Another Sunday.
Except for Rebecca (and her husband and their child) all the wonderful guests have headed home this morning and we will miss them. It was a lot of fun having everyone face to face for the last two weeks.
The way we did this edition is we wrote until two in the morning, then all went to sleep. Then woke up in time for breakfast and to get everyone to the airport. After that, we started the editing and typing process.
Along with Dallas, the following helped write 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),
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.
We thank them all. And here's what we came up with.
Truest statement of the week -- Cindy won hands down.
Truest statement of the week II -- We also were surprised (happily) to see Steve Inskeep weigh in on a very important news story and wanted to note him as well.
Editorial: The Non-Working Barack Obama -- First thing to note here is, we may have an illustration. We're tired. We're not in the mood for Flickr this morning. We plan to add illustrations either tonight or tomorrow but we may end up feeling, "Forget it." This editorial was built around Little Giant. That was Ann and Stan. Both were saying Barack reminded them of an Abbott & Costello movie and they couldn't remember the title. They knew he was a salesman and as they sketched out the farm life (at the beginning of the film), C.I. said, "Little Giant." Jess had seen the film as well so we ended up excited by the film (and the four of them telling the rest of us about it) which was good because prior we were dead tired and not sure we had the energy for an editorial. Yes, it was a shorter writing session but yesterday was also the last day with everyone and we really tried to pack a ton of activities into that and were exhausted by eight o'clock Saturday night.
TV: According to Ava and C.I. -- How exhausted. Ava and C.I. were falling asleep. They take the notes during roundtable pieces and they'd be taking the notes and you'd see one of their heads slump and then, a second later, their body would jerk back awake. So we didn't have high hopes for their TV commentary this week. When they said they just wanted to tackle an entertainment TV show, we said sure and figured regular readers would understand it was a busy, busy week. So imagine our surprise when they passed over the longhand version of this and it ended up being really something.
Roundtable -- This was longer and about a third was edited out. We cover current events in this. One of the topics edited out, for any who wonder, was about the Red Cross' access. If you're interested in the topic, you can see Karen DeYoung's Washington Post report. We did try to work in as many e-mails as possible. The e-mail address here is thirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com.
Iraq -- Ava and C.I. really wrote this and that's another reason they weren't going to do public affairs in the TV commentary. They felt like they'd covered it in this. This was supposed to be a group piece but a number of us fell out during the writing of this. (I did not because I basically drank three pots of coffee while we were working on this edition.) (I'm Jim, if I didn't mention that already.) Those who remained awake would shout out topics or possible links and Ava and C.I. ended up writing it.
The music and book roundtable -- Dona moderated this roundtable. We hadn't all read the book. If you hadn't read the book we didn't feel you should be in the roundtable. Ava, Dona and C.I. are Thirders. We all know Rebecca does a great job moderating a roundtable but since this was at Third I wanted one of them and Rebecca pointed out that is should be Dona because Ava and C.I. were already taking notes. Dona did a great job moderating and I say that not just because we're engaged.
Shame on Dennis Loo -- Ava and C.I. did not write this. There was supposed to be a sentence noting that. Instead it just notes they hadn't participated in an earlier conversation about Dennis Loo. Ruth wrote about it at her site on Friday. Hours later an e-mail arrives from Dennis Loo. As Kat and Marcia told me the story, they were with C.I. when she opened the e-mail, the first thing that pissed C.I. off was Loo didn't address the e-mail. The public account of The Common Ills is used by C.I., Ruth, Kat and Isaiah. You need to address your e-mail. Second, he didn't reference the writing in terms of date or where it appeared or a title and, sorry Denny Loo, on Saturday morning, C.I. has not read every thing posted by the community's thirteen or fourteen daily sites so she has no idea what you're writing about. She reads it and flips through screens to read various posts and try to figure out who's got Denny Loo's drawers in a wad. C.I. wasted an hour attempting to reply and then said "Screw it." Ruth's not going to bother to reply. (Good for Ruth.) When Ruth wrote the post, she was trying to be nice and didn't raise the issue that had us saying "Enough!" to Denny Loo: His hompohobia. Using "tea baggers" as a term to demonize your opponent is homophobia.
Cindy Sheehan to protest War Mongering President -- We note Cindy Sheehan's protest in two other entries. This is just a repost of her press release.
Highlights -- Mike, Elaine, Kat, Betty, Ruth, Rebecca, Marcia, Stan, Cedric, Wally and Ann worked on this and selected highlights unless otherwise noted and we thank them for it.
And that's what we've got. Hopefully something you enjoyed reading. Again, we plan to put in illustrations either tonight or tomorrow but right now we're just ready to get offline.
-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.