Jim (Con't): Last week, we offered "The Black Roundtable" and "Book discussion." Both were very popular and we're glad. Due to some events last week, Ty and Betty would like to do another Black Roundtable and we're also hoping to do a book piece -- especially since Trina didn't participate last week because she'd been reading another book. We actually have a question on that but I'll let Trina go into that in a bit. Right now, we're starting with Cecil's e-mail, "I've noticed that if anyone speaks less than C.I. in any roundtable, it's Isaiah. I can get that he's probably more of a visual person since he does the comics and probably more comfortable with visual illustrations and that sort of thing as opposed to words but I thought I would point that out and also ask him how he makes time for all the comics he does. Oh, and tell him I love them all and my favorite of all time is Irma La Duce. And also please tell him to keep on with the Obama comics because not only do I love them and not only do I think fair is fair but I also think they do a real service and that he, Wally and Cedric and Ava and C.I. are the ones who have really carved out the space on the left to criticize Obama." Isaiah? And, FYI, we're inserting the "Irma La Dunce" comic of Bully Boy holding his dog Barney as he prostitutes national security.
Isaiah: Well thank you to Cecil for the kind words. I have done Sunday comics for Polly's Brew and El Spirito but I did those Saturday. I still don't have my Sunday comic for The Common Ills tonight. In addition, I need to do two in advance for TCI. One is actually several. I really wanted to do one of those this weekend but that's not going to happen. It was actually going to be two -- one for either possible outcome. But there was news yesterday that indicates I have at least another week before any outcome so that's good. But if I think about all of this and that I don't have a Sunday comic, I tend to freak out. So I just ignore it and try not to think about needing X number of comics. Sometimes it works but sometimes it doesn't. And Cecil's favorite comic is also one of Elaine's.
Elaine: I was just going to point that out. I actually have the original that Isaiah drew and colored in hanging, framed, in my office.
Dona: And, FYI, Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Hiding Behind The Leg Of Her Pantsuit is the biggest comic he's done in terms of e-mail responses. Jim and I did nothing but work the e-mail accounts for The Common Ills last week -- Ty had to grab everything here. The public account was all this hatred in the form of drive-bys that C.I. 'dared' to call out the attacks on two women who stated they were raped. And as we went through all of that -- along with Eli, Martha, Shirley, Heather, Morgan and Brady -- one of the constants was how loved Isaiah's comic was. I've never seen that many e-mails -- his comics are always popular -- on one of his comics. Martha estimated there were around 4,000 e-mails just on that comic.
Jim: Okay. Last week we did a book discussion and Trina loves books and book discussions but sat out because she hadn't read the book. She was reading Tariq Ali's The Obama Syndrome. Trina?
Trina: The way each edition goes is that Saturday night various ideas are pitched. Last edition, going in, we had no idea that there would be a book discussion. If I'd known that Roger Hodge's book was going to be discussed, I'd have read it. But I got it with Tariq Ali's book and I started with Tariq's book because I like his writing and I was reading it at my own leisurely pace because I was enjoying it so much. So when that book discussion was a go, I said it was my hope that we would do Tariq's book next week. And we may. If there's not time, Ava and C.I. have already told me it will take place on the Christmas edition that they steer. But we are hoping to do that. Some e-mailed asking if I was refusing to participate out of protest to Hodge's book. I hadn't read his book and I still haven't. After last week's discussion, I probably won't read it. As somone who didn't participate in that discussion, I found it very interesting to read and even listened to the portion in the audio version of Hilda's Mix. I wonder if anyone else had the same reaction?
Marcia: I did. I was really proud of the roundtable we did but I was also, "Hey, how did I miss out on that!" That was something and the message is consistent -- in that roundtable -- with the point we've been making which is, "You can't just pretend now that you're someone who told the truth. You need to own up to your lies, your claims, your attacks and your falsehoods or we don't have the time for you. And we certainly don't have the time for you to attack Hillary or Bill to justify your rather mild critiques of Barack."
Jim: Okay, Ty's officially with us. He was roughing out a piece he's going to write for this edition, another Ty's Corner. Ty, did any e-mail really stand out the most to you last week?
Ty: There were a number and I understand, let me just let off some steam here, I understand the need for you and Dona to help out exclusively with the e-mails at The Common Ills. For those who don't understand that, C.I. was one of the strongest defenders of the women the so-called left was attacking last week. And I know the public account of TCI was going crazy with attacks from those who don't believe rape ever really happens. But last week was pretty busy here as well. Everything got e-mail. Every article. And the book discussion and the roundtable both got more e-mails than any article we've ever done except for Ava and C.I.'s pieces. And then, this point needs to be made -- you'll love this, Jim -- Ava and C.I.'s "TV: SNL as a TGIF staple" got more e-mails in one week than anything they've ever written here before.
Jim: I haven't spoken to Ty about the e-mails, this is the first I'm hearing of that. And he's right I do love it. Ava and C.I. actually reviewed a TV show for last week and it was strong writing. But I begged them to set that aside -- it ended up running in a community newsletter -- and instead tackle SNL. It just felt to me like the topic was one they should run with. A natural for the readers and for them. Glad I was right.
Dona: Jim, should we continue to explore how great you are or does this hymn to self have a closing chorus?
Jim: Okay, okay. Ruth and Betty, Cougar Town [see "Cougar Town" and "Tom Hayden's dead chickens come home to rest"] -- why? That's a question from Jean who says she loves the show and from Allen who says he can't stand the show.
Ruth: Betty?
Betty: Go ahead.
Ruth: Okay. Why are we noting Cougar Town at our sites? Because we have gotten over our funk of The New Adventures of Old Christine being killed by CBS last spring. We loved that show and we blogged about it each week. It was the funniest show on TV. Because it had a female lead, Terry Gross and all of her little male TV critics were not going to praise it. One finally did -- after Betty especially called him out -- but he did so the week before it got the axe. This was a great show and did not get any buzz from the Water Cooler Set. And that is generally how it goes for shows starring women. So Courtney Cox leads the cast of Cougar Town, a show we love and we noted last year we loved it. We are doing our part to get some talk going on about the show.
Betty: Ruth said it perfectly. I can't believe we lost Julia's show. But we did. And we're still mad about that -- Ruth and I -- but we are aware that women are always the first attacked and we looked around and -- especially after CBS has decided to kill Medium -- we decided we needed to do something to show our support for a TV show and Cougar Town is our favorite on the air. We may grab Parks & Recreation when it comes back on the air. We'd told ourselves we would over the summer but it's taken forever for that show to come back on.
Jim: Betty also now covers Desperate Housewives, due a to a cast addition, right?
Betty: I never watched the show once until this season and they have me watching because they have Vanessa Williams in the cast. And Ugly Betty was a great show that I wish I had championed but it was a hit -- until they screwed around with it on the schedule -- and I never thought it would be axed like it was.
Jim: And we also have coverage -- in the community -- of sci fi or adventure shows. Mike covers the comedy-action-drama-romance Chuck, and he also covers Fringe and Marcia covers The Event and Stan and Mike will again be covering V when it comes back on. Stan, are you going to be covering anything else? That's a question from Hannah.
Stan: If readers of my site want it, I'll go back to covering The Good Wife. I do love the show but I'm one the people left behind when the digital switch took place. For economics, I let go of cable and my TV is old. I've got one of those boxes but it doesn't pick up my CBS station. So to watch The Good Wife, I'd have to watch online. And that's not the problem, remembering to watch CBS online is the problem. If they were up at Hulu like everyone else, I'd remember. But it's a great show and I loved covering it last season.
Jim: Okay now to Mike --
C.I.: Wait.
Ava: Yeah. Did Hannah not know that Stan's covering No Ordinary Family?
Jim: I don't know she didn't mention it.
Stan: Hey, even I forgot! Yeah. A lot of people think I threw The Good Wife away to cover No Ordinary Family. No. I just can't get CBS. At my blog I'm a little more straight forward about that show. My hopes lessen for it each week. They had a great episode, their best of the season, when Cybill Shepherd guest starred as Stephanie's mother. That allowed the core family to work together as a group and everyone to be equal which rarely happens in that show that spends far too much time on Jim and his 'manly' adventures.
Jim: Okay, Mike, you've covered Chuck forever now. You're "like the Chuck web expert at this point." And I'm quoting Bernie who e-mailed to ask why you started covering it in the first place and what you're thinking of this season?
Mike: Yeah. I have been covering it forever. That's due to the fact that Ava and C.I. tipped me off to it before it started airing. You can go back through my archives and see all of that. And I really did love it from the start. Bernie's question. Hmm. Season one was excellent. Season two was stronger. Season three was a huge disappointment. I consider it the season Ralph and Potsie took over Happy Days. Too much Jeff and Lester, too much Devin. Season four's gotten back on track in part because the cost cutting prevents Jeff and Lester from being on every episode. Thank goodness. The heart of the show is Chuck and Sarah. They are the spinning off points. You want to spend 30 minutes with Sarah's father? We're interested. You want to spend 30 minutes with Chuck's sister? We're interested. When we're getting back story on Jeff and Lester, we're just bored. There was an episode this season that made no sense at all: Devin's parents come for a visit. And we see them arrive, Morgan Fairchild and Bruce Boxleitner. I honestly thought they were going to end up being spies and part of the story. Because it made no sense to just bring them on all the sudden. But they did and they were in like one scene and then they were gone. Or maybe they've moved in and we just haven't seen it?
Jim: Marcia, you had nothing but praise from Donald who self-describes "a total geek" for your coverage of The Event. He feels it's the best show of the season and wishes it had more attention.
Marcia: Well thank you, Donald. I'm a sci fi fan, as I've noted at my site many times. When we've done theme posts on Wednesdays about poetry or short stories or books, I've generally gone with sci fi in every case. And I am loving The Event. I think it's actually a better show now then when it started. It picks up steam each week, although I believe it's now on hiatus until next year. One of the reasons I started watching it was our pitch sessions here. The ones Trina was talking about earlier. I missed the first two episodes of the show. I didn't know about it. Had missed all the hype. But in pitch sessions, Jim usually asks Ava and C.I. what they're thinking of writing about for their TV article and they generally have several ideas. They have repeatedly pitched The Event and something's gone in the real world and they haven't been able to cover it. So that's why I started watching, just the buzz from them on the show. Thanks to Hulu, when I started watching, I was able to catch up on the two I had missed. It's really a great show. If you caught the first episode and wished it were better and never watched again, you need to catch it now because it's everything you could have hoped.
Jim: Trina, Elaine and Kat, you don't cover TV. Kat, it was noted that you didn't by an angry e-mailer who didn't sign his or her name. And the e-mails were working from for this roundtable were all selected by Ty. I thought that was evident by Ty's remarks earlier but Dona slid me a note informing me that I should mention that and she's right. So, Kat, the e-mail was about you but it's also true of Trina and Elaine as well.
Kat: And true of Rebecca.
Jim: No. She covered Brothers & Sisters last week and is planning on covering it every week now. Am I correct, Rebecca?
Rebecca: Yes, you're a very careful reader. I had covered Heroes -- and Wally covered it for me at my site when I was in London for the work I did with the Labour Party. It got cancelled and it should have been cancelled. It was so bad at the end. In fact, when Nathan died, that was it, that should have been it. But I wasn't interested in anything until I caught Brothers & Sisters last Sunday. Sally Field was so funny in that episode and I thought, "Come on, two-time Oscar winner on each Sunday night? You can cover the show." So I will. People like it when you do that, by the way. It's a connection you can form with your readers. Take Mike, for example, there are people who don't agree with any of his politics, people on the right, who read his site just to get his thoughts on Chuck or Fringe or both.
Jim: And certainly, at our site, Ava and C.I.'s TV articles have been the calling card. But, Kat, back to you and Trina and Elaine.
Kat: I'm on the road. If I catch something on TV, I usually blog about it. I don't have time to watch something each week, sorry. Since C.I. got the new house, we're spending more time in the DC area but even that isn't always possible to plan as in, "I'll be in DC Tuesday! I can watch . . ." We're on the road speaking and I never know where we'll be too far in advance. And then every area has their own system for what's on what channel so it's just crazy.
Trina: I don't have time. I really don't. I watch the news -- usually The NewsHour and the CBS Evening News -- and that's about it for me. I'm helping my oldest son raise his daughter and I've got a lot of other things going on so I really don't watch.
Mike: And we've got a big TV in the living room that we -- the kids -- controlled for years and years. My oldest brother lives at home now and he's not controlling the TV. The rest of us don't live at home. But my folks raised eight of us and Mom had to put up with all these fights over the TV. It's not like she ever got to say, "It's Monday, I'm watching . . ."
Trina: That is true. If I was in there, in the living room, it was usually to settle an argument over who got to pick what was being watched and if I stayed it was just to make sure the argument didn't surface again. We had a small TV in our room that my husband watched games on. But we didn't have TVs in all the rooms until our oldest kids got older and they'd start some job and it seemed like their first purchase was either a TV or a stereo.
Jim: Elaine?
Elaine: I watch Chuck some because Mike loves it. We sometimes watch Fringe together. If he waits until Friday night to watch Fringe, I'll usually plug in ear phones and watch with him. But a lot of times he watches before that. I do group on Thursday nights, I can't catch it then. I can't catch it in the middle of sessions on Fridays. With Chuck, I usually catch it if he's watching it on TV Monday nights. I'm more of a movie person than a TV series person.
Jim: Ann, of course, follows Fresh Air, which is radio. In an e-mail, Ann, reader Joni wonders what happens in January of 2011?
Ann: Predictions? I see -- No, I'm joking. I know she's asking regarding Fresh Air. I'm so ready to move on from that awful show. January 2nd, we do our article here on Fresh Air. That may be it for me and that awful program. I'm considering other NPR programs. But I can't see doing Fresh Air much longer. That show drives me nuts.
Jim: I can understand why. Wally and Cedric were the subject of Marsha's e-mail. That's M-A-R-S-H-A and it's not our own Marcia. Marsha has written repeatedly over the year sure that Cedric or Wally was angry with Trina or Betty or Ann or whomever they accidentally left off "Recommended." Cedric and Wally do joint-posts. That means they write their posts together and they go up at both of their sites. They do humor writing, they then quote from the most recent "Iraq snapshot" by C.I. and then they provide community links under "Recommended." When they forget someone, all of the sudden, some people get suspicious. It's not just Marsha. But she wrote in yesterday to note that she was sorry for repeatedly assuming that Wally and Cedric were mad at someone or at what they'd written and that's why they'd refused to highlight whatever in "Recommended." Marsha came to that conclusion because Wally and Cedric always include their previous post under "Recommended" and they forgot to yesterday in "THIS JUST IN! BROKEN PROMISES!" and "He makes promises he doesn't keep."
Cedric: People really do assume that we do that on purpose, forget someone. I usually tolerate those e-mails when they come in. By "tolerate," I mean that I understand that someone's a big Rebecca fan or whomever and when we forget to link to them in "Recommended" someone's who's a big fan is upset by the oversight. So I don't take it too personally. But I use "tolerate" intentionally because we've forgotten Ann and I've gotten e-mails accusing me of "hating" her -- put that in quotes, they say I am "hating on her" and that I "hate" her. And I don't tolerate that. I'm just -- I know that C.I. once made a joke about how incestous it was all becoming -- a Fleetwood Mac reference, but if you're going to accuse me of hating someone, I think you should at least do your basic homework. Visiting Ann's site, on her profile, you'll see that we're married. So why are you accusing me of hating my wife? I mean, that makes no sense. Other than that, I understand when those e-mails come in. Someone's a big fan. I get it. I'm not bothered by it. But if you're a big fan of Ann's, you should have glance at her home page long enough to have grasped that we're married.
Wally: And you'd be surprised how often that happens, how often Cedric's accused of hating Ann by people who don't know they're married. What happens is that we're on the phone, Cedric and I. One of us, we rotate it, takes charge of writing up what we're doing. Now we don't know what we're doing at the start of the call. We're talking about what's in the news. One of us is flipping around online for news we might not have heard about while the other is assigned the job of preparing the post. Which means, on Saturday, I was in charge of the post and Cedric was searching the news. So, while we're riffing on news stories, I'm typing up "Recommended" and adding links and then I'm typing in "FROM THE TCI WIRE" and grabbing a section from the Iraq snapshot. And then, the last thing we do, we're writing our humor post. Now on Saturday, and Cedric I think this happens when you're doing the actual typing of the post too, what happenes is I'm doing "Recommended" -- which can be a pain in the ass, by the way -- and I'm stopping from time to time when Cedric's got an idea or when I just want to say something smart ass about the news. And then I go back to doing the Recommended. I left ours off at one of the times I stopped and didn't even notice. When I had it done, I sent it to Cedric and I'm figuring out my title and hitting post just as Cedric is copying and pasting it to his site and notices, "Hey, you forgot us."
Cedric: And I published it knowing that. But what Wally described, that's how it is. To do those links in Recommended, we're basically relying on C.I.'s site because she's noting all of the posts community wide. And we're copying and pasting, link by link. It's a time consuming process. When I'm the one that's pulled that duty, it's just like Wally was describing, you're starting and stopping on the links because you're also participating in the discussion of the possible news we can use in the post.
Ty: I'm jumping in. Jim, reader Marcel wonders about your last "Jim's World" and questions the wisdom of that post -- "writing about candy" -- and what he sees at the "increased commercialization of your online magazine." He goes on to note the Netflix feature as an example of that.
Jim: Really? Well, first off, I operate under the assumption that our readers are adults and can decide for themselves what to watch, eat or drink. I wrote about candy and it's a crime. Boo-hoo. I eat candy. I eat other things as well. But I'm not going to apologize because I wrote about eating candy. As for commericalization, I find that hysterical. But I will take a look at it, thanks Marcel.
Jess: If I could add something --
Jim: Please.
Jess: I do understand what Marcel's objecting to. I don't happen to agree with his take on it. I don't think Jim has any apology to make for writing about candy. If Dona still smoked and wanted to write a piece in favor of smoking, I wouldn't have a problem with that either. As Jim stated, we're supposed to be grown ups. On the Netflix issue ["Netflix plan that works for you"], Stan covers Netflix at his site. When we covered Netflix, we were doing it as reporting and trying to advise you on what deal would actually provide you something if you signed up. The MSM press on Netflix was, "Pay $7.99 and you can stream movies!" Our article was, "Actually, you can only stream a few movies and most of them aren't new releases." I follow Marcel's points, I just don't agree with them. I'll further add that, look at the shows being discussed at community websites. Stan's let go of cable. But Rebecca's not hurting for money, she's very wealthy. Marcia's not wealthy but she's got satellite TV, Mike and Elaine have premium whatever -- Elaine is wealthy and Betty's living here at C.I.'s with us so there's not a channel she can't get. Point? They're writing about broadcast TV. I know for a fact that one of Marcia and Rebecca's favorite shows is Damages. But it airs on FX, so they don't cover it. But ask them about Briar Rose and stand back because they'll be talking for hours. The same is true of other TV shows that are not on broadcast channels. That's because they're trying to follow Ava and C.I.'s pattern here which was to be accessible. So the idea that this site or any other has been 'commercialized' is really insulting.
Jim: Well said. Thank you, Jess. Ava and C.I. don't get to speak, we're out of time. We'll be sure to include them in more of the next roundtable. And we thank them for taking notes for this piece. Rush transcript.