A Note to Our Readers

Hey --

Sunday, Sunday. As Mike would say.

Here's 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

In addition, Dallas hunt down links, Rebecca photoshopped the illustrations (and C.I. and Rebecca worked forever getting that tiny photo of Katie Couric just right in one illustration).
We thank everyone for their help.

Truest statement of the week -- Riverbend and her family made it out of Iraq.

Dumbest statement of the week -- The Online Predator, twice busted, decided to explain why Katie Couric isn't a good journalist. He did so by explaining how GE pulls CBS' strings because GE owns CBS . . . but GE doesn't own CBS, Viacom does. Seriously, how did Common Dreams and Truthdig both post his column and not catch the error? And, better question, if two arrests for underage online solicitation don't get you banned from those sites, what does?

Editorial: You should be very angry -- We're happy with this editorial. It was the last thing we wrote and we had agreed to cover this story. We ended up waiting on writing the piece and waiting until finally it became "It's the editorial focus or it's not going in this edition." So we made it the editorial.

TV: The question's not 'Is it worse?' -- it's how much worse? -- Ava and C.I. did carry The George Lopez Show commentary over to Maria, Francisco and Miguel's newsletter. You can read it in today's El Espirito (check your inboxes if you're a community member). We think that's a great commentary and has a lot to say. Do I (Jim) regret asking them to postpone writing it repeatedly? Not really. We got a string of hard hitting TV commentaries from them in this period. It would be great to have the Lopez one up here but it would be great to have the incredible commentary that they did on TV portrayals of women, criticism of them and the TV show Twins. That one ran in the gina & krista round-robin and we all lived. We had no idea what they'd cover this week but they knew we needed something hard hitting. We knew they had something on war resisters. We think they wrote another epic. They're concerned that there aren't enough jokes. If that's true (I can't tell you), the power of the piece more than makes up for it. (The power of this article is what stood out to me then and now.)

Bash the Bitch, available where shoddy toys are sold and sexists gather -- The illustration, if you look closely, has the little boy holding a Katie Couric figure in his fingers. When this went up, Ty was checking the e-mails to see if anyone would complain about one section. Someone did. If you don't care for the fact that we noted personal attacks come from a woman who draws a veil around her own personal life, get the hell over it. Ty's openly gay and neither he nor we will shed any tears that we 'dared' to note the public reality that the veil is drawn over the fact that her husband was gay. If she wants to draw the veil, she should apply the same principle to others. The e-mail complaining (the only one in thus far) also whined that because Ava and C.I. know Katie Couric, they defend her. That's not true. In fact, it's the opposite. Because they know her, they try to avoid the topic of Katie Couric. The reality is we could address Couric here each Sunday and still not have written even a tenth of the "Bash the Bitch" she's been subjected to since it was announced she was becoming the anchor. Ava and C.I. have avoided reviewing The CBS Evening News because they know if they write something nice, it will be, "Oh, you know her and like her, so you just defend her for that reason." Ava and C.I. have not made the issue about liking Couric, they've made it about basic fairness. If you're going to rip apart a woman, do the same with the men. We don't give a damn about tone. We do care about fairness. Rebecca was pushing for this piece. Ava and C.I. agreed but it really only took off once we (Kat, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava, C.I. and myself) hit the toy stores Saturday thinking we might find something from a game box we could could use. If Couric's Satan or you think she is, call her Satan. But make damn sure you treat all the male anchors the same way. That's not happened. Instead it's been dog pile on Couric. Where this ends is Couric could end up being fired. Maybe that's something the sexists (male and female) want. If so, they better pray they can point to a record of treating males and females the same because if Couric gets fired, it's going to be years before another woman gets hired and you better believe the howler monkies cheering them on today will be replaced with angry people tomorrow who will point out that Couric was lynched.


Mailbag -- We did this first because Lenora e-mailed saying we hadn't done one of these in so long. We don't know how long but we agreed with Lenora it was needed. The typos in the whiner about Ava and C.I.'s TV commentary are the whiners. We did not correct his spelling.
And to repeat, there is no privacy policy here. If you e-mail, we may or may not quote you -- in part or in full. (The whiner was quoted in full.) We may or may not list your name. That's our call. If you don't like it, don't e-mail. (In the case of the professor, C.I. said she teaches a conservative college. We're not sure she's political -- and her daughter, not the professor, is a reader of this site -- so we avoided naming her or mentioning the college to avoid her getting on some watch list as a 'lefty' when we have no idea if she is. On her, and some kind people at The Nation -- a few exist -- and other types we will continue to make that call.)

Brown is invisible? -- Joe Biden's skipping the Spanish debate. If we'd known that when we wrote this, we would have worked that in as well. Apparently Brown is also invisible to Biden.
Rebecca said to put in here that her in-laws know Chris Dodd. She doesn't and has no strong opinion on him.

The Pacifica Archives -- Ruth had hoped to note this in her report Saturday. She didn't have time or room and suggested it to us. We were happy to grab it. We all agree -- everyone who worked on this edition, in fact -- that the Pacifica Radio Archives are worth supporting. Of the ones writing this note, all but C.I. agree that until KPFA apologies online for threatening to cut the stream to listeners, you shouldn't give them a dime. (C.I.'s position is, "I never say 'don't donate' to anything Pacifica related. People can make up their own mind and, with KPFA especially, I'm uncomfortable getting behind a 'Don't donate' policy. However, I do agree that they need to post an apology to online listeners.") The archives need preserving. It's our history and one point we should have made stronger is that: our history. It's not just the famous being interviewed and covered. It's not PBS offering heads of state and government officials. It's the people. If you've got money to give (now or when the fundraiser rolls around), please consider giving. Five dollars, ten dollars (one time donations of those amounts) are appreciated and everything that is given goes to preserving history before it's gone forever.

Highlights -- Mike, Elaine, Kat, Rebecca, Betty, Wally and Cedric wrote this. We thank them for it. (We were all typing and editing while they did that except for Ava and C.I. who used the 20 to 30 minutes to do their TV commentary.)

Mark your calendars -- This went up first. That wasn't our intent. But it was getting close to time for The Next Hour to air. If you missed it and would like to check it out, you can visit WBAI's archives. All the broadcasts noted will be archived.


Now, Mike's "Marjorie Cohn on Iran, Third." Every Monday (unless Monday is a holiday -- or unless he's sick though that hasn't prevented him thus far), Mike writes his version of this note where he notes various things from the edition. If you enjoy the note, please make sure to check Mike out each week. He has a day (and sleep) before he writes it. We're often able to note something when he calls so his note usually includes more. It's also true that his note often catches things I (Jim) miss because I'm tired and we just want to go to bed and get some sleep. Actually, like many Sundays after the note, we're going to watch a movie, snack and fall asleep in the middle of the movie. We know it will be a comedy and have five titles we're arguing over.

What's coming up next week? We usually never know. But we meant to note the Green Party this week and did but it runs in the print edition. It wasn't working and we couldn't fix it. (Ty's boyfriend in NY distributes the print edition on our old campus -- 'our' is Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and myself. We have a deadline with that and many things make the print edition that don't make it online.)

So that's a sketch of this edition. We'll also be visiting the issue of sin taxes shortly and intended to cover that this week. It may be done next week. Next week, fingers crossed, we're also going to have a book discussion on Naomi Klein's new book. (Provided Mike and Betty finish reading it and provided there's time. We're breaking street date, it comes out at the end of September. But there's a push to get some 'heat' on the book so we'll do our part.)

See you next week.


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