag and on the MSM feature. Dona said, "I want a short feature and it better be short. Don't toss out an idea if we can do it quickly." We were hoping to finish early or finish most of it early enough so everyone could get some sleep before the first group had to catch their flights. Didn't happen. But this did end up a short feature.

Hightlights -- Mike, Wally, Cedric, Betty, Rebecca, Elaine and Kat (and Kat this time around) worked on this. We thank them for it. Dona and Ty suggested they include links in the writing credit and that should have been done all along. Our apologies for not realizing that before.

And? And that's it. We'll see you next week. Hope you found something here to make you laugh, make you think or make you angry. If you laughed, thought or frowned even once, we did our job.

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