A Note to Our Readers

Hey --
Sunday night.

We had to a break this morning due to losing the typed version of the roundtable and being extremely frustrated. Here's who participated on this edition as well as Dallas who locates links, acts as a soundboard and much more:

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,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
and Marcia SICKOFITRDLZ.

Here's what we got:

Truest statement of the week -- Robin Morgan -- the pick for truest. Read her entire column. Amazing.

Truest statement of the week II -- This section by C.I. was requested repeatedly by readers throughout last week.

Editorial: State of 'Independent' Media -- This was supposed to be the feature and an editorial would be done solely on Iraq. Didn't work out that way. Ava and C.I. had to work at least an hour on their commentary this week. Dona said, after Ava and C.I. left, when the rest of us were supposed to be focusing on roughing out the editorial, "I don't see any work going on, I'm taking a nap." I (Jim) swore there was plenty of time for work and conversation. I was wrong. We never got the editorial roughed out. When the hour was late this morning, Dona's the one who said this feature could be bumped up to editorial which we all agree with.

TV: What's the measurement? -- This went up by accident again. Like last week. They were in the middle of typing up the redraft and hit the space bar and the thing posted. They quickly put it back into draft but those were among the many blogger problems. They are Ava and C.I. who wrote this. At five this morning, when we were already tired and considering packing it in, there was concern about the edition. We didn't have an editorial (this was before Dona suggested a feature article be turned into an editorial) and we weren't sure about what we had (we knew we had short features). Whether we wrapped up the edition then -- as everyone really wanted -- or not depended upon the strength of this piece. After I read this out loud we were all in agreement that Ava and C.I. pulled it off. Last week's commentary, by the way, was huge with our longterm readers. Ava and C.I. tackled a Bully Boy speech as if it were a sitcom, something they've done before. I wasn't sure how that would play even though it had been popular before. They've been doing these epic commentaries (like this one) and it's brought in even more readers. But longterm readers loved it. Ava and C.I. were right about those readers needing some fun after nothing but commentaries of news & public affairs programming week after week since November (due to the Writers' Strike -- and bad news there, if the Screen Actors Guild goes on strike, Ava and C.I. will honor that strike as well). Surprisingly, many new readers who've come on board during the writers' strike also enjoyed it. Three people complained, however, that it wasn't 'serious' enough or 'up to standard.' Ava and C.I. reply, "We don't write for you and we're not a juke box."


Roundtable -- This was murder to reytpe and murder to start retyping. More time was spent avoiding retyping than in actual retyping. We really hate typing up roundtables. The audio excerpt for Hilda's Mix audio version will be about resistance which we pulled from this. A very long roundtable. Long to do, long to edit. Long to type and then long to retype. Rush transcript, remember. Also no illustrations. If C.I. or Jess has time, they'll add them by Tuesday. As it is, everyone wants this note done and the edition finished.


What you didn't hear on Pacifica last week -- The first feature we did. We thought we'd be moving along smoothly after this. We were wrong.

Reality check -- In the roundtable, I argue for this as a truest. C.I. said no and stuck to it. As a compromise, we offer it as a stand alone.

Women, you're her third choice! -- Short pieces! Always Dona's cry. As we did them, we still thought we were moving along quickly. We had no idea of the roundtable to come.

Philip Roth, stuck on stupid -- Maybe some people shouldn't speak in public? I wrote all headlines so blame me if you don't like them; however, I need to give Betty's oldest sister credit. She has some wonderful sayings and one of them is, when someone tries to play her, "You must think I'm stuck on stupid." So I've borrowed one of her phrases for this headline.


Katrina vanden Heuvel kind of remembers she's a woman -- for at least one moment in time.

Highlights -- Mike, Kat, Cedric, Elaine, Rebecca, Betty and Wally wrote this and picked all highlights unless otherwise noted. We thank them for this. Also, there was a problem with this feature last week in posting. As Mike explains in "Barack Lovers, they love Miley Ray too," a few sentences were lost. C.I. went in Sunday night and fixed that. Mike wanted to be sure that was credited.

Note -- Our note explaining we'd be up by 8:00 p.m. EST. We lied. It was 8:15. We wanted to sleep. Then we took forever waking up and spent a great deal of time griping about having to retype the roundtable.

So that's it. We'll run the marathon next weekend.

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