Ty: This is a mailbag and we've confined it to The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Jess, Ava and me, Ty, as well as C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review. We did that in order for everyone else to get some sleep. We appreciate their help each week, but we do know they're not responsible for every word up here and don't need to wreck themselves each weekened. So first up, Miley notes this comment she saw at the top of The Futon Critic: "Please note: As a courtesy, please do not reproduce these comments to newsgroups, forums or other online places. Links only please." She writes she's sorry because she's quoted Ava and C.I. at various forums online.
Ava: She doesn't have to be sorry. C.I. and I have no problem with that. We're not the AP. We're not making idiots out of ourselves the way the AP and, apparently, The Futon Critic is. I understand that Miley was apologizing specifically to C.I. and myself so I'm stating in response that there's nothing to apologize for, she's not done anything wrong and she doesn't need to do anything differently. But, having said that, I'll toss to Jim because this is an issue he covers regularly in e-mails.
Jim: Yeah. First off, anyone being quoted somewhere else only adds interest and only increases their potential audience. Which is why AP and The Futon Critic are assholes and idiots. In terms of what we do here, anyone who wants to can quote from it. A link is nice but credit is necessary. You may be a right-wing site that doesn't want to link to a left-wing one. That's fine, you can just say "The Third Estate Sunday Review writes in ____" and not provide any link. If anyone's interested, they can Google. But you need to credit. And credit can be "Read this" or whatever with a link. In some way you need to credit. In terms of reposting in full, if it's our stuff, we've been fine with it when it's happened at some sites. What sites? Sites that aren't commercial sites. If you raise money from ads or for from pledges or begging, you're making money. So you should be asking us before you repost. If you're a website or a blog, and you're not making money or trying to, and you repost our stuff, we've never been offended. We hear about it sometimes and it's no problem. By the same token, we're not responsible for people reposting without our permission. We've been attacked for a Soros site reposting us -- reposting Ava and C.I. -- and how we must be in the bag for Soros. We had nothing to do with that. We were not informed we were being reposted -- in full or partially -- and were as surprised as our readers complaining that a site with a budget decided to repost Ava and C.I. in full without asking us. The other problem issue has been when erotic or pornographic sites have reposted us. We've not given permission to them either, we've never heard from them, they never asked. We're not responsible. Take up your issues with them.
Dona: This is a Third mailbag composed of the six of us who make up Third. We're speaking for this site and this site only. And as Jim noted, "in terms of what we do here." Isaiah, for example, retains the rights to his comics. If we repost his comics here, we do so with permission. If you take something of ours, "something of ours" does not include Isaiah's illustration. That's his. Now if it's one of our illustrations, it's either something we created or public domain. In which case, if you're reposting in full, you could include it.
Ava: Exception.
Dona: Right. Exception being if it's from C.I.'s personal collection. We've done a few illustrations here that were from C.I.'s personal collection of photos. But, take last week's "Tea Parties " which features three amazing photos taken by the daughter of a Common Ills community member. If you credited that to Third, she'd be fine with it. Some of the illustrations we have here are done by Kat and Betty's kids and sometimes Wally as well. They are of the opinion that if it's credited to Third, it can be used. Ty gave me a heads up to this as a topic so I spent Thursday going over this and only forgot the exception Ava just noted. If it's a celeb or a politician, you might want to check first to make sure it's not from C.I.'s private collection. You can check by e-mailing us at thirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com or by checking our "A note to our readers" each week. When we dip into C.I.'s private collection, we note it in the note. Private collection photos we don't give permission to reproduce. And you may ask why? The minute permission is granted, AP's grabbing it and calling it "news" and announcing that they have the rights to it. There was a photo that Wikipedia displayed of Abeer. It was a government photo on a government document -- Iraqi government -- and AP insisted they 'owned' that. They didn't own it. That's ludicrous. But it's for that reason that C.I.'s private photos are not 'released' with our permission. If they were, the AP and others would then rush them over a wire and indicate that, as a result of publishing, they now owned them.
Jim: Dallas i.m.ed me while Dona was speaking to note that Wikipedia has the same photo back up only via Reuters. Go here for Wikipedia's explanation.
Jess: If you go back to our August 2006 article on Abeer, you'll find a place for an illustration but none. We used the Wikipedia one and then Wikipedia deleted it. It's amazing that a news outlet wants to claim they 'own' something. We wanted to cover an Iraqi cartoonist's plight, for example. But we need the cartoon. An example of one of the 'offensive' cartoons. The New York Times reprints the comic -- with no payment to the cartoonist -- and does so calling it 'news'. If we post it here, we're supposedly breaking a copyright law. Not of the artist, of NYT. It makes no sense. People like The Futon Critic -- who I've never heard of before this discussion -- really piss me off because they're justifying the same thing the AP is doing and they're promoting it. We're not giving that site a link.
Ty: That's a good place for me to jump in with another e-mail issue. What does it take to get censored forever -- blacklisted, asks another -- by this site?
Dona: Every site has its own policies. Marcia, for example, regularly asks her readers for input on this topic. So before anyone speaks, I want to note that we're referring to the policy at The Third Estate Sunday Review only.
Jess: We're a site for the left and we will include a wide variety from the left. We're not afraid to do that. But we do draw the line at certain things. We will never, ever, link to TruthOut again because the editor of that website called for a candidate to drop out of a race. That's not espousing democracy. Telling a candidate to drop out of the race does not espouse or promote democracy. We will never again link to that site. The second it ran that editorial, we weren't interested in it. That's not a minor point. The editorial was on Hillary Clinton, that she should drop out. I'm a Green and I had to see two intense campaigns of "Ralph Don't Run" in 2000 and 2004. I did not appreciate those. As a community member of The Common Ills in 2004, I was very grateful that C.I. made clear that TCI would never endorse a "don't run" or "drop out" move. We started this site in 2005 and we're not interested in anyone saying, "You can't run!" That's undemocratic. As a third party member, I'm aware that it's not just presidential races, it can include local races where Greens are told to drop out. I do not agree with that. So when Truth Out pulled that nonsense, they lost any chance of a link.
Ty: There are a number of White women -- too many to list -- that I've used my power to blackball here because they attacked either African-Americans or gays. I fall into both categories. We have an article on one such woman this week and no link to her garbage site. I exchanged e-mails with her repeatedly explaining why her remarks about Senator Roland Burris were factually incorrect and racially offensive. She didn't care. We'll never link to her. I'm not calling her a racist, by the way, I'm stating her remarks were racially offensive. And adding that, based on the e-mail exchange, she didn't care that they were racially offensive. Another blogger, who is a racist, we don't link to. We didn't realize he was a racist until Roland Burris became a news story. All of the sudden he spewed the most racist garbage. It was not one post. But at one point, Stan left a comment, not a mean one, noting the importance of affirmative action and that just set the racist off at which point there was no more, "Well, maybe we're reading him wrong . . ." At which point, he was a racist. We do not link to him. And to be clear, I'm not saying White women are any more racist or homophobic than are White men -- or than people of any color. But the PUMA-sphere is notorius for writing at length while knowing so very little and when the Burris attacks started, the PUMAs happily fingered their inner racists. The kinder lies included that Burris and Barack were friends and that Barack wanted him to be senator. That's a flat out lie. But they saw an African-American man and it made their blood boil. They let their inner racists come out and play in the front yard. It was a very ugly moment and made very clear to many of us who had defended PUMA -- those of us in the African-American community -- that we didn't need to waste our breath anymore, they weren't worth defending.
Dona: I don't think the woman has a website, she may. But the only one I'm thinking of that I've blacklisted is a journalist -- frequently quoted in The New York Times but she's never worked for them -- and I blacklisted her because she's a damn liar. She spoke at our college in New York and she's such a 'truth teller.' I asked her three specific questions and Ava had another. She knew our campus press was covering the event and refused to go on record but told me to e-mail her so she could 'think' about it. I did and she had more excuses for not replying. She's a damn liar and my questions were on journalism. They were about ethical issues then in the news. Now Ava's question was more timely and do you want to talk about that?
Ava: Sure. Ms. Bravery, Ms. Big Newspaper woman, she was there 'to tell it like it is' she said in her opening remarks to applause and laughter. So try answering my damn question about why we don't see the media calling out the sexism in their own ranks? This was 2003 or 2004, I can't remember. But you should have seen her recoil from the question and she wouldn't answer it. She offered some vauge bulls**t and tried to move on and I stood back up and said, "Excuse me, you didn't answer my question. Was that intentional?" She then said it would take hours to answer that question. Well she doesn't have hours now, not at the media outlet my father works at because I didn't just get her blackballed her . . .
Dona: We hate that woman. We, really, really hate her. To be clear, it's not Dr. Kathy from Annerberg. But the woman we hate, we refuse to allow her name to ever be mentioned here. Even if we're discussing a book she blurbed or one she's quoted in, we never mention her name. And we never will. She was a media apologist for the pre-war coverage and she refused to tackle serious issues while wanting applause as a truth-teller. We'd believed the woman's hype and it's really important to me that I never hype that woman.
Jim: I don't know that I've blackballed anyone. I would be the one to do it. And I'm sure I did back when we lived in New York. But I'm much more mellow since we moved.
Dona: He really is.
Jim: I really am, I'm not just joking. But I'm sure, before we all moved out here to C.I.'s, you can find some that I banned. Oh, there are blogs that we won't link to because my brother was one of the early bloggers and refused to take part in the circle-jerk, he stopped blogging long before this site started. Because of his tales of the inner-workings of the sexist Blogger Boyz -- I'm not talking Corrente, I'm talking the big sites, we don't link to them. He was their friend and their contemporary and they repulsed him. I've talked about that here before and we've got an article about it. C.I.?
C.I.: I've got The Common Ills so I generally don't ask for anyone not to be mentioned here or linked to. The pig with the skin rag that Goody hobknobs with and used to contribute to, I will not mention him by name and I won't be connected with anything that does. There's The Ego Of Us All who fits that as well. In both cases, I'm asking that someone not be named. In terms of linking, Newsweek is the last place I would ever want to link to but if I make that objection known and it's judged not important, I'm not going to say, "No!!!!!" If someone hurts a community member, I'm done with them. That's if they're a community member with a site or without. If you go after anyone in this community, I'm done with you and I will not link to you. At The Common Ills, we don't link to right-wing websites. At this site, they are linked to from time to time. Jim's usually the one pushing it although I pushed for Adam Bitely (in "Tea Parties --"). I think we do it case-by-case. There's a new one, for example, and I think Ty's going to talk about that.
Ty: We're not linking to No Quarter anymore. Susan UnPC has been the topic of mean remarks for some time with people insisting she used to play left and really wasn't. Due to that, we didn't want to say anything, we just weren't going to link. But her rants have become infamous. I'm not going to say she pretended to be something once upon a time because that predates my familiarity with her work. But she's crossed our line which is we support democracy and open societies. She's foaming at the mouth about how the memos -- the torture memos -- should not have been released. We can't support No Quarter and we can't be silent on that. It's non-democratic to argue that a people do not have a right to know what their government does. We will not be highlighting them again. We often disagreed with No Quarter and Elaine and C.I. would generally note that Larry Johnson was more of a law and order type than they were. Note that in a nice way. We didn't attack Larry Johnson when everyone piled on. In fact, C.I. and Rebecca went out of their way to make clear that Johnson was not inventing the story on the videotape. They explained that they'd heard it and Rebecca's first husband is huge in GOP circles and Rebecca went out of the way to explain that the rumors were the tape existed and that Rudy G's campaign had unearthed it and were planning to use it in the general election -- which Rudy G assumed he'd be the presidential candidate in for the Republican Party. Larry Johnson got attacked over his postings on that tape. We have let a lot of things slide that have ticked us off at No Quarter because we felt Johnson was attacked unfairly -- he never claimed to have seen the tape. But when Susan UnPC and other contributors to No Quarter are regularly arguing that the people don't have a right to know, and that is their argument, that's not anything we can endorse. So we won't be linking to No Quarter again.
Jim: I just need to add that it is a rare week that goes by that they're not mentioned in e-mails. They have, for example, attacked one of Hillary's biggest supporters and attacked the woman in the most sexist manner. And the blogger, who wasn't named in Ty's comments, was too stupid to know the woman had campaigned for Hillary repeatedly. They've got a whole crew like that, people who don't know what they're writing about. They also have some very strong writers but, more and more, they come at it from a right-wing point of view. Some of their comments about Latinos have been less than enlightened and I had to deal with e-mails on that topic and was going to move for them to be blackballed the next time we had the time for a discussion -- which is never. However, the e-mails came in on the "people don't have the right to know" argument Susan UnPC is making and Ty told me, "They're not linked to anymore." If Ty says it, it's pretty much law. If Ty says it, C.I. backs him up. Because Ty so rarely asks. So you've already got two votes there. And if C.I. votes some way, Ava does to. So you've got three votes and then there's the fact that Ava and Jess are a couple and Jess isn't going in the dog house. I'm laughing. But that's four votes.
Ty: Jim's mentioned before that C.I. "always" backs me up so I'll toss to you, C.I., to see if you want to make a comment on that.
C.I.: Jim does always bring that up. I'm wondering if he feels that I don't back him up enough? Ava and I always vote the same because we bonded long ago and did so because we see things very similar. That goes back to the first edition. It's true that Ty rarely asks for someone to be banned and that's part of it. But it's also that it takes a lot to tick Ty off period. So if he's upset, it's for a reason. Jess is the only one with less of a temper than Ty. I think Jim, Ava and I are probably the quickest to explode and Dona's exactly the center of the seven of us.
Jim: I'd agree with all you said including that I may feel you don't back me up enough. I'm laughing. But really. We are often at loggerheads for the editorials intentionally. Or often have been. And we had questions about that in the e-mails and I wanted to bring that into this mailbag. For those late to the party, a lot of the *editorials* the first three years are pretty much me attempting to upset C.I. and C.I. responding. And we write that up. It's emotionally truthful and gives us some very powerful editorials. Our editorials haven't been like that in some time because it upsets a number of people to watch it. It's been noted in the e-mails that our editorials are strong or funny or both but they're not like they once were. I just wanted to note that here so people e-mailing will feel listened to.
Dona: I can see what they're saying. We have lost the rawness and it is because a lot of people aren't comfortable with that process. That was never the only way we wrote editorials but it was the way we wrote a number of them each year. Those were usually the most powerful ones. And usually, C.I. would be a wreck at the end. I don't think we've reached the point where we're just going through the motions but we have moved away from that.
Jess: And that is something we worry about. Going through the motions. It's why we originally planned to go dark, back in the summer of 2005, when the 2008 presidential election rolled around. I don't think we've hit the wall yet but it is something we all worry about.
Ty: Which brings me to Amber's e-mail. She notes we had an anniversary back in January and didn't even note it.
Jim: Most weeks, we're just trying to get through the writing edition. For Amber, I'll look back on 2008 at this site. What am I most proud of? I think the fact that we didn't swallow the Kool-Aid. We didn't take part in telling Ralph Nader not to run or to drop out. We covered Ralph -- we endorsed him in fact, everyone but Ava and C.I. -- and we covered Cynthia McKinney and we covered John McCain. I think we did a good job of that. We also covered Barack but I think we did a good job with the political race coverage and did it in such a manner that it wasn't horseracing. I think we covered some actual issues. And I include our roundtables after each Democratic Party primary in that mix, by the way. We covered it in terms of roundtables, articles, feature stories --
Dona: Ava and C.I.
Jim: I was getting to them. They were at the DNC convention and I think they did an amazing job in the TV commentary with that. They weren't at the RNC convention but I thought they did a strong job there as well. But, leaving aside the conventions, they did some amazing work throughout 2008 on politics while covering TV. Jess will probably grab some of that. So I'll just say they did an amazing job. And I'm proud that we stood up for things we believed in and didn't hide our head in the sands because it was an election year.
Jess: Jim's pointing at me. Ava and C.I. did a better job, in TV commentaries and other things here featuring just their byline, of covering the Green Party than did Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! They regulary covered the way Cynthia McKinney was shut out and silenced. And they were a stronger critic of that than any Green Party blogger. They were just amazing and they wrote things that I'd noticed but couldn't have written about because it was too upsetting and they wrote things that I hadn't even sussed out. People still e-mail to ask did they vote for Ralph or Cynthia? They still can't figure it out by what's written and that's because Ava and C.I. handled it fairly. They did what others wouldn't. I'm very proud of them.
Jim: If I can jump back in, Republicans and independents and crossovers who supported the McCain-Palin ticket were and are pleased with their [Ava and C.I.'s] writing as well. Because they noted -- often -- that they weren't voting for McCain, his supporters don't wonder about that but we always hear about how fair Ava and C.I. were and how unfair the media was and I would agree with that call.
Jess: Except for C.I., we all majored in journalism as under graduates. Jim and Dona are in grad school and still majoring, I'm in law school. Ty's working in the film industry. Ava's on the road every week with C.I. speaking out against the Iraq War. And of course, Ava and C.I. are from journalism families. So this isn't just speculation or mere opinion, the media behaved horribly in their political coverage in 2008. Conservatives were rewarded with some of the strongest examples they could ever hope to point to. The media was clearly in the tank for one candidate, they were in the tank for him when he was one of many competing for the Democratic Party nomination and they were in the tank for him in the general. The media system was not fixed from years of online criticism. The media system is just as corrupt as ever but a lot of people seem okay with that as long as their candidate won. I'm not okay with that. I'm appalled by it and ashamed of the media. Glad I'm no longer planning to go into it. Like Jim, I'm glad that we refused to ride the bandwagon, I'm glad that we held onto our independence and I'm glad that the things that mattered to us in 2005, the very beliefs we hold close and dear, were not tossed aside in 2008.
Ty: I think what Jim and Jess said is very valid. I'd signal out other things as well. I'm glad, as an African-American, that we didn't become the two most common sites in 2008. The first is, "African-Americans can do no wrong!" The second is, "African-Americans aren't really people!"
We criticized people who needed criticizing and we praised those who needed praising. I'm glad that we never stop considering things. I'm talking about the process and I know Dona's going to grab one issue, so I won't. But we're always talking about what we could do that we're not doing. And the attacks on Iraq's LGBT community has resulted in us doing a feature, a serial, where we write a little each month and I do think it's worth doing and I'm really glad the response has been so positive to it from readers. I think we stretched in 2008 and I think we're continuing to stretch. Dona?
Dona: As Ty probably suspected, I'm going with the visuals. If you consider that our first year had very few visuals, I'm proudest of the visuals we now have. I have a thing I don't like on that as well. And I explain that to readers who complain about it that I agree with them. Our photos or illustrations are all placed in the same place. It would be better if we could move them to the left or right. We can't when using Flickr. Flicker demands that you use their code. If you don't, they kick you out. To position them, I don't think you use Flickr. But I do like that we have visuals. And I know we continue attempting to figure out ways to do more there. Of course, I love Ava and C.I.'s writing.
Ava: And Dona wrote her first solo piece here in 2008. That was a high. Jim does the "A note to our readers" feature. For those who don't know. That's him and the rest of us may shout out some stuff. Ty does Ty's Corner. Jess would honestly drop out if he had to do more because law school takes up a lot of his time. But he and Elaine are talking about a joint-piece -- to debut at her site, Jim. So it was a big deal for Dona to write something solo. To write two? They were amazing pieces. Dona and Jim act as the supervisors of the writing edition and they contribute all the time but Dona's the one really making sure the editions get done and that doesn't leave a lot of time to step out on her own so I was really thrilled she had two pieces and that everyone could see how wonderful and amazing she is. C.I. is of course very wonderful and I'm very lucky to have C.I. as a co-writer each week.
C.I.: And the same for me. Ava's wonderful and smart and funny and astute. I wouldn't be doing it if it weren't for her --
Ava: Right back at you!
C.I.: Yeah, well, we're so tired. And it's gone on so long and so much longer than we planned. Ty was talking about calling people out. Cedric deserves some credit for that. I know Rev Jesse Jackson and had Cedric not called out Jesse Jr.'s nonsense in a roundtable one week, Ava and I would've taken a pass on his nonsense. Instead, we tackled it the same week. But when we'd watched that, we'd decided to just ignore him. Then came the roundtable and Cedric brought it up and he also had questions for us after the roundtable so credit to Cedric on that. And Betty's never shied from that topic nor has Ty. Stan and Marcia would deserve credit here if there was a noticeable shift from 2007 to 2008 because they both started blogging in 2008 and participating here in 2008. In terms of the group writing up here, I'd also note that Ruth regularly makes the most delicate of contributions, these whispers that appear to be asides, that really end up being at the crux of the matter. Everybody brings something to the table -- Kat, Wally, Mike, Elaine and Rebecca. I'd go for big theme like Jess and Jim and say I'm glad we didn't sell out. I'm glad we didn't suddenly flip on public financing or FISA or any other issue that we supposedly gave a damn about until the Democratic presidential nominee elected to go another way.
Jim: Agreed. Transcript piece. Rush transcript at that. In addition to those participating, we mentioned Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man, 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.
[Dona note, 4-29-09: Thank you to reader Joyce who e-mailed about a remark of Jim's. It's now rendered "*editorials*". Jim had said "e-mails." He meant editorials. To clear up any confusion, I've changed it. Thank you, Joyce.]