Sunday, June 12, 2011

A note to our readers

Hey --

A long Sunday. We weren't planning on having a special edition or theme. But Ava and C.I. were writing their piece for this edition and stopped to inform us, "We've got one long piece. We think it would be smart to break it up into two pieces. And that's shelving one aspect we really wanted to tackle."

At which point, we started thinking about a theme. Dona was doing a piece on videos. Could we turn it into a TV theme? Yes, we could.



First up, we thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:

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),
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.


And what did we come up with?

Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan and, with her 60 Minutes ref, she fits into the TV theme which I (Jim) didn't even realize until now.
Justin Raimondo.

Having decided that this would be a TV-theme, our editorial went a different way than we'd thought it would Saturday. But that's fine.

Ava and C.I. take on racism, homophobia and two creatures from the Water Cooler Petting Zoo. If you pay attention, you'll notice that Bill Moyers is mentioned early on and the piece ends with Terry Gross.
In this piece, Ava and C.I. take on Terry and Bill, Goodman and Olbermann. And they note how the two TV personalities get booked on public radio where they are fawned over. These are two strong commentaries. If you read them closely, you'll probably easily see how the two could have been one very long article. What did Ava and C.I. put on hold? Actually two things. If forced to revist The Daily Show again (they'd prefer not to), they may bring up the issue of who gets booked and who doesn't and how unliberal the booking really is. They say if anyone wants to grab that and run with it now, have at it. The other aspect? NPR's continued reliance on men to define what is 'good' TV and what isn't. They hope to work that in next week but say "no promises."

Many readers who write in have wondered over the last many, many weeks why Dona stopped doing the e-mails? They knew she was taking a week off but it turned into months. What happened? During some of that, she gave birth (to our child!). She plans to return to the e-mails at some point but not just yet. After giving birth, she immediately started insisting she was fat (she wasn't) and two days after giving birth was working out. Two weeks ago, she said there might be an article in that. She was more than right. I love this piece and I hope you do too. I also want to note that Dona -- by her own choice -- never missed a week working on Third. (Nor did I. But while I do take part in parenting, I'm not the one who gave birth. Or, Dona just added, the one who breast feeds.)
Why is Whoopi opposing torture? We do. But we didn't play a cop in a movie who used torture to get her way.

When Ava and C.I. informed us that they'd have two TV pieces, we decided to do a TV Themes Roundtable. I started it up without much thought -- and ignoring Jess, Dona and Ty telling me TV theme songs wasn't enough for a roundtable -- but we managed to add to it as we went along and I think it turned out okay.

This was supposed to be 10. We had talked about this as soon as we decided we wanted to do a TV themed edition. We were done with the editorial and in the process of posting the articles when Mike hollered, "We never wrote the 10!" We didn't. And we were too tired for 10. So we came up with 5.

This was suggested, Eric Mann was, by several e-mails from Communist readers who felt that Mann not only betrayed the cause in 2008 but that he's never taken accountability. Looking over the public record for this article, we have to say they were right. (Thank you Shelley, Marshall and B. for e-mailing.)

A repost of a classic piece by C.I. from last week. (Continues the TV theme.)

A repost from Great Britain's Socialist Worker.
A repost from Workers World. We hope you use the links if you like a piece to look for other pieces. I feel the need to stress that after last week when their "Police & Rape" was read hear by 105 people -- Blogger/Blogspot has a feature that allows us to see what is most read. If you like the article, use the link and explore the site. And for the reader who e-mails every week with a rant about Workers World, we're not interested in your problems with them. They're of the left. We're of the left. It is within this site's mission to help promote the left. Workers World qualifies and we will continue to repost their work.

Mike, Elaine, Wally, Cedric, Marcia, Stan, Ann, Trina, Isaiah, Betty, Ruth, Kat and Rebecca wrote this and we thank them for it. (And if I left anybody out, next week I go back to saying "Mike and the gang").



So that's what we ended up with. Pretty good edition, I think. Next week? We don't know yet but for those of you e-mailing -- our e-mail address is thirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com -- to ask about our annual summer read edition, we will be doing that this summer as usual. It could be as early as next week. It could be later than that. This will be our seventh summer read edition. I'd like to tell you we've planne for it but the reality is that we'll pull it together as we go, the way we generally do.



Peace.

-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.
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