A note to our readers

Hey --
The edition is finally up. Two pieces were scrapped due to today's This Week. While two other pieces were made one. (So that's four additional pieces in the print version.)

Helping out here were Dallas and the following:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jess, Ty and Ava,
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.

Thank you to everyone.

What have we got? Let's start with what we don't have: Dona and Jim. They are on vacation. They'll be back mid-day Tuesday. Ty is on vacation this week and will not be participating in next week's edition.

Content wise, what do we have?

Truest statement of the week -- Ralph Nader. Had we more time, there would have been a second truest.

Editorial: What did happen, what can happen -- This became one piece from two. We were doing a piece on historical war resistance and one on modern day. We pieced them together when a large section of the second couldn't be polished.

TV: Nothing but personal says the Big O -- When are you going to review Oprah? At some point, we included the show in a TV commentary ("we" would be Ava and C.I.). It was during a Hurricane Katrina coverage piece. But this is the most often asked question and with Dona and Jim on vacation and with it popping up eight times in e-mails last week, we thought we'd grab it. As Ava notes in mailbag, they thought it would be so much briefer and eaiser to write.

Ralph Nader, Defending Article II -- Our political feature article. We had another article on Ralph Nader. It's not going online. It was pretty much dead after This Week aired. When we realized that, we (Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.) kidded ourselves that we could just add a little to what everyone worked on. Maybe at the top and near the end. Instead, as we began the 'fixes,' it became obvious we needed to redo the entire article. Despite that, this was actually a fun article to write.

Sexism: Exhibit A, David Carr -- When one of Carr's two articles noted here ran, C.I. said at The Common Ills that it would be covered here. There was never time for that. Betty reminded C.I. this week and we grabbed it as a topic.

Mailbag -- No roundtable but readers have been e-mailing complaints about how there has been no mailbag. We realized we had to do one this week or you'd all stop blaming Jim and start blaming the rest of us! (The last sentence was a joke.) Marilyn Monroe illustration mentioned was added to this.

It started in DC . . . -- While we were hoping to do a mailbag but not sure if we'd have time, we knew we had to note the research done by this reader.

The Christ-child is born -- This is a speculative story. No one participating was present for the events. A few comments had been made to Ava and C.I. in 2007 when they were introduced to a woman who knew Ann Dunham. That led to more remarks throughout 2007 by others. When the Barack campaign decided to attack Gloria Steinem, Ava and C.I. began seriously hunting down friends of Ann Dunham (as they noted in their TV commentary back in January -- we don't have time to look it up, use the archives). That has continued to the current day (and will continue past today). In all, they (and Kat) have spoken with 51 people who knew Ann Dunham. Only one of whom was close to Barack Sr. The statements indicate there's more to the story than what has been told publicy. And we bit our tongues, Barack. More could have been written in this. Like quoting that July 1961 letter. Illustration was done by Betty's eldest son.

The Outsider pronounces the 'surge' a success! -- Another feature done after the edition. Jess reminded Ava and C.I. that Jim would insist this be covered. So Ava and C.I. do a quick commentary on Katrina vanden Heuvel's appearance on ABC's This Week today.

Highlights -- Mike, Elaine, Betty, Rebecca, Cedric, Kat, Wally, Ruth and Marcia wrote this feature and selected the highlights unless otherwise noted.

Ralph Nader on today's This Week (ABC) -- The speculation piece apparently got some outside the community and outside Third's regular readers attention. And since we were 'late' (we're still not late by Third's schedule), these newbies were e-mailing that we'd "chickened out". Nope and the note was just to clear that up and especially to give a heads up to Ralph's appearance.

And that's that. We're going to bed. See you next week (except for Ty who will be on vacation).

We missed you, Jim and Dona!

Added: "Bonus" went up mid-week last week. We've changed the date on it to Sunday so that it will archive with this edition. Ty, Betty, Cedric and Wally wrote it.

And this wasn't noted in Mailbag because we didn't see it (went to spam folder):

A reminder: There is no NOW on PBS on July 4, 2008.

However, on the website we do have an insightful interview (conducted
yesterday) with a North Korea expert commenting on the thawing of
relations between our country and North Korea, including a look ahead and
analysis of McCain's and Obama's reactions:

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/426/north-korea.html


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