A note to our readers

Hey --

Another Sunday. Another Flickr battle. We have our illustrations up (although on one computer, Flickr is still "Processing" on one computer. We thank all who helped this edition. That includes Dallas and the following:

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. Here's what we've got.

Truest statement of the week -- Glen Ford bats another one out of the park. He was the solid pick since Thursday. In a just world, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, et al would be booking Ford to provide political commentary.

Truest statement of the week II -- Doug Henwood also had a strong showing. There were six choices for truest this week and there was no way we could reduce to one. Thanks to ___ who e-mailed the public account of The Common Ills to note Henwood. C.I. had already included Henwood in that day's snapshot but (except Ava who was on the road with Kat and C.I.) the rest of us first came across the Henwood article via the e-mail. Thank you.

Editorial: Iraq, beware the snow job -- To be clear, there is no withdrawal being called for by Congressional Democrats in 2008. Last week was about creating a criteria for grading Iraq. On that, many did well. (Pelosi is not among the many.) The photo is of Rahm Emanuel. He's never been praised by any community site until last week when C.I. noted his comments at the press conference. We'll gladly praise him for that. And we'll slam him next week if our judgement is that he deserves it. We'll go into that (outside of Rahm) as I (Jim) get further into the note.

TV: Pulled Punches -- Ava and C.I. had some antsy readers (longterm readers) noting the writers strike was over and hoping that at least they would include a fictional show in this report as they worked Medium last week (Patricia Arquette and Roseanna Arquette are both on Monday's Medium on NBC, it's the first time the two sisters have acted togheter). They weren't sure that was possible. They'd planned to grab regional PBS shows (including one featuring a CBS 'veteran' making a fool of himself and eating up easy applause). When SNL friends kept pressuring them to catch Saturday night's broadcast, they put everything else on hold to take on comedy. I think it continues their strong streak. (Ava says, "Great, next week we will lower the stakes because we're not interested in all the Johnny Come Latelys.")

Randi Rhodes & other Hitler Youth for Bambi -- Where the hell does Randi Rhodes get off calling Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro the names she did? We'll probably explore that more next week. The new Obama illustration is by Kat and Betty's eldest son. When we were all in Boston, he brought a drawing he'd done of Obama. We loved it. He insisted it wasn't very good (he was wrong). He said it needed color. Kat offered to paint in colors. He was up for that. So that's a collaboration between Kat and Betty's eldest son. We thank him for their illustration. Randi Rhodes at a campaign event called Hillary and Ferraro unacceptable names. C.I. and Ava had a section on what Whoopi, at a John Kerry event, got grief for and how the Kerry campaign apologized for that. That section got pulled for flow. But if it's not clear, campaigning for a candidate means the candidate is responsible for what is said unless he or she issues a statement denouncing the remarks.

Pockmarks of the Soul -- This article takes on Tom Hayden. "Tom-Tom" is his new name and C.I. gave that name. C.I. could have given many other names and is biting the tongue and the lips at this point. But much more nonsense from Tom-Tom and it will fly. Despite some feeling that this has already taken place, it hasn't. The big guns have yet to come out. In this article, we offer praise to Phyllis Bennis at the end. She earned it. (And was among those considered for truest statement this week.) This is an online magazine. It's one that receives no help from outside this community though damned if everyone and their dog doesn't e-mail wanting favors.
(We've never heard from Bennis. C.I. does know her.) The point here is that we don't owe anyone anything. Each weekend, we do an all night/all morning writing session and we share our truths. If you don't like our opinions, don't come back. Unless you're trying to raise your blood pressure, there's no point in reading something you don't care for. But unlike some people, we don't believe most have a fixed nature. We believe anyone can redeem themselves in our eyes (not that they'd want to) and that's part of the reason C.I. continues to bite the tongue on Hayden. But we're writing each week and if someone does something horrible, we call it out. We're not indebted to anyone. If this week Tom Hayden demonstrates some common sense (in our opinion), we're happy to note that, we're happy to applaud it. We say what's on our minds. If you don't like it, in the words of Cedric, oh well.

The McKinny and Nader campaigns for president -- This feature will probably offend someone. It's rare that something doesn't. But McKinney's website is her office and it needs to be run in such a way that it's open weekdays. And here's one of the benefits of my doing the note (besides letting me gas bag). C.I. still has to do a morning entry at The Common Ills and post Isaiah's latest comic. So I keep announcing how many more articles are left to note in the note. C.I. just said, to my latest tally, "What about Ralph's media criticism?" We had forgotten to post that. We just put it up.

Ralph Nader tells the truth on 'independent' media... -- That's higher in the list on the right but I'll put it in here. It's the article we forgot to post. It fits in with my point that we don't owe anyone anything and if, next week, The Progressive has anything to offer, we'll be happy to note it. But they've done a poor job, as Nader notes, and we provide a backup to his critique. We could have gone on much longer. Dona and Jess were trying to get down all the examples C.I. was ticking off. We also would like to do a piece on those who turned on Nader. We'd hoped to do that this edition but time ran out. (A rough sketch -- three paragraphs -- runs in the print edition.) "In the year 2000" would be the opening if and when we get around to writing that. For now we offer this and Nader is correct, he is not treated fairly. It's embarrassing to watch alleged 'independent' media rush so quickly to compromise their beliefs and hop on board the Bambi Express. But they've done that for some time, haven't they?

Don't Put It On Your Resume -- Media criticism. It takes a lot of dumb or malice to rewrite history that's less than a month old. Joshy has a lot of moxie, to put it mildly. Link goes to a site other than where the article appears. We will never, ever link to that site. For a link to that site to take place, the parents of West would have to get an apology from it for two people (a writer and an editor) attempting to conduct negative research on a child who posted at that site. We don't tolerate that and we don't pretend that's left behavior.

CODEPINK? -- We did a roundtable this week. Ava and C.I. said, "Forget it, we're not typing it up." No one wanted to spend the time required. A segement is donated to Hilda's Mix' audio version. We also took a section and put it in article form for this feature.

Highlights -- Mike, Kat, Cedric, Rebecca, Betty, Elaine, Marcia, Wally and Ruth worked on this. As they note, I've been begging Ruth to participate here. C.I. has a rule: No report from Ruth on the weekend if we're also using her on this. She is not superwoman and can't do both. As they note in this, it's equally true that Ruth's finding very little worthy of doing a report on from public radio. We thank them for this piece.

And that's it, we'll see you next week.

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

P.S. TCI community member Lynda noted that Hillary Clinton's online campaign office was issuing new statements on Sunday. "Hillary in the West" has been added -- and that is one of several posts they offered on Sunday. (Thank you, Lynda, for pointing that out.)