Betty: Mine and this community's. Who is Sonia Sotomayor? She's a "first." So I guess we'll all learn that in school but for those of us who have already advanced from first grade, who is she? We don't know.
Ava: I want to jump in here. First, to point out that any illustration in this is by Betty's kids. Second, because I am a Latina. I agree with what Betty's saying here and loved what she wrote. Sotomayor's hearing, if it's any indication of how she's going to be on the bench -- overly cautious, courting and courtly to authority, tells us that's all she's going to offer "first." And I'm sorry but I expect a little more. Not only from "firsts" but from a Democratically controlled Senate. And certainly from a so-called Democratic White House. How sad, if she turns out to be exactly as she presented herself, that this is the first Latina we get on the bench.
Mike: I agree that Betty did some real work and I haven't caught up with all of it, I was on vacation last week, Elaine and I got back Saturday night. But one point she did make was that, if confirmed, Sotomayor is the sixth out of nine Justices who is Catholic. Betty made that point, why didn't anyone else? In Bush's time in office, I can remember alarm over Catholic Roberts, alarm from the left. I'm Catholic so maybe I'm just more likely to remember that. But there was a very strong thread of, "We've got too many Catholics on the Supreme Court bench!" And now the left is silent. Barack really can do whatever he wants apparently because the left circle-jerk pundits will not hold him accountable.
Jim: Well, as a Catholic, do you think that there are too many Catholics on the bench?
Mike: Absolutely. That's over half the bench, that's two-thirds of the bench if Sotomayor is confirmed and we do not make up two-thirds of the population.
Jim: Kat?
Kat: Yeah, I'd agree with Mike. Like Mike, I'm Irish-Catholic. I would agree that we're over-represented on the Court already, before Sotomayor's confirmed. I would argue that our religion is more one that should be scrutanized than most practiced in the US just for the reason that the head of our Church is an international figure, the Pope. Now because the Pope's the head doesn't mean he controls the five members currently, six with Sotomayor. John Roberts being Catholic doesn't mean that he's going to rule according to the Pope's edicts on every matter. Does it mean he would on some? I don't know. That's why I say it needs to be scrutanized. If I were nominated for the bench, I never would be, but if I were, I wouldn't be a concern because I'm not following the Pope. I follow some Catholic teachings and don't others. I will go to confession. But there have been numerous Popes in my lifetime and I honestly haven't followed the current one or the previous one. I don't know what they're talking about unless it's covered in secular media. So someone like me, I'd be judging on other things. But I do think that's a question we need to ask. Sotomayor did not strike me as overly concerned about what was coming out of Vatican City; however, I won't say that of others and when you end up with six Justices who are members of the same religion, let's not pretend that's not going to have an impact.
Jim: In your analysis, Betty, you argue that you feel the GOP was setting up a new round for their argument against Affirmative Action. Did you want to talk some on that?
Betty: I just felt that a number of pundits kept insisting it was race, race, race at the hearings. As a Black woman, if it had been race, race, race, I wouldn't have been offended because I think we need to talk about race a lot more in our daily discourse. I didn't hear a racial conversation. I heard comments that, to my ears, set the stage for anyone disappointed with Sotomayor's future rulings -- and I think most people will be if her performance at the hearings is an indication -- would have in the back of their heads, "Affirmative Action hire." That's what I heard. I didn't hear the non-stop racism that other pundits did. I heard a few things that I was suspicious of and one thing that I thought was an attack on her heritage but I didn't hear what others were. I did hear White senators voicing concerns, from the GOP, that discrimination might effect their own race. I heard that fear. I would've loved for a real discussion of that fear because I think America needs that conversation. I think there's been enough right wing spin and enough attacks on Affirmative Action that, in a bad economy especially, we need a real discussion. Sotomayor wasn't the person who could offer a real discussion. The fact that she couldn't or wouldn't -- which is no one's fault but her own -- means that if she is seen as an "Affirmative Action hire" and if that's seen as a negative, it's her own fault.
Ava: I'm sorry to jump in again but I just so strongly agree with what Betty's saying. I think we all took a hit, we all suffered a set back, in order for one woman to move up and I don't think that was worth it.
Jim: Okay, that brings up another issue. Voices of Honor. Jess, sketch out who they are.
Jess: They're an organization that is attempting to overturn the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy which was intended to be a stop-gap measure under Bill Clinton to allow gays and lesbians to serve in the military. Clinton wanted them to serve openly and came into office with that plan. He was immediately savaged by the press, by Republicans and by many Democrats in Congress. As an alternative, Don't Ask, Don't Tell was proposed. Under this policy, the military was supposed to stop investigating service members to find out if they were gay or lesbian. You weren't allowed to "tell" and you weren't allowed to "ask." If that was followed, the plus was that gays and lesbians could serve in the military. The minus was that it forced them into a closet and into denial about their own lives. We covered this history and the organization's press conference in last week's "Voices of Honor."
Jim: Thank you. And the response to that in e-mails, address is thirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com, was positive that the LGBT issues were being highlighted but very negative about what some of the organization's members were stating publicly. That was a topic tackled Wednesday in C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot," Marcia's "Voices of Honor needs to show some honor" and, at Elaine's site with C.I. filling in, "Gay Liberation Movement." And we got e-mails on those posts with requests for highlights and a repeated question. C.I., you mention the murder trial of Ramon Novarro, photo below, and note that the prosecutor went on to become a federal judge. "Who is he?" was the big question.
C.I. James M. Ideman. He went from the LA district attorney's office to serving on LA County's Superior Court to the US District Court for the Central District of California. He was appointed to the last court in 1984 and served until retirement in 1998.
Jim: Thanks for clearing that up. I'm going to toss to Ty.
Ty: Marcia and C.I. did a great job of explaining the outrage that's growing with Voices of Honor. It should be noted that Human Rights Campaign is generally seen as the weakest gay rights organization and that's been its impression throughout this decade. It's one of the two groups coming together for this organization, Voices of Honor. But 'honor' doesn't include who we are. It's what we did. So if you were in the military, step up and take some honor for that. But you're gay or you're a lesbian? The organization is saying that doesn't matter. It is actively saying that doesn't matter and that shouldn't even be raised. We're taping this to include in Hilda's Mix, the audio version, and people will notice how tense my voice is. I really am about to start cursing if I continue. C.I., can I pass to you for a moment?
C.I.: Sure. Picking up at Ty's point. The press conference itself had strains of that attitude. And that wasn't surprising. But it also had, as Marcia noted, Joan Darrah, who was not trying to fit into anyone else's script but was just telling her story, about serving, about being at the Pentagon on 9-11 and how, if she'd been killed, her partner wouldn't have been recognized the way other partners would have been. Joan Darrah's very important testimony was clearly the highlight of the press conference. It was brave and it was real and people responded to it. But then came other things -- and I was hearing about those things from friends, many of whom are gay and lesbians -- and Patrick Murphy, US House Rep, goes on Diane Rehm's radio show last Monday and gives very bad remarks that were offensive to a lot of gays and lesbians. We ignored that on Monday but come Tuesday, the complaints were reaching me and by Wednesday we had to address it. People are getting very offended by this organization and Ty looks ready for me to hand back to him.
Ty: Yeah, thanks, I needed to calm down. Okay, look, I'm gay. I'll help anyone who's gay. Except those who won't help me. So if you're telling me you're issue is not about being gay, then why you are asking me to help you? Voices of Honor has far too many speakers saying that "it's not about being gay." Well then stick to rounding up military people to call Congress. Don't ask for my help. You're not doing a damn thing for me. What you are doing is implying that my life is so disgusting that you can't speak about it openly. That's not "honor." That's f**ked up and I call bulls**t on Voices Of Honor. They need to lose the gym bunny, who's their main problem with Congress and why many members won't have anything to do with them, they don't want help you when they know you're going to trash them, the way the gym bunny trashed Ellen Tauscher when she came to an event, spoke at it and supported it completely. What was Ellen's crime? Talking about the gay issue. Gym bunny doesn't think it's a gay issue. I don't need his closeted ass. And, let's be really clear for gym bunny, instead of dragging down the gay rights movement, get your ass back to the gym because you've neglected to work on that waist and you're kind of chunky.
Marcia: I love that. Okay, I have to stop laughing. Okay. What Ty said is exactly right. I'm so disgusted with that group and I was so pleased with it the week before. But you've got too many men playing too many macho head games and too scared of being gay. It is because you're gay. You're being targeted because you're gay. Quit saying it's not about being gay. That's so insulting and it really does harm the gay rights movement. I don't want to have anything to do with that group or organization if they can't find the dignity to include our dignity. Instead, who we are is constantly being hidden and for what? So gays and lesbians can serve openly. Does no one get the contradiction.
Elaine: I'm jumping in because everyone's laughing at Marcia's point. If you didn't get it, Voices of Honor is arguing that gays and lesbians shouldn't be forced to hide, that they should serve openly but the way they argue the case, they hide sexuality. I want to go back to Joan Darrah, to what C.I. was stating about her not fitting herself to some script. That's what would be most effective, others following her example, telling their stories. The move that's being pushed is that the stories don't matter, what matters is the money lost and national security. If you want to motivate people, if you want them to support you and lobby for you, they need to know your stories. They need to hear about Joan Darrah's partner. What the organization is doing, as Marcia underlined so well, is saying, "We're against Don't Ask, Don't Tell but notice that we're going to embrace it for our campaign." And I think Ty's exactly right that it strips the dignity away and that there is nothing in it for him. He's a gay man who has no desire to join the military. I'm a straight woman. If this isn't a gay issue, why should I support it? Right now, if a person says they're gay, they're supposed to be discharged from the military. I support war resisters. Why would I want to take away one path by which they could be discharged? I'd support taking it away if it meant that all could be equal. But Voices Of Honor isn't arguing for equality, it's whining about the tax dollars and trying to scare people over national security. If that's their method, why do we need to lose one of the few usually-sure ways of getting out of the military? Make your case on dignity and equality and you've got grounds to make it to a non-military audience. Which, by the way, is the bulk of the US population, especially the population under the age of fifty whose males never experienced the draft first hand.
Mike: With Patrick Murphy, he's straight and it is a big step for some straight people to talk about these issues. I'm not attacking him, yet, and I don't think any of us have. But he needs to be informed that if he's speaking, he needs to be speaking about equality and dignity or it's offensive. I'm straight but I caught the Diane Rehm thing late Saturday night and it was offensive.
Jim: Okay, what was offensive about it to you in particular?
Mike: If anyone doesn't know, they need to go to C.I.'s snapshot where they can see a transcript of the first section. First he starts saying it has to be repealed for: National security. Then it's that no one serving cares if you're gay. Never does he make the point that it's okay to be gay or that it's about equality or dignity. It's a money issue, it's a national security issue, it's not an issue about equality or rights or liberation or fairness.
Rebecca: And he was full of s**t when talking about, excuse me, when covering for Barack. Saying that if Barack stopped the discharges right now by issuing a stop-loss order that wouldn't show proper respect for co-equal branches of government. As if we don't all know about his signing statements? Patrick Murphy, we're not as stupid as you wish we were.
Jim: Rebecca, you sound almost as angry as Ty, maybe as angry.
Rebecca: Well I am angry. This bothers me a great deal. I loved what C.I. wrote in the snapshot and I hope we can include that in a feature here in some way. But, like C.I.'s saying, gays and lesbians aren't people I'm going to bump into every ten years at some reunion. They are a part of my life, they are a part of the fabric of human existence and to deny that, as this cowardly group is doing, is to deny reality and to be more insulting, in my opinion, than the policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell is. And I'm no defender of that suck-ass policy. As anyone who's ever read my site knows.
Jim: Okay, question comes in from Major who says that's his first name, not a rank. He wants to know why the health care plan of Barack's isn't being covered here or at any community site?
Wally: What plan? There's no plan. A plan is something you present to the people, you say, "This is our plan. Do you support it?" There's no plan.
Cedric: And, let me drop back to Sotomayor. If Carter or Clinton had nominated her, I might have given her more of a benefit of a doubt. But she's a Barack nominee. Barack who nominated Larry Summers to his current post to 'fix' the economy. Barack who has Arne Duncan to 'fix' the school system. I mean the bulk of Barack's nominees scream, "Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!" So then you get to a health care plan from Barack and that's already going to raise my suspicion and then when, as Wally pointed out, you've got him rallying his online groupies to 'support' his 'plan' that doesn't exist? I'm not wasting my time.
Ann: I could have covered it. I filled in for Ruth and just finished filling in for Mike and the scope I was given was what ever you want to write about. So I could have grabbed the topic. I didnt' because there's nothing to advocate for or against. Cedric and Wally have really said it all. Barack can keep saying it's a "must" but he's yet to tell us what the reform is.
Wally: Why are we going to waste our time covering something that doesn't even exist, that's not even a concrete proposal? There's so much more out there.
Jim: Another e-mail, from Dorothy, notes that we haven't covered Honduras at all and she writes she finds that "shocking."
Dona: Well we wrote two pieces on it and neither was worthy of making it online. They were really bad. The problem there was that we should have all shut up, we should have said, "Ava, C.I., expalin it to us." Instead, we thought we had a grasp on the issue, we start writing and Ava and C.I. are offering all these points that go so far beyond what we knew.
Jess: Well we could have also said, "Ava and C.I., go write it."
Dona: You're right. But those were the two choices. Either ask them to write it themselves or ask them to do a presentation on it and then have everyone work on the article.
Jim: Ava and C.I., want to add anything?
Ava: I'll add that I've found Amy Goodman's coverage on Democracy Now! disgusting and completely lacking in anything other than good intentions. She needs to educate herself and that doesn't mean just sit next to Juan Gonzalez.
C.I.: Ava and I believe the issue is about economic policies.
Ava: And believe that because we know a great deal about the actual president and the one who's been installed.
C.I.: This all goes to CAFTA and so-called "free trade" and that's been a footnote in coverage we've seen if even that.
Ava: Maybe we missed some coverage noting it? I doubt it because when we'd raise points about this topic during the writing of the two attempted pieces, we'd have to backtrack because no one participating knew what we were talking about. Hondoruas is a poor country and considered one of the countries for which "banana republic" was first coined. As such, due to this colonial imperalism, their lands have suffered greatly over the years. And yet they're still a farm economy with sugar plantations, for example.
C.I.: And the land policies are frightening with US interests and their friends doing very well and the people of Honduras doing very poorly. CAFTA comes along and is ratified in 2005 and all the concerns and the warnings end up being true and the ones hurt are the poor farmers, not the plantation owners, of course. And this is the backdrop for what's going on right now, in our opinion. It's why, despite a few strongly worded statements, the US government has done very little. Big Business wanted the overthrow and got it and we'll get a few weak statements from the US government but nothing much more.
Ava: Right and there's little awareness, that I've seen, in US media, Big or Small, of the land evictions which were taking place before CAFTA went into effect but have continued and the poor have gotten so much poorer as a result of CAFTA. But CAFTA was a zero-sum game. It was never about lifting all boats, it was about how Big Business could reap huge profits and off whose backs.
Jim: And listening to Ava and C.I. right now, if Jess had proposed that they write it themselves when we were writing those articles, I would vote that they write it themselves. They place the coup squarely in the economic foundation.
Ava: And we also believe that the coup went forward with the approval of many elements of the US government.
Stan: On that topic, I'll add that when they'd raise these issues it was, Dona's point, while we were writing. And Ava's right, the coverage in this country is not addressing the economic issues. So we'd be like, "Huh?" or "What?" When they'd bring that up and then they'd try to walk us through it and what would happen is we'd try to graft on what they were saying to what we'd already written and it wasn't making sense.
Jim: Because those sections stuck out -- were the best things, actually -- and the rest of it was just crap. We probably could have also fixed it by editing, don't you think, Stan?
Stan: Yeah, just boil it down to a set of points that Ava and C.I. had made. Lose the paragraph we loved because we'd written it so well, for example. But we really got to the point where we had, honestly, too much pride in the piece to fix it. I include myself in that because there was a sentence that was a great sentence but it didn't belong in the article. That sentence was one of my contributions. It would have helped if I had said, "Lose my sentence there, it's not helping anything." But I didn't.
Jim: And none of us did.
Stan: So it was a learning experience, I think. And I'm sure we'll have to learn the lesson again at some point.
Jim: Absolutely. We never truly absorb it. Okay, working those e-mails, readers, don't say I don't try. Lavonne e-mailed to note that "Editorial: Taking sexism seriously " includes an added note of "Added July 7, 2009, Thank you to The New Agenda and Femisex.com for getting the word out on the imbalance with regards to bookings and bylines. Added July 9th and thank you to Hillary's Village and Spiral Gate and Donna Darko and for also getting the word out in their continued fight against sexism." Lavonne says she's seen it elsewhere and wonders "Why weren't other sites noted?"
Ava: C.I. and I did the update on that. We did it twice. And that was based on e-mails here informing us of it. If there were others who amplified it, Lavonne needs to e-mail and say what they were. I don't dispute her but we're not mind readers and we're not spending our lives online. If you pass it on, we'll gladly include it. I'm glad it got mentioned this week because C.I. and I were pushing last week for a short feature to note that. We added those sentences after the editorial was published and put them at the top to be sure they were seen; however, there were people who had already read it by then and I doubt they went back and read it again. Maybe they did? So I would guess we would have readers who aren't aware that the editorial opens with that.
Jim: Okay and this will be the last one, Dona's telling me we've got so much to do still. A Brad, not community member Brad, e-mails to state, "For three weeks now C.I. kept hitting on the issue of the KRG and the tensions between it and Nouri al-Maliki's elected government. By Friday, that finally became a press issue. I see that a lot and am just wondering why that is? Why does it surface first at The Common Ills?" C.I.?
C.I.: Well first off, I've never said "Nouri al-Maliki's elected government." I say "the central government out of Baghdad," instead, for example. In terms of why I'm noting something that the press really isn't? A lot of times it's because of the press. A lot of times it's because I know an outlet's working on a story. Sometimes it's because they worked on a story on the topic and it got killed. My including the topic means someone can try for that story again saying, "Hey, there's talk online about this issue." It's also true that I've got to cover Iraq several times a day during the week which is much more than any single outlet not broadcasting or printing for Iraqis does. I made a similar comment last time and an e-mail came in that Ty read saying, "What about Iraq Slogger?" What about it? It's a for-pay service that generates no original reporting. I also don't find it reliable because it's owner twice made statements that I personally stood by only to see him cave and act the coward. No offense, I know the man, but I'm not interested in anything he has to say. If Iraq Slogger actually broke news, we'd stay away from it because the man associated with it now has a very public history of making dramatic claims and then walking away from them. And I'm really not in the mood to stand up for him again only to have him cave. Sorry.
Elaine: If I can jump in, you've got to remember that C.I.'s on the road speaking about Iraq every day -- with Kat, Ava and Wally -- during the week so C.I. has access to a pool or polling group to find out what their interests are and what they're not hearing of. In addition, C.I.'s speaking to friends at relief organizations as well as to the press. And especially true, C.I.'s always been ahead of the curve. There's a line in a Maria McKee song that says, "And I feel the mountain movin' deep within" that I really think sums up C.I.'s ability to anticipate certain topics.
Jim: Okay and on that note we wind down. This is a rush transcript and this was our news roundtable. This edition will also feature a music roundtable. Our e-mail address is thirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com.