A note to our readers

Hey --

A very rough writing edition.

Along with Dallas, the following helped on this edition:

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,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ
and Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends.

An e-mail Ty saw thirty minutes ago suggested we were early last week just because we wanted to promote Roland Burris' appearance on Face The Nation. We did want to do that but we were early because we had it together. We couldn't get it together this week.

Truest statement of the week -- Mickey Z more than earned this. We believe this is the second time Mickey Z's had a truest. When did they start? We believe the "Truest" of the week started back in 2006 and we'd guess late spring.

Truest statement of the week II -- Sunsara Taylor also had a very strong statement.

Editorial: A little perspective, please -- We'd hoped to have a Gaza editorial. It would not pull together. This is what we ended up with. There are important points and, as Ty points out, there's certainly not a silence of coverage on Gaza. In fact, for some left outlets it's the only story they can cover.

TV: Tragedies in real time -- Ava and C.I. We love them. Always. But never more so than this week when we couldn't get any drafts to work. They went off to work on their TV commentary and came back with a piece that ran long. Ran long? It was actually three pieces. We kept the bulk of the TV in this article.


Roundtable -- We did this near the end (only the editorial came after). It was unplanned, we were unprepared, but nothing else was working and Dona said we should try it in a roundtable. I agreed and praise Dona for the idea.

Naomi Wolf: The Feminist Myth (Ava and C.I.) -- This was in the TV commentary. I (Jim) figured we could pull Naomi Wolf and it would just mean Ava and C.I. would have to come up with a new ending for their TV commentary. This is really a powerful piece and it can stand alone. Nothing was added to this from their original version so you can tell their original TV article was huge. In the middle of this section, CODESTINK got highlighted. Dona and I thought that could be its own piece. Illustration for this article was done by Betty's oldest son. We thank him for it. We thank him for the roundtable illustration we always use and we thank Isaiah for the use of one of his comics in the roundtable.

We always knew he was a drama queen -- Short feature. Why is Bully Boy clutching his chest? Drama queen.

Bye, bye Dickster -- Short piece.

Crack a window, it's CODESTINK (Ava and C.I.) -- The CODESTINK section. They didn't look at this and want that noted. It may or may not have an ending or a transition or any number of things. They're too tired to read over it, they say. We love it. Oh, thank yous. They need to think a member of CODEPINK (who is considering leaving) because they didn't even know about the blog post let alone the attack on special-needs children. While they were working on this early this morning, a friend called and, learning what they were working on, she suggested they make a point to include the issue of the blog and the comments.

Susan Lindauer -- A repost of a story Wally and Cedric found interesting.

Highlights -- Wally, Cedric, Stan, Mike, Elaine, Ruth, Marcia, Kat, Betty and Rebecca wrote this and selected the highlights unless otherwise noted. We thank them for it.

And that's it. I'm yawning and Jess is already sleep. Dona's tired, Ty's checking incoming e-mails and Ava and C.I. are taking aspirin. It was truly the worst writing edition.

We did have ideas. We just could not execute them. We could not pull it together. There was a weekend like that in 2005. We were up until four p.m. Sunday. This was like that. What saved us this time was Ava and C.I.'s mammoth commentary which could actually be broken up into three articles. Consider it an Ava and C.I. edition. And be as glad for them as we are.


And that's what we got. We'll see you next week.

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