Ty: Digging into the mailbag to share a few of your thoughts, links, questions and more. We do a mailbag as frequently as we can. I pick the e-mails and participating in this are The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, 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, Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ and Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends. First up, Robbie1987 e-mails to thank us for the work on the treaty masquerading as the Status Of Forces Treaty and to single out C.I. in particular for work on this at The Common Ills: "Where was everyone else? The treay doesn't matter? And when barely noted we should do like Amy Goodman and just repeat the White House talking points? It was shameful. I recommend everyone read Phyllis Bennis' 'The meaning of Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between US and Iraq' at ZNet and wonder if any of you have any thoughts on it? My only disappointment is that it went up yesterday" that was Friday "when it was too late to do any good. I felt that was a little chicken-hearted." Anyone?
C.I.: There's silence. First, thank you for the compliments on the work done here, that's a group thank-you, I'm not commenting on The Common Ills. In terms of the article -- I haven't read it -- I believe it's an interview. I also believe Phyllis gave that interview before Thanksgiving. I have a general understanding of the points she's making and they're ones we are all in agreement on -- all participating in this. So I think she did speak strongly against the treaty. I understand Robbie's point regarding it being too late but, repeating, I believe she gave that interview before Thanksgiving. Meaning, she's not the one responsible for when it posted and she has been speaking out against the treaty prior to Friday. Again, I haven't read it, I've heard of it. We'll open with a quote from it at The Common Ills tonight in "And the war drags on" and I'll make a point to read it then.
Ty: Thank you for answering but I wish someone else had because a lot of the e-mails are going to require your response. To be clear, as C.I. pointed out, there was silence. None of us have read the Bennis interview and I don't think anyone else was even aware of it. So C.I. jumped in but I'm saying right now, to everyone, there are several questions that C.I. is the obvious person to respond to them so you need to make a point to jump in.
Dona: Let me jump in now to explain for drive-by readers, the only one of us who would have a problem with that is C.I. That's why Ty's saying he wished someone else had answered because if others don't, C.I.'s going to walk out on this feature.
Ty: Right. Okay, Betty, here's one that was to you. Lanah wants to know what's changing at your site and if you've considered putting up a note explaining the title now that your site is a blog and no longer the online novel of Betinna?
Betty: I hadn't consisdered that but it's a good point. Lanah's right. Someone coming by a month or two from now by chance is going to see "Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man" and think, "This woman loves Thomas Friedman? She's sick!" The title was a joke. And when Betinna, the lead character in the novel, was showing up in weekly chapters, that should have been obvious to people. But now that the site's a blog, it could lead to confusion. I should update that in someway, a note or something. Thanks for pointing that out, I will figure out some way to note that.
Ty: Carlton wishes Ava and C.I. would do a weekly feature "called 'Things To Watch This Week'."
Ava: I'll grab. We don't have the time for another feature, first off. We've already done one feature for this edition and Jim's pushing us for two more. There's no time. Second, it's really not our job to tell you what to watch. Or to tell you to watch. If you want the week's best bests, I'll tell you right now, Monday the place to be is NBC because you do not want to miss Chuck and Heroes. Those are both episodes with foreshadowing. On Wednesday, the place to be is CBS for The New Adventures of Old Christine because Megan Mullally drops by and, unlike on 30 Rock, they've actually written some scenes for her to play.
Rebecca: Ty's admonishment ringing in my ears, let me jump in. First, Megan Mullally is the Emmy winning actress most famous for playing Karen Walker on Will & Grace. Second, I've started covering Heroes at my site each week. A reader asked me to watch the show this fall and I did. I'm hooked on it now. Nathan's just decided to go over to the dark side so I'm assuming Ava's referring to things we'll see on Monday regarding that. Assuming because, unlike Mike, Ava and C.I. don't tell me s**t.
Mike: I'm laughing. I cover Chuck at my site and it is my favorite show and I'm so glad it's finally cooking again this year. Those first two episodes were awful. Ava and C.I. just give me hints. They'll toss something out as an aside. It's only when I watch a new episode that I get what they were telling me.
Ava: Also true is that Mike is not someone self-confessed about being unable to keep a secret.
Rebecca: That is true. We should put the picture of Nathan in here.
Ty: Wait, I can pull an e-mail for that. Hold it. Okay, here it is is. Janet e-mailed to say she enjoyed that NBC photo Rebecca posted, "It reminds me I need to again make it a point to watch Heroes." But she wondered why Rebecca didn't post it to her own Flickr account?
Rebecca: I don't have one. We started out using Hello. That's what we did visuals with. Illustrations, photos. And C.I. had a Hello account, Third had one and I had one. We'd just share the passwords if someone else wanted to use a visual so they didn't have to sign up. Now Hello ended on a december 31st -- 2007? 2006? With no notice. C.I. and I looked at various things and finally decided Flickr was the best. I didn't need an account. And we all have the passwords to both accounts C.I. has -- that's how we post Isaiah's comic at our sites. So if I need to post a photo at my site, I will sometimes go to C.I.'s Flickr account, toss it in there and do a note explaining it's for my site so people don't start e-mailing C.I. asking, "What are you writing about Heroes?"
Jess: As somone who helps out with e-mails to the public account of The Common Ills, let me interject that even with that, two people e-mailed asking why C.I. posted a photo of Pasdar to Flickr. Along with the group that continues to e-mail every other day asking to use this photo or that, it gets old. "Old" because C.I. told them anything but Isaiah's comics can be used. But they continue to e-mail over and over.
Rebecca: Well, I tried. I don't know what else to tell you.
Mike: Before we move away from TV, New Adventures of Old Christine no longer streams full episodes online. A stupid decision. But I want to note that because I found out Monday when I was hoping to catch the Thanksgiving episode.
Ty: Okay. And thank you to everyone who participated. Okay, this one can go to Jim or Dona or Jess or Ava. Belle e-mails wondering what's the right number each week for features here? She also wonders if we're moving away from doing as much?
Jim: Everyone's looking at me. There's no set number, believe it or not. When we started, I think we did something like five to seven a week. Now days we have much more than that. We have tried to drop back down but it usually doesn't work out. We write more each week than ever makes it up here. What makes it up here is usually what we consider the best of the batch. That doesn't mean it's great, just that it was the best we could do that week.
Dona: I want to focus on the time issue quickly. There are features like "Truest statement of the Week" that pop up regularly. In that, we grab a quote from the previous week that we believe was right-on-the-money. Now that might seem like a simple cut & paste. However, you've got everyone involved in this mailbag gathering to toss out who they think is qualified. And there are sometimes many, many nominees each week. If that's the case, we spend time not only reviewing the statements but arguing why it is or isn't as important as other statements. I ask for short features and I do that to break up the look of the site. I long ago grasped that shorter pieces did not and would not mean we only had to spend five minutes or less on the feature.
Jess: And there's the pitching aspect. At the start of each writing edition, as soon as everyone's 'together' -- Kat, Wally, and the six of us -- Jim, Dona, Ty, C.I., Ava and myself -- are all together on the West Coast, others are phoning in -- we've got to pitch the ideas for the edition. Everyone comes in with thoughts. C.I. and Trina had a great idea and that would have been waived through by all of us; however, Trina ended up not having time -- her grandchild is sick -- so that's put off until next week. But something like that would be waived through by all because it's Trina. Those of us who work on the edition every week don't get waived through so easy. Mike had a number of ideas and they all got shot down, I think.
Mike: Yeah, they all did.
Jess: Betty and C.I. came into this with a pitch and it got shot down over and over. Betty want to talk about that?
Betty: Sure. We're doing a feature on bi-racial and multi-racial. It's important to us and to my father. And we came in with several ways it could be done. We didn't just pitch an idea, we didn't just say, "Article on the difference between bi-racial and Black. What do you think?" We came in with how it could be a roundtable discussion, or it could be an editorial, or this, or that. And it was shot down over and over. Like Mike's things. And that wasn't anything personal -- for Mike or for us. A roundtable, for example, no one wanted to do. It was too long and we didn't want to spend that amount of time. As an editorial, Dona and Jim both felt we'd get stuck in the research and not have time to write it. Or be up until noon Sunday still working on the edition. At that point, I had pretty much given up on us doing it. C.I. and I had pitched it in about four or five different ways and seen it shot down everytime. But then C.I. said, okay, we also have a way of doing it as a short feature. C.I. tosses that out and then Ty starts building on that and that got waived through. It was felt we could do that. That it would be a different way to cover the topic than we already had. And that it was different from other features planned.
Jess: Thanks, Betty. So that not only illustrates how something ends up on the cutting block or something we spend time on, it also illustrates the time that goes into just discussing one feature idea. The writing editions take a lot more time than we ever plan.
Ty: Marcia and Stan, would you like to comment? Cedric?
Cedric: Sure. I want to back up Betty's comment about it not being anything personal when your ideas get shot down. Mike had several great ideas. The feeling was just, "That's going to take a lot more work than we're going to have time for." In terms of Betty and C.I.'s pitches, I supported everyone of them -- as did Marcia and Stan which is probably why Ty asked us to jump in here -- but I did see Jim's point regarding time and Dona's asking, "How is this different from what we've already done here?"
Marcia: Everybody gets turned down. I can say from my time reading -- over three years -- and my time participating -- almost one year -- that even C.I. gets shot down. I don't know if Jim ever has, but I've read how C.I.'s been shot down and I've also participated when C.I.'s been shot down. Or C.I. and Ava for that matter. If it's really important to someone, it will get waived through in some way. Your best chance is to do what Betty and C.I. did this time which is to come in with several different pitches for it. My cousin's shrugging indicating nothing to add.
Ty: Okay. Last week's "Book discussion roundtable" was very popular with readers who've been waiting forever for a book discussion. Dona says Ruth, Stan, Wally and Elaine haven't spoken. Elaine, you can wait because you and C.I. can grab another point in a moment. But Sylvia e-mailed praising it and again asking why it wasn't possible to do a book discussion at least once a month. I'm going to toss to Stan because this was his first book discussion and he can share his impressions. Sylvia thinks they just fly by. Stan?
Stan: I understand that because I read all the other ones and it seemed like it did just take a few minutes. But the reality is that there is so much more than what goes into the transcript. First off, Ava and C.I. take notes throughout the discussion. After the discussion, the notes are scanned and e-mailed to those of us not in California. We all go over them and make sure we're comfortable with what we said. We can't add anything but we can say, "I don't think I said anything there." And ask that it be pulled. If we think we're not making sense or if we read it and think it's a waste of time or maybe we said more than we realized. From the stuff that's not crossed out, a transcript is assembled. It's a rush transcript. And stuff will be edited out. It may read Betty saying something that backs up what Rebecca just said but in the discussion, five or six people spoke between Betty and Rebecca. So there's that. It's also true that we all read a book --
Kat: I didn't.
Stan: Kat didn't. Ava and C.I. didn't either. But everyone else was assigned one book by Jim and, in addition, many of us, Mike and me for instance, read more than what we were assigned. So there was that prep time as well. It's very consuming. This one supposedly went quickly.
Ty: Wally? Ruth? You've done these before. Did it go quickly and if so why and if not why not?
Ruth: It did go a little quicker. I think that was because it was a little more structured than they usually are. We were generally paired up on a book. So it was a systematic work through of each book on the list. It made for a structure that we don't generally have and that is why Jim set it up the way he did. Wally?
Wally: I agree with Ruth's point and would also add that by it being two or so on each book, it also allowed for less conversation. Take a look at the end of that discussion, for example. Mike, Elaine and C.I. have read every book on the list. And they are able to bring those in and, even when not citing the other books, they are referencing them. That final section is, in many ways, the strongest. Because it was the three of them, it moved quickly. And there are no edits. It is exactly what they said --
Ruth: One edit. Jim typed it up and skipped over, by accident, the section where C.I. was explaining that when Bette Davis goes from the hit All About Eve and the Oscar nomination to never reach those heights again, people need to grasp that a lot of things are involved.
Wally: Right. Bette Davis wasn't blacklisted and wasn't a Communist or suspected of being one and look at her career. But other than Jim's accident, it's exactly what they said. Now because Elaine is involved with Mike, and he her, and because Elaine and C.I. are lifetime friends since college and because they know all the books on the list, they're able to bounce off one another quickly. They know what each other mean. And, if you pay attention, not only do they know what each other means, they also fill in for each other. Like Mike will talk about the point C.I. was making and sketch it out further or C.I. or Elaine will do the same. Mike was excited so he spoke quickly and Elaine and C.I. always speak quickly so that just breezed by. And gave us a strong finish.
Kat: Which we were able to listen to and enjoy. I mean, that section was just, "Sit back and enjoy." I thought Elaine, Mike and C.I. did an incredible job and, as Wally points out, that went so quickly -- poor Ava taking notes -- and probably lasted less than ten minutes. All that came before was over two hours easily. But a lot got pulled out by the persons speaking and some got dropped during the editing to make it flow better -- as Stan was explaining.
Ty: Thank you all especially Kat who also hadn't spoken until this section. Okay, I've substituted e-mails I'd hoped to use. But this one really has to stay in. Also on the book discussion, Zloax79 e-mails that, "You" -- assuming it's "you" plural -- "are lying about the Communist Party in the US being under control of the Soviet Union. I know my country's history." Elaine?
Elaine: We're lying? Was that the entire e-mail? I mean, did he or she offer any, "I was reading . . ." or "My professor says . . ."?
Ty: Nope. That is the full e-mail: "You are lying about the Communist Party in the US being under control of the Soviet Union. I know my country's history."
Elaine: I thank you for your brevity, e-mailer. My reply: No, we are not.
Ty: I'm laughing. C.I.?
C.I.: I'm not going to go through the entire history of the Communist Party in the first half of the 20th Century.
Ty: I know you weren't finished but let me also add that two e-mails came in, referencing a Kat post last week, asking about the Communist Party not being huge in the years right before WWII.
C.I.: I think we're covering that aspect in another feature. In case we're not, define the measurement. If the measurement is their past profile, the Communist Party shrinks in the lead up to WWII. That's all I'll say on that. In terms of the question the person was asking regarding where the orders came from. In the film Reds, you'll see Warren Beatty travel to Russia and argue for the winners of a US election to hold the positions they'd been elected to and lose -- John Reed would lose, Beatty was playing John Reed. That's not a film invention. Jay Lovestone and others won 90% of the votes in the American Communist Party election in 1929. They should have held office. You win 90% of the vote, you're the winner by a large margin. But that didn't happen. American delegations went to Russia and Stalin made it clear that he didn't want Lovestone -- or Benjamin Gitlow -- in charge. So despite their huge win, they did not become the party's officials. That's one example of Soviet control of the American party. There are many, many more. And that incident described lead some Americans to leave the party. Similar incidents is why some of the most anti-communists in this country were on the left. They were former party members -- I'm not talking about those who testified before the HUAC -- who were confronted with realities that didn't jibe and they left the Communist Party. They left angry and they left feeling lied to. They were outraged and they were very vocal about that. Some of the most centrists left politicians -- some not all -- during the forties included former Communist Party members. And of course, another branch would go onto become neocons in the 80s for differing reasons. But Lovestone and Gitlow won the election and Stalin refused to allow them to hold office and then, after he had ensured that, he went out of his way to destroy their standing in the party. We can talk about the turn-on-a-dime political positioning and how that was due to the orders coming from the Soviet Union. We can talk about any number of things, but the US is a democratic society based on the belief in democratic elections. The fact that an American political party's elections would be overturned by the ruler of another country goes to who controlled the party.
Ty: Alright and I had several other e-mails. Maybe some can be worked in during the near future.
