Ty: John R. e-mails to note the book Mark Ribowsky wrote entitled The Supremes -- about Diana and the Supremes -- and he quotes this from the book:
Diana Ross -- hailed by MCA executives as “the queen returning home” -- was given stock in MCA that carried over to PolyGram and Universal, but has failed to register a single Top Forty pop hit since 1981, compiling only scattered lightweight R&B hits such as “Workin’ Overtime” in ‘89 and her ‘91 duet --
C.I.: Stop. Enough of the crap. Ribowsky wrote a bad book on Phil Spector. How bad? The book came out years and years ago but when Phil went on trial, there was no effort to rush it out in a new printing and work it. He's a bad, bad writer. In the passage Ty was quoting? Diana Ross hasn't a Top 40 hit since 1981? Really? 1982, "Mirror, Mirror" goes to number eight, same year sees "Muscles" make it to number ten, 1983 sees "So Close" make it to number 40 -- which is top 40 -- all of these the top forty pop charts. This isn't R&B or adult contemporary. He lied that she didn't make the top 40 after 1981 and she repeatedly made the top 40. 1983's "Pieces of Ice" made it to 31, 1984's "All of You" -- which was a duet with Julio Iglesias -- made it to number 19, as did "Swept Away" in the same year. "Missing You" would go to number ten. So that's seven songs right there, seven songs that hit the Top 40 and did so after 1981. I'm just not in the mood for the crap.
Betty: Agreed. I've seen that book around and picked it up a few times because I am a big fan of Diana's and I skimmed a few pages to see if I'd like it. You can scan any page at random and grasp that the author has an axe to grind against Diana. Now C.I. just counted the hits since 1981 and if you include "Why Do Fools Fall In Love" -- which hit number 7 -- you have eight top forty hits from 1981 to 1985. That's a pretty solid record for a woman who's been hitting the charts for decades by then. What I'm saying is that there's this knee jerk response to say, "Oh, Diana, she stopped having hits!" How long was she supposed to have hits? Find another hit maker like Diana and explain to me how many decades they had hits? Because Diana had a top 40 hit every year from 1963 through 1985 except for 1978. That's 21 years of Top 40 hits. "When The Lovelight Starts Shining In His Eyes" is the first top forty hit she has -- with the Supremes -- in 1963. "Missing You" in 1985 is the last one she has. Now there are many years when she had more than one -- and, again, no Top 40 hit in 1978 -- but that's a huge string of hits. Not to take anything away from Cher or Tina Turner -- I love both of them -- but they had their moments out of the public eye during those years. Diana's accomplishments are very real and something to be proud of.
Ty: I'm glad Betty and C.I. raised the points they did because I made a point to count up all the Top 40 hits Diana's sung on. 52 if you don't count "We Are The World." 53, if you do. Outside of Madonna, I don't know anyone else who could make that claim. And if we expanded that to the Top 100 on pop, it would be an even higher number. But her career has seen her hit the Top 40 fifty-two times.
Jim: How many times has Madonna hit the Top 40?
Ty: I counted 48. Erika e-mails to note that "The Carly Roundtable" mentioned Isaiah but he's no where to be found in it. Did he end up having to leave? Did he get forgotten? Was it a typo?
Jim: I typed that up and what happened was a series of things were edited down because it was so long. Isaiah spoke right after a long section where C.I. was talking about chords and C.I. said to pull that because it would probably be too technical. I gladly did to avoid typing and, in doing so, I also missed Isaiah. My apologies for that. I'll let Isaiah speak now.
Isaiah: That was on Coming Around Again and, like Marcia, I had picked it as my favorite. I talked mainly about the images from the lyrics like "something in my pocket that was written years ago in faded ink says you are my fire" from "Do The Walls Come Down" and "you're freight trains whistling over my track" from "All I Want Is You." And especially "Give Me All Night" for "Don't give me fountains, I need water falls, and when I cry, my tears will fill an ocean." I really felt it was her strongest lyrically with some of her strongest images which is true in the title track with "break a window, burn a souffle, scream a lullaby." "Two Hot Girls (On A Hot Summer Night)" has "the kettle was on and it started up steamin'" in the second verse and then, in the third verse, "the kettle boiled down and evaporated me." And then "Don't look at yourself in the same old way, take another picture, shoot the stars off in your own backyard, don't look any further and you will see" from "The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of." There's so much going for that album and I really love it for any number of reasons but I felt that it had the strongest lyrics of any of her albums. I think that's basically what I went into. It was no great loss for me to be left out and I'd have gladly said "Cut me!" if it would have meant we could keep in the section on the chords.
Ty: Still on the subject of Carly Simon, Bill, who runs Carly Simon Conversations, recommends this Day Trotter article on Carly Simon's concert, last week at Lincoln Center, this blog post on the concert and this video of "Touched By The Sun." A number of people are e-mailing to ask if Kat's going to do a review of Carly's new album Never Been Gone?
Kat: No. Not going to. What? I announced it at my site, it was noted here last week. Maybe people are so in love with the album that they're impatient for my review to go up? Generally, they go up on Sunday. The reason for that is (a) to give me a little more time -- meaning I write it on the plane ride home Saturday and (b) to give C.I. and/or Isaiah a breather if they need it. See, once upon a time, a weekend at The Common Ills might mean a review from me, a comic from Isaiah and a report from Ruth. Those days are long gone. And it really falls on Isaiah and C.I. So when I do a review, it does give Isaiah the chance of taking the weekend off without having to worry that C.I.'s going to do extra entries to make up for Isaiah's absence. And before anyone wonders about Ruth, she was benched.
Ruth: I was benched by C.I. I was told I could do my own site and my "Ruth Reports" for The Common Ills or I could work on the Third editions here and do "Ruth Reports" for The Common Ills but I could not do five posts a week at my site and work on the weekends here and still do a "Ruth Reports" for The Common Ills.
C.I.: It's too much to ask for. It's too much to expect. You also do pieces for Hilda's Mix. And no one should think Ruth's not missed. She still does her yearly look back at radio. But she's not doing that on a weekly basis anymore. I loved her reports and I miss her reports. But it's just too much to ask of one person.
Rebecca: And just to back C.I. up on that, if you're not the core six of Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I., you're usually gone earlier. I don't know when Dallas leaves. But the rest of us who aren't part of the core six usually get dismissed about two to four hours before the writing's posted here. At least. That's because they're still editing and there's still the typing to be done. But even getting dismissed early, we start the edition on Saturday night and finish it up on Sunday morning and it's just really long. C.I. also tries to encourage Isaiah not to do that and turn around and do a comic.
Isaiah: Yeah. And that's why C.I. got really ticked about the time I spent 12 hours here and, in the end, Jim decided we didn't need to work on the article -- the one I wanted to help write. And it's that way with Trina as well but probably less so because Trina will say, "I'll do this but not that." Trina?
Trina: Yes, I'm comfortable with that. I get up early in the morning and walk through and someone here -- Mike, Rebecca, Elaine, Ruth, Marcia or Stan -- will say, "We're doing a roundtable in a second want to take part?" And a lot of times I will but sometimes I've got a headache or too much to do that morning and won't. I'll also, if I know the editorial topic, help on that if I think I can add anything. But I don't generally stay up through the entire edition. I'm usually too wiped out from daily life.
Jim: And we love all the assistance we get but we always encourage people to do like Trina or like Elaine who will say, "I don't think this is getting anywhere and I'm tired." And she'll go on to sleep. Nobody should knock themselves out. And, in reference to the piece Isaiah was speaking of, that was my bad. I did know Isaiah was working with us that edition just waiting for us to do the feature on comics and I had just put it off and then there was no time for it. Again, my apologies for that.
Dona: Let me interrupt for a second to note that Kat's review is up. It's entitled "Carly Simon's warm benediction."
Ty: Roberto e-mailed, "I detect a sense of moving away from politics in recent weeks and I'm wondering how intentional that is?"
Jess: I don't think it's intentional. If you look at the last three weeks, you'll probably find some ways of backing Roberto up but I believe one of those -- at least one -- was an edition where everything fell apart and Ava and C.I. ended up doing three TV articles just so we'd have an edition. Now Jim, Dona, Ty, Ava and I all got our degrees in journalism and that means we do know about feature writing and there have been some good feature articles in the last three weeks -- one of those was political in that it was a survey of political opinion journals -- but that's not so much a walk away from politics as just trying to have some variety. We try to do at least one feature article on comics each month and we have other regular features as well.
Dona: To pick up on what Jess just said about Ava and C.I. doing three articles one week just so we'd have an edition, we're going to ask them to do a second one this week. Why? It's the only thing that we've got so far -- their article on The Forgotten. Mike and the gang are going to do highlights right after this roundtable and the six of us will be trying to figure out what else we can do because things did not work out this edition. At all. And we're scrambling which means we'll be tossing out ideas quickly and writing quickly. And that may mean no political topics because if someone comes up with an off the wall suggestion that's something we haven't done or don't usually do, that's going to generate more interest for those of us writing than another piece on whatever.
Mike: And if I can jump in here, what are we supposed to be writing about that we're not covering? I mean, we've got a mix of stories here each week. At our own sites, we're covering a mix. As far as I can tell, the bulk of the 'left' outlets are doing nothing but repeating administration talking points. And, honestly, I'm so damn sick of the ObamaCare at this point and I'm not alone. Forget that I despise it and know it doesn't work -- it's built around what we have in Big Mass -- for a minute. I'm just so damn sick of hearing about it. I can't watch f**king PBS anymore because every damn show seems to be obsessed with this topic -- this topic we've had to hear non-stop yammering on since July. I'm damn sick of it. And that's a pretty common feeling on my campus. It's not an issue that inspires young people and that may be due to the fact that we see ourselves as invincible. Or it may be because of all the overkill. Or it may be because of all the fawning over Barry and the lack of reporting.
Elaine: And, similar thought, I was on the phone with a friend -- a Democrat who voted for Barack in 2008 -- and she was saying that she made it through the Bush years thinking it could never be worse and that when a Democrat got into office, everything would be better but now there's a Democrat in office and he's just George W. Bush. Now I agree with her, he is the third term of George W. Bush but we've covered that. Over and over. Here and at our own sites. We're among the few who broke the ground on that on the left. Everyone else was too damn chicken. And I won't mention the joker who had a joke my friend passed on but I will note that it was a funny observation, one that made me laugh when I first read it a year ago in an article Ava and C.I. wrote. But my larger point -- away from the rip-off -- is that we can't just churn it out. We know each week we have to hit hard -- here and at our own sites -- because this is just like what C.I. was doing on campuses when it was Bush Cannot Be Questioned! It took people like C.I. going around and saying, "Yes, he can" to kill that worship passed off as reporting. So each week we will let the air out of the balloon. But we can't do the same piece over and over. Or if we're going to, just re-run it and let us all go to sleep.
Marcia: What Elaine's saying, I'm seeing that too. People who wrote me off in early 2008 suddenly showing up to say, "You were right about Barack." And that's good but what worries me is that the people like us, like Hillary Is 44, etc. are not going to get any credit and it's going to be the people who cheerleaded us into this mess that get credit for, in 2010, suddenly realizing Barack's a fake. The liars who caused the problem will not be exposed, will not be held accountable and, as a result, they will live to do it again.
Cedric: Yeah. I agree with that so much. Like Elaine and Marcia, I'm seeing and hearing that from people I know -- people suddenly grasping Barack is a fake. And Marcia's right and before anyone tries to say, "She just wants credit for her ego!" No. First, after the way she and others were treated for speaking the truth, she deserves credit. But more importantly, if we don't get rid of our own Judy Millers and Michael Gordons, they will be around to do this again. And they're doing it now. With the war on Fox News, they're attacking that network and also being hypocrites.
Wally: Right because if it was MSNBC, they'd be screaming their heads off. As it is, FAIR won't call out MSNBC unless it's Chris Matthews. They're so damn busy fawning over MSNBC. They're so ethically corrupt. I don't think we can move forward on the left until people start taking accountability. And anyone cheering on a government attack on a press outlet better start explaining when that became acceptable?
Ruth: Let me jump back in because this is a topic Elaine and I have covered at our sites and I agree completely. When we cheer a president and/or an administration for going after a news outlet, we are encouraging them to do it again. We are saying it is okay. When does it become not okay? Watergate did not happen over night. It was a slow and steady erosion, each bit greater and greater leading to the big cover up.
Stan: And look at Bob Somerby whom Betty and I like to highlight but he keeps demanding and applauding a war on a news outlet -- a war from the White House. That's not the role of the White House or the role of the government. I'm sorry that pundits and reporters are too weak to call out Fox when it needs calling out but that's not the role of a president and I've about had it with Barack's repeatedly lowering the stature of the presidency. And Mike had a really good point last week when he explained that no one ever needed to see Barack shirtless and the little girly-boy should have learned to pull on a shirt instead of strutting with his man boobs dripping and dragging all over the place. What is that? Is he a hillbilly? Does he just not know any better? Or does he think we all need to see him without a shirt? Whatever it is, put a damn shirt on already.
Betty: Just to back up Stan, I wrote about Carly's album twice last week at my site and one reason was because it's so great and another is because I just wasn't in the mood for Bob Somerby and his idiotic cheerleading of the White House declaring a war on a press outlet. No White House should be cheered for doing that. The Democrats have their pit bulls, if they can't bark effectively, that's no reason to bring the White House into it. It cheapens the White House and, like Stan just said, it lowers the stature of the presidency. But what really concerns me is what happens when we encourage a government to attack the press. That's what concerns me. What is this? Lifeboat? We're all going to beat up on the bad German -- Fox News -- and then when the young wounded German comes on board, what are we going to do? Beat up on him too?
Ava: Betty's referring to Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat. I just want to add that where does it end? Betty's talking about -- and others as well -- that you're asking for a White House -- any White House -- to start attacking all the press organs they don't like. I believe that's how many reporters ended up on Nixon's enemies list. Bob Somerby might want to try grasping that. But I want to talk about a different way it ends. Fox News. Now C.I. and I have already pointed out this year that Amy Goodman is among those who doesn't know the difference between Fox News and Fox home of The Simpsons and many other shows. But maybe they need to boycott that too? All these do-gooders who want to call for the end to Fox News. And let's hold accountable the ones working for Fox as well, right? Including Laura Flanders' niece who works on House? This is all such bulls**t and it really needs to stop. It's one thing for media critics to document Fox News' problems, it's another for the White House to go after it.
C.I.: Do you want to bring up the other thing, the frenzy of 'climate'?
Ava: Yeah, let's do that here. C.I. and I've been talking about this. Unless Lou Dobbs is lying -- and we don't think he is -- then his wife was shot at last week. Now all we've heard is that Fox and Rush and blah blah blah are creating a 'dangerous' climate in this country. Maybe it's time for the Kool-Aid drinkers to wonder what sort of climate they create? I'm for free speech. I feel anyone should say what they want -- and accept the consequences. But I'm not demonizing Lou Dobbs every five minutes and there aren't many on the left who can say that. The Kool-Aid drinkers have repeatedly stated that there is a climate created -- and Barack is threatened in it -- from the right-wingers. Well Lou Dobbs' wife got shot at. Anybody from the Kool-Aid side going to express any regret?
C.I.: And to be clear for any who didn't pay attention to what Ava just said, neither she nor I believe that speech creates a climate. People do what they want to do. Political speech is not responsible for violence. We have never pushed the notion that it was. But many of Barack's biggest cheerleaders push that crap. They whine that Barack's compared to a Nazi but had no problems with Bush being compared to a Nazi. And they say something bad will happen because of political speech, that it must be curbed. They didn't curb their political speech with regards to Lou Dobbs so they need to step up and figure what they believe in.
Jess: And just to jump in because a point does come up in e-mails. There is a commentary Ava and C.I. did addressing the" 'Barack is a Nazi' is outrageous but it's okay to call Bush one." They're addressing idiots who did one thing with Bush and another with Barack. They are not comparing either Bush or Barack to Nazis and, at this site, we have never compared either to Nazis. Every few weeks there's an e-mail insisting that we did to either Barack or Bush. We didn't. Nazis really isn't a word we use in our conversations or in our writing.
Ann: I think, if I can jump in, it's been the hypocrisy and the lack of consistency that has so discouraged me from our 'brave' left -- The Nation, Democracy Now!, FAIR, etc. You have standards or you don't. You can't put them on some days and prance around and throw them on the bottom of your closet other days. I find the fact that an attack on the press wouldn't be called out by these people to be repulsive and telling.
Jim: Thank you, Ann, for jumping in right then. I was about to call on you because you're the only one who hadn't spoken at least once and Dona has twice passed me a note saying "TIME!" This is a rush transcript, our e-mail address is thirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com. Illustration by Betty's kids.