A note to our readers

Hey --
Another Sunday and way behind for reasons other than daylight savings time.

Here's who helped out -- along with Dallas who hunted down links, was a sounding board and so much more -- and we thank all:


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.


What did we come up with?



Truest statement of the week -- Chris Hedges. He will be delivering this speech at actions to mark the anniversary of the Iraq War this month.


Truest statement of the week II -- Debra Sweet another worthy choice. Not an easy week to get a truest, by the way. Other nominees included Cynthia McKinney and John Pilger. (There were ten other nominess. That's just two of the ten.)


Editorial: Ms. magazine gets punked -- This wasn't the editorial we all worked on. That got scrapped. This editorial was written by the core six plus Kat, Betty and Wally. We caught the Today Show as we were rushing to finish editing, finish illustrations, finish typing, etc. We felt we had to scrap our editorial and make this the one. We do not support the Afghanistan War, we have never supported it. But when Barack says it's time to hold hands with the Taliban, even we are shocked at the new low.

TV: Alessandra Stanley, far funnier than Tina Fey -- Could Ava and C.I. just cover entertainment? That was the request from Dona who knew by Thursday this would be a very political, very charged edition and hoped Ava and C.I. would be able to grab entertainment and offer something there because otherwise the edition would be 'beyond heavy.' They could do glancing blows (their term) on 30 Rock based on an Alessandra Stanley article. Great! That was the reply and great's how it turned out. We thank Ava and C.I. so much. By the way, when people complain that the TV commentaries on Twins and Pepper Dennison, to name two, ran in newsletters and not here, this is why we sometimes ask them to cover something else -- in terms of providing balance to the edition. Sometimes it's just me being stupid. I'll gladly own up to that. But sometimes we actually do have a reason for requesting them to cover something when they may have other things planned (or even written). (In the old days, they sometimes showed up with a commentary already written or half-way written.)

The Thomas E. Ricks Dialogue -- This is C.I. and me. (Me is Jim.) I play Thomas E. Ricks and C.I. plays C.I. This is an Iraq debate. I really like the way this turned out. Yes, I am aware that C.I. gets the best of me. I'm not surprised by that. But I was trying. And trying to convey Thomas E. Ricks' position as honestly as I could. I may or may not have succeeded. Illustration by Kat and Betty's oldest son and Wally.

Talking Iraq -- This is the core six of Third, Wally, Betty and Kat plus Elaine. We will be doing a roundtable next edition -- on Iraq -- and Rebecca will moderate a roundtable Friday night on Iraq. We are doing our part to put the focus where it belongs. Thank you to Elaine for agreeing to participate and for what she brought to the roundtable. She was a last minute addition. Illustration by Betty's oldest son.

Amnesty Provincial -- The illustration (the Barack one) was an hour of work after we thought it was done and it may have taken up more time than anything else. While we were trying to get this uploaded, this is when we were watching Today and realized we'd have to scrap the editorial we'd written on another topic. This was written by all listed in the thank yous as was every thing until ETAN and "Highlights."

The Puta Janine Jackson -- No, we're not letting FAIR off the hook, especially when they continue to refuse to call out sexism. And that has nothing to do with a FAIR member passing on a private e-mail (from Jess) to The Nation magazine. It was 2006 when Jess replied to their e-mail. So FAIR can stop whining in e-mails to this site (thirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com) about how we're so mean and it's all about the passed on e-mail. That was three years ago. We would have immediately gone after FAIR if we wanted to. We would have named the journalist whose e-mails FAIR passed on to C.I. (C.I. had not written them and had not requested copies of any e-mails.) But if they don't learn how to drop that -- they're the ones obsessed with the 2006 e-mail -- we may post it here as well as all the others that have begun flooding in since FAIR got seriously called out (beginning in 2008). We had called them out on sexism even before the 2006 e-mail. We're getting damn tired of their e-mails that say the same things, whine the same whine. Cease and desist or we can print all the e-mails. And when we repost the June 2006 e-mail with FAIR copying and pasting another journalist's e-mail to pass on to C.I., it won't be pretty for FAIR. Don't poke the bear.


Al Distraction, Domestic Arts Czar -- We thank Isaiah for his permission to reprint these. We thank Stan who had actually asked. Stan showed up this edition with one suggestion -- this one. We weren't sure if we could get ahold of Isaiah and said so (he's supposed to be vacationing). Stan explained he'd already asked Isaiah Thursday and received permission.

The Katrina goes to . . . -- Betty brought this idea and we loved it. How much? We had a Bronze Booby going to Tom Hayden. We needed 30 more minutes to work on it for it to be worth appearing here. We ditched it when we still needed work on this as well.

ETAN offers Power Plant Information -- from ETAN.

Friday roundtable on Iraq -- The roundtable Rebecca moderated on Friday.

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

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

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