A Note to Our Readers

Hey --
Sunday night now. Everything's up except the note I (Jim) am writing now.

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

We thank all of them and we thank Dallas. Here's what we've got:

Truest statement of the week -- Margaret Kimberely calling like it is. If you don't yet grasp the importance of Black Agenda Report, ask yourself who else had the guts to take on that editorial?

Truest statement of the week II -- Juan Gonzalez, like Kimberley, remains a truth-teller and a land of go-alongs. We may revist Gonzalez' comments next week.

A mini-note to the readers -- This is out of order. It's supposed to be further down. But while C.I. fixes that on another computer, this is where I explain that Ava and C.I. were sick. They were prepared to go on but they didn't have the flu and were sick from exhaustion. Dona wisely suggested we all get some sleep. Ava and C.I. hit the road every week to speak out against the illegal war (usually with Kat) and they end up flying home Saturday morning. They have a ton of personal things to catch up on, they have to help out with the all night writing edition which falls into Sunday and then, they're back out on the road again. C.I.'s just moved this down to right after highlights. It was just a mini-note saying we would be posting today and we posted two things that were complete and needed nothing else that we knew of.

Editorial: While You Were Distracted -- A lot of news happens. A lot of it doesn't get reported. Allegedly Panhandle Media is supposed to grab what falls between the cracks but that didn't happen here despite the fact that contractors remain the only Iraq issue Panhanlde Media can report on these days -- they certainly can't report on war resisters.

TV: Recyling the tired and the damaging -- Ava and C.I.'s commentary that has already had complaints from readers that if we were going to take a sleep break, couldn't we have at least posted this -- one missing paragraph (see mini-note) or not? Ty was attempting to help out Ava and C.I. They write this piece, they type it up, they do their own links. They were throwing at this point and Ty went into this to add a link for Johnny Test -- what they'd said still needed to be done. When he did, the paragraph the link went into was lost. They said they'd fix it later. They open with the Academy Awards and note that they were texting everyone about an opening monologue ripping off a seven-year-old episode of a sitcom. Among the people they texted were Elaine and Mike who note that in this joint-entry Sunday night where they filled in for C.I.

Roundtable -- This went the two hours planned even with the last topic coming up. We're still working on the kinks to figure out how to do a roundtable in a reasonable amount of time. Among the problems (as I see it) this week is that Betty didn't talk. Everything you see by Betty is everything she said. She was afraid she'd make us go over the limit. So that's something I still need to address. We're covering a number of topics and thanks to reader Duncan, Ty for picking the e-mail and C.I. for addressing Duncan's topic or we might not have Iraq in the roundtable. Stealing from Friday's snapshot: " Kimberly Wilder (On The Wilder Side) in a video produced by Terry Morrone (a typo yesterday, it is "Terry Morrone")." We've added that to the roundtable. We were going to note the Wilder interview in a separate feature dealing with Cynthia and Matt Gonzalez but time ran out so we've added it into the transcript of this piece and now into the note as well.

Why Marcia started her own blog -- This is generally a Q & A. When a member starts their own site, we do an interview with them. But, due to the fact that we had the lengthy roundtable, we didn't want two major transcript pieces. If you hate it in this format, let us know. We'll be happy to interview Marcia again. Be sure to check out her site.

Fool On The Hill -- Barack Obama breathes oxygen. Due to the touchy nature of the candidate and the campaign, will that be considered a smear as well? Or will it just be something we're not supposed to talk about? I have no idea but it's amazing how much is being tossed under the bus for the candidate supposedly bringing us all 'together.' Maybe he's just bringing together the last ones left standing? The Cockburn family is becoming an embarrassment.

Dumb Ass of the Week -- It's a tie! -- How do you tell Air Berman and Air Mebler apart? The world may never know. We're trying to figure out which one is the Heddy (Single White Female) of the pair but we're left the impression that they're both Heddy.

It's still called The Progressive, right? -- Thank you, Matt Rothschild, for seeing that more voices were needed in independent media and specificially in your magazine. It was so very wonderful of you to add two new columnists. And it was no surprise that you went with the most under-represented category, the voices least heard: Two White males. Thanks, Matty.

Highlights -- Kat, Mike, Rebecca, Betty, Wally, Cedric and Elaine wrote this and picked the highlights unless otherwise noted. We thank them for this. Dona, C.I. and I made an addition to this with one final highlight.

That's what we've got. Hopefully something that made you laugh, pissed you off or got you active.

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