Ty: We're dipping into the mailbag and will try to get to respond to as many e-mails here as we can in the designated time limit. Here's who is participating: The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ava, Jim and me, 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 JotFirst up, Joanne wonders, "Why you all link to On the Wilder Side and credit it to Kimberly Wilder when she does have a husband who also posts there?"
Mike: Let me start. I don't link to On the Wilder Side. In fact, most of us don't. That's not a reflection on the work done there, it's just we all hate going into our templates. Unless it's a war resister's site, I haven't really made significant changes to my blogroll since 2005. I just don't have the time. I have linked to her site, in posts, from time to time when it was covering something I wanted to talk about. If it was something her husband had written, I would have given his name and not typed: "Kimberly Wilder's husband wrote a . . ."
Elaine: I had to check my own site before answering. I do like her site but, for the reasons Mike gave, I doubted I had it on my roll. I don't. That's not a reflection on her, I'm just really busy and when I go into Blogger/Blogspot, I'm going there to post. It's why I don't go back and fix typos as well, I don't have the time. I have linked to her in posts and think she does a wonderful site. I want to link to C.I.'s "Bused and Bought" post, a permalink, and when I finally get around to doing that, I'll add her to my permalinks.
Jess: Well here we list the site as On the Wilder Side. C.I. did the links because after Ty, Dona and Jim switched templates on us one writing edition, none of us knew how to add links. So here we list it by the title. The question to "you" really goes to C.I.
C.I.: Right. Kimberly Wilder does the majority of the posts, if not all, on any given day I've visted the site. She is listed on The Common Ills permalinks in parenthesis after the title of the site. The reason for that is (a) she does the bulk of the work and (b) she is a "she." Visitors e-mail all the time asking where they can find more women bloggers or sites run by women. That's been the case since The Common Ills started. Anyone with that question visiting The Common Ills sees her name in parenthesis and they have the answer right there.
Ty: Next up. Kyle loves Betty's "Betinna goes to the movies" and wonders if we have thought any about reviewing Redacted here?
Jim: First, Betty did do a wonderful chapter, didn't she? And it was important enough, the film, that she broke from her outline. We actually had intended to have a review of the film this week. We had selected this week for two reasons. (1) Betty hadn't seen it and it opened in Atlanta Friday. (2) Texas community members are very interested in it and it was supposed to open Friday in Houston and Dallas. Those dates changed. By having something up Sunday 'morning,' it would serve as a reminder to members in that area to go out and see it. We're now wondering when we'll note it or how. But the plan had been that this edition would have a movie sub-theme and that would include Brian De Palma's film. Now we're trying to figure out what to do and C.I. and Dona are both of the belief that the Joshua Key thing we wanted to do has been postponed enough so, De Palma piece or not, we do the Key piece today. I know C.I.'s not going to comment, holding it in case we do something on the film, but Betty?
Betty: See the movie. It's everything Wally has said it was. Wally saw it early and has talked it up to the point that I was afraid I was going to be disappointed. It's really that great.
Ty: Next up political endorsements. We'll toss to Kat first after I summarize. Thirteen e-mails screaming that we have endorsed Ralph Nader for president in 2008, four e-mails screaming that Wally and Cedric aren't fair to Barack Obama. Kat?
Kat: In terms of presidential contenders, only one person has been endorsed and that's not even by everyone. The post appeared at my site in March. The candidate endorsed was Dennis Kucinich and, along with me, the post speaks for "The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona and Ava, Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man, Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz, former NOW member Trina of Trina's Kitchen, Gina of the gina & krista round-robin, Krista of the gina & krista round-robin, Martha, community member, Shirley, community member, Kayla, community member, Keesha, community member." It was in response to NOW PAC endorsing Hillary Clinton. C.I. didn't sign it but Ava did. That was brought up by Ava and C.I. recently because we've stated here, Jim's stated here, that Ava didn't sign it. Ava did sign it. I'd assumed Jim was correct or I would have corrected him. Ava asked me after that was stated about it in terms of did I leave her name off because she thought she'd given me permission to put her name on the post? She had. So those members of the community have endorsed Kucinich.
Cedric: I really don't care that someone's upset that I'm not 'fair' to Obama. Wally and I come across a ton of articles about him every day and we could turn our sites over to him in terms of the many appalling things he does.
Wally: JFK.
Cedric: Right. Recently we saw that nonsense. He and his campaign and his supporters are trying to compare him to JFK. It's always a White person for the bi-racial Obama. He wants the 'first' publicity but he's always rushing to the White comparison. If you don't think I'm 'fair' to him, oh well. I don't think he's fair to African-Americans. I don't think he's fair to the other Democratic candidates. I don't think he's fair to gays and lesbians. I really don't care. We're trying to do a quick post and a short amount of time and if you don't like what we do, stop going to our sites. We won't cry over it.
Ty: Wally?
Wally: I think Cedric said. Whether it's using right-wing talking points or playing footsie with Mike Bloomberg, we don't like him. That's not really breaking news. I'll say right now that I honestly don't want to waste time in a mailbag with this issue again.
Jess: On the Nader issue, he won't even be announcing whether or not he'll run until the end of the year so anyone wrongly assuming that we have endorsed Ralph Nader has some issues of their own that they need to examine.
Ty: Lynette e-mailed that she would like more visuals and Paul e-mailed to register that when we don't offer visuals, the site loads a lot quicker on his computer.
Dona: In good news for Paul, since we've lost our sub-theme for this edition, there probably won't be a great deal of illustrations. It has to do with what we have time for. Do we have time to do something new, an illustration? Do we have time to go through the physical folder of illustrations we've already done -- including some done just by Betty's oldest son? Are Rebecca and C.I. ready to battle with Flickr? We spent a great deal of the opening time of this writing edition hunting down links for an amazing review that Kat did of Ann Wilson's new CD. She wrote that in a burst and then had to type it. We were reading over it and impressed, no question, but we pointed out how many links it should require. So we started hunting down those. By the time you read this, by the way, it should be up at The Common Ills. But there are a number of things that happen any edition. Including writing many pieces that only go into the print edition. My own personal belief is that the site's stronger with visuals, that it breaks up text and accomplishes other things. Jim, you want to talk about it in terms of public domain?
Jim: Sure. Dona had a project for a class around the time we started doing illustrations here. We started to give a face to war resisters. So that people had something to visualize and put a face to. Then Dona was doing research on coverage of war and how the problems with today's media are not limited to today. C.I. helped her with the research so that she could trace it back to the Civil War and it probably goes further than that. But while we were going through the bound journals of those early magazines and early newspapers, we could see the emergence of visuals. That's what got us to thinking about adding visuals here. And, in those early days, it was an engraving. A generic one that they used over and over. So if there's something we've used before and can use it again, I'm not bothered by that. It's in keeping with what prompted us to really consider illustrations to begin with. About the only thing that does bother me is the fact that we've got illustrations Betty's son has done -- either by himself or with others -- and we haven't used them. We will be doing so. But you've got everyone busy beyond belief and somethings have to wait.
Ty: Rebecca?
Rebecca: Flickr's the program used to upload illustrations. Prior to Flickr, C.I. and I both had Hello! accounts. All we did was upload our illustrations into Hello! and e-mail them to our sites. Once they 'hit' the sites, anyone who wanted to could use them. They'd click on the illustration and be taken to a web page where they just copied that web address. With Flickr, you have to register with them to use an illustration. That means you have to log into their illustration bank and pick the image and blah, blah, blah. In terms of uploading, I think we've missed the window of opportunity, looking at the time, on Sunday morning when it will upload quickly and easily. If we miss that window, we end up with error messages, slow uploads and, often, non-uploads. Repeatedly. It's a pain in the ass and there has to be another way but, as of now, Flickr is what we're sticking with.
Ty: ___ e-mails that he has written over and over to get an event plugged and we will not do it.
Jim: Is that the 'Unity' guy?
Ty: No.
Jim: The 'Unity' guy can forget it. We're not interested in endorsing Republican events. Jess, talk about this site and then toss it out there to anyone else who wants to grab it.
Jess: Your every event may be the beginning and the end of the world to you. It's not to us. We get a number of things each week that we're asked to note. The Common Ills gets a number of things, I'm mentioning TCI because I'm among the ones who go through the e-mails for TCI, and even as much as C.I. puts online each week, there's not enough time to note everything. Each writing edition here starts with a list of things we would like to work on. From that, we work on what time permits. From all that we get done, we decide what's worth going up online. As a general rule, you can ask yourself, "Did I call them about this?" If you answer is no, then we have no personal obligation to note your event because we do not personally know you. We note what we can. I'll also note that, especially with TCI, there are a lot of people wanting things noted and, as Ava has pointed out, it's a one way street. That's probably done more than anything else to make me say, "Oh, we've got more important things to cover" when someone tosses out, "Do we want to note ___?"
Ty: C.I. should probably comment but I've got a specific on C.I. so if someone else wants to leap in?
Wally: If I could note Brian De Palma's film in every post, I would. That's not how Cedric and my joint-posts work. The fact that something I really believe in like that film doesn't get the attention from me I wished it would goes a long way towards my not feeling guilty about things that really don't effect my own life not getting noted. This is someone, Ty, who's self-published a book, right? He's been e-mailing me as well.
Ty: Yeah. Anyone else?
Mike: Well I don't know the book so I couldn't plug it. In terms of my site, I meant to plug Courage to Resist's holiday gifts -- gifts all year round but they're noting them during the holidays. I see that Thursday as I've just posted and I called C.I. and C.I. noted it for me. I meant to note it on Friday but I was posting at eleven at night and forgot. I'll try to note it on Monday because I believe in the work that organization does. But sometimes the answer is as simple as that, you think you'll note it, you forget and then life's moved on.
Ty: Okay, C.I., Reena e-mails complaining that you didn't note the Culture Project's Impeachment project. She also complains that in Tuesday's "Iraq snapshot" you didn't note Naomi Wolf's comments on impeachment from "'The End of America': Feminist Social Critic Naomi Wolf Warns U.S. in Slow Descent into Fascism" on Democracy Now!
C.I.: First up, Reena's specific issues. I don't support No End In Sight. It's a bad film that sells illegal war and the Culture Project can exhibit whatever they want but I don't publicize that film and I won't. The film was made by a War Hawk who still supports the illegal war and will not call it out. He wants to offer that it wasn't 'planned.' Naomi Klein has aptly demonstrated that the chaos was planned. I'm not going to endorse any event that features that crappy film. As for Wolf's statements about impeachment, she had recently been interviewed on The Bat Segunda Show. Google "Bat Segunda Show," "Naomi Wolf" and "The Common Ills" and you'll see that her remarks on impeachment were noted in an "Iraq snapshot." Her group is America Freedom Campaign. On Bat Segunda, she explained that she personally favored impeachment but it wasn't a position her organization had taken a position on. That was due to the fact that it's a grassroots organization and positions and stands come from the bottom to the top. They aren't dictating to members, they are listening to members. On that day in question, she spoke about impeachment and spoke for the organization. That was a change and one we would have noted; however, there was, as Kat pointed out in her post that day, no transcript at Democracy Now! when I was finishing up the snapshot. I'd assumed we'd end with Naomi and told the friend I was dictating the snapshot to over the phone, "Grab ____" I then was told there was no transcript. I thought real hard about the broadcast I'd heard and we noted a section of it based on my memory only. I didn't have time to listen a second time. Due to the fact that Wolf was announcing a new position for her organization, I wasn't going to include anything on that unless it was absolutely 100%, word for word, Wolf. And, for the record, that was Wednesday, not Tuesday, as Reena seems to think, Wednesday for the snapshot, Wednesday for the broadcast of Democracy Now!. We've covered impeachment before, we will again. In terms of all things not-related to Iraq, it gets mentioned when it's possible. Some things are held for several days because I don't have the time or can't make them fit. That's life. I used to worry about it, I don't now. "IVAW is organizing a March 2008 DC event" are words that will appear in every snapshot between now and the event itself. In fact, we're running the full announcement because TCI members want it run. That to me is a great deal more important than many of the things that I don't highlight -- either by choice, due to time or whatever. But I am not going to play dumb and highlight a film by a War Hawk that tells you the Iraq War's big problem was lack of 'planning.' The Iraq War is illegal. The embrace of that film by The New Republican would be expected, that others have hopped on board with it is distrubing. To offer an example of why something isn't noted, there was a thing for African-American business people that came into the public account. That has nothing to do with Iraq. Which, to repeat, is the focus of The Common Ills. But the topic was interesting so I did what I usually do when I don't know anything about a sender or whatever they are promoting, grabbed the phone and called friends. No one had heard of it, I looked around on the web and there was no information on the organization. Its stated goals were worthy but I couldn't verify anything on it and wasn't going to write anything about it as a result. As Mike pointed out, it's hard for him to plug a book he doesn't know. If I'm sending out an S.O.S. to everyone I know about an organization and no one's heard of it and even Google can't turn up anything on it, it's not getting noted. It's equally true that I'm going through two e-mail accounts for members and the public e-mail account. First thing in the morning, I'm starting with what's at the top of each page and working my way through as quickly as possible. If someone's put something in a "Must read" folder for me, I may not see it until that evening if then.
Elaine: In terms of checking things out, I'd add that possibly if some of the people promoting the film No End In Sight had bothered to do a little research, people against the illegal war wouldn't be steered to a film that tells you all would be right with the Iraq War if only the occupation phase had been planned better. Why anyone opposed to the illegal war would promote a film whose maker is for the Iraq War to this day is a question for others to answer. In terms of my site, what C.I. just said. That happens all the time. I don't know anything about the thing they want highlighted, I do some research and either find out it's not worth highlighting or can't find out anything on it. It's equally true that if that research takes me more than a single day and you e-mail me to tear me a new one for not noting your thing, I stop researching because I don't work for you and if you've shown your ass, I'm not going to go to the trouble of using my time to try to help you.
Ty: This is going to be the last e-mail. Robert applauds Ava and C.I.'s stand and says he'll keep reading regardless of what they cover in their TV pieces. But he wonders if they're prepared for the fact that the strike could go on for some time.
Ava: Absolutely. Jay Leno's move has angered the writers. Why he decided to fire striking workers is anyone's guess. But if it was to play toady for the corporation that's already dumping him for Conan O'Brian, as they've publicly announced, it didn't work out that way. It's actually added a new determination to the strike. C.I. and I are fully aware that the strike could go on through March easily. We'll return to covering first-run entertainment shows when the strike is over and not before then. Thank you to Robert and everyone else who wrote in to say they supported or could live with the decision.
Ty: And that's going to be it for this mailbag.