Sunday, August 03, 2008

A note to our readers

Hey --
Another Sunday. We're posting a bit late, even for us. Working on this edition were Dallas and the following:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, 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.

For a change, we were all together last week -- though Ava, C.I., Jess, Wally, Dona and Mike went to DC on Thursday. I (Jim) think we all had a lot of fun. Ty forgot an e-mail he wanted to include. ToolRules97 e-mailed to express surprise that C.I. didn't cover a Congressional hearing on Thursday about sexual assault in the military. C.I. responds, "We checked a week ago and that hearing was going to be a joke, we were told. We decided to go in on Thursday for the hearing on food safety and again checked to make sure there wasn't any point in also catching some of the hearing ToolRules refers to. We were told it would be a joke. I haven't read any coverage of it -- did anyone cover it -- but I've heard it was a joke with a refusal to testify. Ava and I covered the food safety hearing for Polly's Brew. It's not my job to cover every hearing and there was one more interesting going on that got very little attention." So that's your reply ToolRules97. Back to the together. We were all together and many had to leave today. At a little before 4:00 a.m. this morning, Dona and C.I. called a halt to the edition. They noted people needed to get sleep before they left. We'd finished everything but hadn't worked on typing anything. The agreement was we'd come back and here type. Due to the fact that it took longer than we'd planned to do that, we began posting out of order because Ty was in the e-mails and seeing people assuming we weren't posting. Due to that, things tended to go up as soon as they were typed. (We'll correct typos by Tuesday night.) (Typos we catch.) Ava and C.I. (the fastest typists of the bunch) finished typing up their piece early but we held that to post last since it was so many wait for. As Ty said, "Diana Ross closes a concert, she doesn't come on the middle of a bunch of other acts!" Which, I guess, makes me the announcer telling you that Ava and C.I. have left the building?

Here's what we got:

Truest statement of the week -- Margaret Kimberly.

Truest statement of the week II -- Bonnie Erbe.

Editorial: Open Up The Debates -- This was the last thing we wrote (in long hand) and wasn't our planned editorial. Jess and Elaine said this could be the editorial. We reworked it quickly to make it read like one. The illustration is of Barack, Ralph and McCain's sites. Why no Cynthia McKinney or Bob Barr? Can you really even make out Barack in the photo? Three was pushing it.

TV: Reality, Power and 'Reality' -- Ava and C.I.'s masterpiece. When we heard that, we couldn't believe it. (I read it out loud to everyone at 1:15 this morning.) It's got it all and, here's the thing, they didn't think they had a commentary this week. KPFA was almost dealt with by C.I. Thursday night but Ava and C.I. decided they better hold that because they didn't think they had anything to comment on. 'Reality' TV fans will be glad to see that Ava and C.I. have tackled another 'reality' program. I'm asking them what they've done on reality right now and they say The Simple Life, The Princes of Malibu and that we all did a piece on The Apprentice. They believe that's it. (And I'll put in the links for those three by Tuesday night.) The first two -- the ones they wrote by themselves -- remain hugely popular. We think this one will as well. (Ava and C.I. disagree and C.I. asks that we note that "all of us" together last week includes Dallas. [Added by Jim: I've put the links for the three reality shows in and I think Ava and C.I. wrote The Apprentice review as well. If they didn't, they wrote the bulk of it. It reads like them. To explain, we started this site a month before that review. Everything was a group process in terms of writing here. But Ava and C.I. came up with the best lines. I did not -- speaking just for me -- even appreciate it and would be thinking, "Yeah, yeah, can we focus?" Ava and C.I. would back the other up and say, "That has to go on." Often it was humor and a feminist point all-in-one and back then it just sailed over my head. They fought for their bits to go into these things and it was only due to the reaction from readers to the parts Ava and C.I. contributed that got me to realize they were doing something special and also had me urging them to do the TV commentaries solo. There is way too much Ava and C.I. in The Apprentice commentary for it to be group writing. Before the switch took place, Ava and C.I. had to fight for every line and were lucky to convince me that much was worth going in. So this may be where the switch took place and Ava and C.I. took over writing the TV commentaries solo. I could ask them but they'd say, "We don't remember." I could ask them to read it and they'd say, "Jim, you know we don't read it once it's posted." I could give them a few lines and it would probably jog their memory but that's about it. ]

Nader '08: Health care and dining -- This is our Ralph Nader article. We wish it were longer and planned for it to be but we did this right before we did what became the editorial and Dona was pointing to the clock throughout. We shoved back (for the third week) a feature we're hoping to do next week as well as a technology piece I was hoping we'd have time for. By the way, last Monday, The New York Times got it wrong on CDs, vinyl and cassettes. Repeatedly. They lied and said Walkman's took off in 1979 (among other lies). 1979 was a bad year for music sales. The Walkman took off in the early eighties. Cassette sales weren't even surpassing vinyl until the early eighties.

The Death of Panhandle Media -- I was reading over C.I.'s shoulder Saturday morning and ten paragraphs in this are from that with us reworking them. I really did like it. I didn't, however, try to claim it for Third. I tried to claim something else and C.I. had to think about that (and wanted it offered to Isaiah first) so the morning entries were held. When they were posted later, Dona was looking at the second entry and saying, "We could expand this at Third." C.I. pulled the ten paragraphs and that was the basis for this article.

Captain Caveman Barack -- This came about from a one-liner C.I. had Saturday morning. That's what I asked to be pulled and tried to claim for Third. I thought we could superimpose Barack's face on an illustration of Captain Caveman. C.I. said we could have it for a story but the idea of an illustration needed to be offered to Isaiah first since he is the community cartoonist. He loved the idea. We thank him for letting us repost his cartoon in this feature.

Workin' it for Sister Baracka -- A small number felt this topic was covered at community sites last week (it was covered) and that it didn't need to be addressed here. Rebecca and C.I. pointed out that doing it as a feature article would allow us to link to three organizations ( The Denver Group, PUMA and Just Say No Deal) which sold us on it.

Roundtable -- This is a very basic roundtable. We had two topics we wanted to explore in this (our topics, not from e-mails) but it had gone on long enough. I believe the bulk of the topics -- if not all -- come from e-mails.

Highlights -- Mike, Kat, Rebecca, Betty, Ruth, Marcia, Cedric, Wally and Elaine wrote this and selected all highlgihts unless otherwise noted. To note something here, because it does bother Elaine, she wrote something last week and made it clear that she and I have no problems between us. We do not. In fact the only 'friction' when I read it was my telling her that she didn't need to include the sentences in parenthesis saying we didn't have a problem. We don't. People repeatedly jump to the conclusion that we do. That bothers Elaine so I will include it in the note and say yet again, "Elaine and I get along famously."

That's it. See you next week.

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