Jim (Con't): First up, comments. We go over this over and over. Repeatedly. But we need to do it again because Carl Davidson just emerged from an adult literacy class and is confused that this "blog" doesn't have comments. Carl, it's an online magazine. As for comments, I'm tossing to Betty.
Betty: I don't have comments at my site. And I do a blog. When I started, it was a comedic novel from the point of view of a woman Thomas Friedman kidnapped and drugged. That ended in 2008, I kept the name and turned it into a blog. But I would never have comments at my site. That's because I'm Black and, like many who were online during the first part of the 2000s, I remember what happenes. Now The Common Ills had comments when it started. A number of people -- I wasn't the only one -- had e-mailed C.I. to say they didn't like that. Keesha was another one who had complained. And we had explained what had happened to us -- and none of us knew each other then. But it's not uncommon if you're Black to be at a left site and feel welcomed and then you make a comment that, I don't know, maybe Al Gore doesn't piss rainbows and just produces urine like everyone else and suddenly you'd be attacked. It would be coded at first but it would be racism and if you continued to stand up for yourself or your point of view, the racism would come out full blown. That's true of every one of the big sites in that time period. And that's why Black bloggers still have to struggle. A White male blogger -- presumably straight -- can say what ever we do and it's okay but if we say it, it's not.
Marica: And a White blogger -- say Amanda you know who -- can rip off an African-American blogger and when called to the carpet on it insist, 'Yes I read her but I didn't feel I had to credit her because even though this is her topic she's covered for years, I'm writing about it and I'm White. And I'm a feminist because I worked for the John Edwards campaign!'
Ann: Cedric's going to s**t his shorts right now but I need to add something here and, Cedric, just don't say a word okay? David Swanson thought it was okay to take my husband's words and post them at his site without asking. David Swanson thought it was okay to appropriate Cedric's work. It didn't happen with anyone else, now did it? But if it's a Black person a lot of White's seem to feel they're entitled to steal. Back to Betty's point about the way we are treated online, she's right. I remember those days very well. There's not a big site you can name where the blogger running it did not allow racism in the comments to go unchecked and did not allow Black people to regularly be trashed. They can rewrite history anyway they want but Black people will not be silent.
Betty: And that's true. They've got Barack now and the Blogger Boyz love him and they try to pretend like they love Black people. Really? The same ones who when we brought up racism would snarl we were playing "identity politics"? But the blogosphere was not friendly to Black people. I don't honestly think it's any better today. I think a lot of White men and women on the left feel they have to make a token effort because they see Barack as Black so that's toned it down some but if it really wasn't a racist scene, people would be linked to beyond the Democratic-cheerleaders of Jack & Jill, okay? Check the blogrolls and notice how few bloggers of color get linkage. That's not an accident. And the hostility was why we didn't want comments at TCI. C.I. wrote those of us e-mailing on that topic to say she'd watch for it. She said that if it happened, the comments would be shut down immediately and for good. Keesha left a comment on one post, she and several others, but two centrist Democrats, praising Martin Frost among others, zoomed in on her -- probably because her name made her race more obvious -- and began using coded racism and upped it to full on racism. They also took it to every other TCI post that Keesha commented on and began trashing her there with racist remarks as well. That's when C.I. closed the comments section and they have never been opened again.
Ty: And when we started Third -- Jim, Dona, Jess, Ava, C.I. and myself -- we were aware of what happened at TCI. I was glad it happened because Jim, Dona, Jess, Ava and I had long talked about starting up a website. And I would share with Jim and Jess what I saw happening online to African-Americans. And they would listen and they would nod but I really got that you probably had to be African-American yourself to notice it. So when it happened in the comments at TCI, I was able to say, "See, I'm not just being sensitive, this is what happens." So there was no way we were going to have comments here. First off, no one has the time to police them. Second off, we don't want that crap. Third of all, we've always been an online magazine that publishes once a week.
Jess: And our e-mail is clearly included in at least one article a week and it is on our profile. It's not hard to e-mail -- as many do each week. When Ty was telling Jim and I about what had happened to him and some of his friends in high school on blogs, we were shocked. We're not comment people ourselves, so we hadn't seen it. And Ty explained it to us but even with that, we were still shocked when it happened at TCI. And there was a period where we were kind of pissed at C.I. because we'd seen the comments and more like them were going up and we were thinking, "Well why isn't she doing something about this?" When you don't do your own site, you may not realize that you're not checking out your own site every minute of the day.
Jim: And that, Carl Davidson, is why we don't include comments. Dona read over Carl's fan mail. Dona was there anything worth quoting?
Dona: Not a damn thing.
Jim: Thanks. Carl e-mailed twice. The first time to attack us for not having a comment option so that he could spread some more propaganda by leaving comments on our article "Barry's Geriatric 'Progs'." He opens by calling our article "crap" and then calling us "cowards." And when I reply to him, Old Man Carl suddenly is grasping for the pearls. He needs the vapors, our poor fraglie, Southern Miss. As if he'd written a calm e-mail? Carl, we don't like you. But we do like laughing at you and this edition we've got another piece about you. Elaine and C.I. know Carl from back in the day. Do either of you want to add anything?
Elaine: I'll add that a generational sell-out took place for many of my generation but few sold out so hard and for so little the way that Carl did. When you look at wasted potential, you're looking at Carl Davidson.
Jim: Thanks. We're done with Carl now. Ty?
Ty: Kathy writes, "Betty and Kat are my two favorites, though I love all of you. I enjoy Betty and Kat's sites the most because they write about their families and friends and that really hits home with me. But I'm writing about WBAI. There's an announcement up that WBAI has stopped podcasting and that all Pacifica stations will shortly. I remember Kat and Betty both writing repeatedly about how C.I. said they were going to have to stop podcasting. This has been something they've blogged about for about two years now. So I was hoping someone could explain to me what happened?"
Kat: Well, Kathy, on behalf of Betty and me, thank you. Betty does put a great deal of work into her site. Me, I'm just booting up at whatever hotel we happen to be in on the road and trying to figure out what's the quickest thing I can write on. Which is why you'll often encounter my friends, my nephews, my nieces and my grandmother at my site. The podcasting? It's a legal issue. KPFA stopped keeping their archives online. They do it for a few weeks now. Originally -- and they raised money on this, gave pledge drive pitches on this -- they were building the largest online archives for public radio. But the idea that they'd have to pay royalties for using music was just too scary for them. So they had to only archive temporarily, according to them. That's really not true and never was true. KPFA isn't 'live.' They have a delay now due to FCC fines on TV -- which a court case may have stopped. But KPFA has a delay and if the f-word gets said, they can hit a button and the word's not broadcast on the airwaves. They could do the same with the music, to eliminate it. Think about The Randi Rhodes Show if you listened to it back when Air America Radio was on. If you were streaming online, a lot of the time you couldn't get Randi on AAR. So you'd go to the Florida station that broadcast her. And listening there, you'd encounter lengthy commercial breaks without commercials. You'd hear some but you'd get a lot of silence. They were able to -- for reasons I don't know -- silence portions during the broadcast and KPFA could have done the same for music in the archives. But they didn't want to, they wanted to play the victim yet again. So they had to cut down on listeners -- something at odds with radio programming -- and they stated they couldn't archive permanently anymore because of the royalty issue. But this whole time, they've been podcasting and they've knowingly refused to count the podcasts when figuring out listeners and the royalty rate they owed. If someone wanted to, they could go back over the figures and stick KPFA with a bill. They underpaid. And C.I. has warned about this aspect forever and a day. I saw her explain to two Pacifica board members over 16 months ago. I'm not surprised it happened, I'm just surprised it took so long.
Ty: Next e-mail is for Jim and Isaiah. Barry e-mails to note this from C.I.'s "Feds still chasing after WikiLeaks:"
Let's deal with community issues arising. Isaiah plans to do a comic tomorrow. The only thing that might change that is Third's writing session going crazy. On that, I want to scream. A friend's asked that we address -- Ava and I -- an attack on Lindsay Lohan and I'm fine with that. Lindsay's under attack. And she's being attacked by Queen Bitchy which necessitates that we also stop being nice to Joan Rivers. A number of people will laugh at that assertion but Ava and I caught Joan's little anti-Muslim tirade and chose to ignore it because our plates were full and Joan's so pathetic as it is. Now, we'll instead explore it at Third (with link for you to listen yourselves). It's awful, it's disgusting and it's amazing that it took place -- IN PUBLIC -- at the same time the assault on Helen Thomas did and it didn't raise an eyebrow. So that's two things we've been asked for by friends and that's fine. Now a friend at CNN is asking that we take on idiot Rachel Maddow, so we'll be doing that as well. Poor Rachel, caught in yet another lie. She is a world class liar. And she must want to be known as such because she does it repeatedly and she does it badly. Somewhere in all of that, we'll attempt to tackle NPR and there's also a TV piece to write. That's what Ava and I will be working on. It'll take forever. I don't know what everyone else is going ot be working on, I don't know how long those other pieces will take. I say that because if this writing edition goes on too long, Isaiah may not do a comic and I've outlined here what Ava and I are working on so take it up with Jim if there's no comic.
Ty (Con't): Barry wants to know why it's referred to Jim and what the status is on the comic?
Isaiah: Jim's pointing to me so let me state I haven't drawn anything yet and it's 8:00 a.m. PST right now. Will I have a comic tonight? I have two ideas for one. If we can finish the writing edition soon enough, I will do a comic. If not, I may not. I'm already tired and would love to be in bed right now.
Jim: C.I. made a point of referring the issue to me because she got tired of e-mails two Sundays ago. She had noted to us that if Isaiah was going to do a comic, he needed to be let go. But I said we needed him -- and we did -- to complete the edition. So I was the reason there was no comic and that's what C.I. was stating.
Isaiah: And this edition, I've worked on a few articles and I've also done some drawings. I did a Lynne Stewart with Betty's kids adding some color for what we hope to use as an editorial, I did a Lindsay Loham for another piece and Betty's kids are going to work with Kat on that, adding a few touches, I did the Carl Davidson paper doll drawings.
Jim: And in terms of what C.I. promised from Ava and herself, they've done everything but the Loham article so far. They've done their TV piece, they've done the Rachel Maddow piece which is an epic and which will probably run in the spot that their TV piece usually does and they've documented Joan Rivers' ugly speech about Arab-Americans.
Dona: Isaiah just mentioned Lynne Stewart and Allison e-mailed wondering how Ruth ended up being the community's Lynne Stewart chronicler?
Ruth: Well I think that's due to the fact that Lynne's husband Ralph Poynter usually appears each Tuesday on Taking Aim on WBAI. I usually note that show at my site. With the exception of Stan and Ann, I think every site has covered her. Stan and Ann have reposted the Iraq snapshot and C.I.'s noted Lynne in that, so she's been covered in that way but I mean that everyone has written about her themselves except Stan and Ann. That's not an insult to them or a why-don't-they? I have been doing my site since 2005 and Lynne was much more in the news then. For example, Wally and Cedric have covered her in non-joint posts before their sites went into joint-posts. Since Stan and Ann started their sites, the only new news has been the re-sentencing. I like to write about Lynne -- I would like it better if I had some good news to write about Lynee -- and due to Taking Aim, I have pretty much been the one covering it this year.
Mike: Lynne's the planned topic for the editorial so no one really knows what to say because we're all trying to save it for the editorial. But just to give a very brief explanation for anyone late to the party on this topic, Lynne Stewart is a legendary Civil Rights attorney. She took on a case and has been punished for issuing a press release to Reuters news agency on behalf of her client. This happened in 2000, when Bill Clinton was president and Janet Reno, the Attorney General, looked into the matter and decided it wasn't anything to prosecute on. Then came the Bush administration and they decided to prosecute Lynne for breaking an agreement -- not a law -- and they tied her into 9-11 and scared up a vote of guilty. She's a political prisoner. She's an attorney. She's a grandma. She's not a crook.
Trina: I would agree with Mike -- not just because he's my son. But I'd add something else to Ruth's answer. Ruth has covered Lynne and I enjoy reading that coverage. But I had written about Lynne some time ago, early in my blog, and I really didn't think there was much more to add. I thought Ruth was covering it, doing a great job, and covering it all. I wrote "Silences on Lynne Stewart" only because I was here at C.I.'s for the vacation and encountered some friends of C.I.'s at one of the parties last week, friends who are National Lawyers Guild members and they were extremely pissed that the NLG was not advocating on behalf of Lynne or even raising awareness about the sentencing hearing. They also called out Marjoie Cohn for her silence. They had a whole list of people. So that gave me a new way to write about the topic. Ruth does a great job and I praise her for her work but, for me and maybe others, we feel Ruth's got it covered and there's nothing we can really add.
Jim: And, it's a miracle, Dallas wants to speak. This is the first time Dallas has ever spoken during a roundtable without prompting from C.I. first.
Dona: So shut up and let him speak.
Dallas: Yeah, first, Stan, like the blue. Wasn't aware you'd changed your site's template, it looks good. But to correct something that was said, Stan has written about Lynne at his site. In fact, he's written about her a few times including about meeting her in 2009.
Ruth: I am sorry. I really am.
Stan: Don't be. When you brought that up, I thought for a moment and then said, "Oh, I must have just mentioned that here." The meeting. That's all I remembered writing about.
Jim: Anything else, Dallas? Nope. Okay, that was Dallas. We offer to include him in the Third gang. He's a sounding board on everything, he's the one hunting down links in all the pieces except the ones Ava and C.I. write -- they do their own links unless they state otherwise.
Dona: Robert e-mailed that he is a huge fan of Ava and C.I.'s -- and he is, he's always writing about their articles -- but he feels we've been leaning on them too much lately expecting them to write multiple articles each edition. I've actually commented on this in roundtables and in Jim's "note to our readers." I agree completely. This issue, they'll have done at least four pieces. There's no excuse for that. That's not blaming them, that is blaming the rest of us. For example, we are supposed to have a big PTSD piece. We went to the hearing in DC last week. And planned for the article to be the big piece. We can't get it together enough to come up with a strong opening for the piece. We're blowing it. I don't make excuses for us. I've noted that Ava and C.I. have repeatedly saved the editions in the last two months and I've noted that we've over-relied upon them. When they came into the pitch session Saturday night, I hadn't read the entry at The Common Ills that was quoted in an e-mail a little while ago. In fact, when it was read in this roundtable was the first time I'd heard it. But that backs up what Ava and C.I. said when, during the pitch session, they said, "We will write . . ." and outlined what they were going to do. At that time, I said, "That's a lot and I really don't want to push that much on you." Their response was that each of those pieces -- except the TV piece -- was requested by friends and they'd promised to write them to ensure that they were written. That means, if they were writing it with all of us, it might not get written. Why? Because we'd lose focus or waste time or whatever. Ava and C.I. have already written three pieces and when they go to the fourth, they'll probably have written half the edition. Are we leaning on them too much? Hell yes.
Jim: And I don't disagree with Dona's opinion --
Dona: Oh, of course you do!
Jim: -- but Ava and C.I. have always been the calling card for this site. So let's not pretend that if they write four articles in one edition we're leaning on them but if they only do one then we're not leaning on them. You go through my "note to our readers" and you'll see time and again I'm writing that Ava and C.I. save the edition with their article. I understand Dona's point about wasted time and even agree with her on that. And I'm honestly worried about how we finish this edition because we have no Iraq feature and are we going to do that? Or are we going to pull something together? I have no idea.
Wally: I'm all for Lynne as the editorial but as long as we're going nuts and bolts on writing in this roundtable, I want to point out that this will be the fifth or sixth week in a row that we didn't run with C.I.'s editorial topic. I think we all need to agree that she needs to take it to The Common Ills and write about it there before someone else notices and makes that an editorial or article. For five or six weeks now, we've argued that it is a great topic and we've never done it.
Cedric: I -- Do I only talk when Wally does? I realized I was about to sound off and that thought just entered my head. But Wally and I talk about this stuff all the time. We write joint-posts together so we're always on the phone and we're always talking about everything. And I know what he's saying and I agree with him because we have talked about it. How did that happen? How did C.I. come up with a great editorial topic and we didn't write it. We didn't it write it once. For five or six weeks we've had one excuse after another not to write it. And this edition we worked on some things that became questionable early on and were obviously not working much later.
Jim: Cedric's specifically referring to a piece I thought we could do that came to me in a dream and would have been a fiction piece. It didn't work out. It absorbed a lot of time. My apologies; however, we are going to include fiction more often and not just over the summer. Each year we do a summer fiction edition. We had a lot of readers responding to that this year and we're going to try to do fiction regularly throughout the year. And Cedric and Wally are correct that C.I. came to us with an editorial on Iraq or Iraq-related which basically writes itself and we've never managed to pull it together enough to do it. And Dona just handed me a note saying it was time to wrap up. She points out Elaine and Stan barely spoke but did speak. Ava and C.I. are the only ones who did not and they stated ahead of time that they might not. They take the notes during roundtable pieces. And this is a rush transcript that you're reading.
