Sunday, June 19, 2011

A note to our readers

Hey --

Another Sunday. We're publishing at what's becoming our usual time.


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?

Hillary Is 44 has long called out the nutroots and we felt they earned a truest this week and then some.
Remember in 2007 and 2008 when Keith Olbermann wouldn't drop the sexism? Remember how FAIR and Media Channel and The Overweight News Dissector couldn't call it out? Well Rachel Maddow's been getting away with crap for years now. (We've long called her out. One of Rebecca's first posts at her site was calling "big brain" out.) Bob Somerby refuses to play shirts and skins and calls Maddow out on her nonsense.



This is a really good editorial, I (Jim) say. It was easy to write, for a change, and it didn't require links and links and links. (Thank you to Dallas for hunting down our links.) We had an e-mail last week from someone who "just found" us online while looking for Iraq coverage. She wrote that, in her high school, Iraq's becoming a huge issue as it appears that all US troops will not leave at the end of the year. She expressed dismay over "all the silence on Iraq from The Progressive, The Nation, In These Times and the rest" with great eloquence. In many ways, that statement inspired this editorial. (We have the best readers.)

Ava and C.I.'s masterpiece. They worked two hours on this. In editing. Two hours editing. The writing edition started Saturday night. Our (Dona and my) baby woke up around midnight. Dona nursed, then I took rocking duty when the baby was still up. I fell asleep. Dona fell asleep. It was decided to send everyone off to sleep. Except Ava and C.I. figured they could do their TV piece and then go to sleep. When I woke up at five in the morning, they were just finishing it. I didn't read it outloud to anyone because they were the only ones up besides me. But I read over it and over it and loved it. But pointed out that this thing, when typed, was going to be longer than anything we'd ever done. They wrote in long hand and hadn't paid attention. It translated to 15 typed pages approximately. It required a severe edit (or we run it as it -- and I was fine with that). They spent two hours doing the edit. This really is a strong piece. It reflects on the three networks evening news -- commercial broadcast networks -- and on Iraq and on how an anchor distorts a story one night, makes the distortion bigger the next night and continues to distort. It's a must read.


Dona and Ty did this feature. It was the last thing done. How come? They did it because Dona said we had to cover some of the Congressional things C.I., Ava, Kat and Wally had been reporting on last week and because we had to have something that noted 9 US soldiers had died this month in Iraq. We were typing up pieces and getting ready to post. But we told them to go off and do it and we're glad they did. This is a really important article. It's also a rush transcript, which was not noted in it, that's how 'rush' it was.

Dona and Ty were doing their feature and Ty asked, "Could someone see about Bill's e-mail and working in a link to that Carly Simon site?" Jess finished typing two articles and then went into the e-mails, found Bill's, visited the Carly Simon website (Carly Simon Album Covers) and wrote up this article. We also put the site on our permalinks. Thanks to Bill for suggesting the website.

C.I. and Elaine were talking about a post Trina did two months ago. Two months ago. The rest of us are lucky to remember last week! But we agreed it was a shame we never did something on that topic -- "not even a short feature," Dona noted. At which point, C.I. said we could pull from Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States to do a short feature now. We readily agreed.

Iraq was covered in Ava and C.I.'s piece and in our editorial (and would then be noted in "The Week" but that hadn't been written or even thought about yet). I said it's a shame we can't do more Iraq coverage due to time running out. Jess noted there was so little of it and Ty wondered why no one was doing Iraq coverage, no new people. Somehow this led to C.I. pointing out The Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe was headed to Iraq for seven weeks and that Patrick Smith was reporting and Tweeting and that she wasn't sure most people were familiar with his work. We pulled it all together for a short piece.


Kat actually caught this. This is what she's referring to in the first sentence of her Saturday post "Jay The Fool Carney." Sorry but POLITICO and Burgess Everett ran an announcement. They did not report. There's been a change to Barack Obama's Twitter feed. Considering that we suggested such a change needed to take place in an article here last month, we're not surprised. Or caught off balance.

I wrote this up before we were all doing individual pieces. And before we took our sleep break in the writing edition. So Jess' feature and Dona and Ty's "The Week" plus Ava and C.I.'s TV report meant we all had individual pieces this week. Brendan's e-mail, as noted, clearly inspired this.


This is a reprint from Great Britain's Socialist Worker.

This is a reprint from Workers' World.


Mike, Elaine, Cedric, Ann, Wally, Marcia, Betty, Kat, Ruth, Isaiah, Stan and Rebecca wrote this and we thank them for it.



Peace.

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