Hey --
Another Sunday.
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),
Mike of
Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of
Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of
Cedric's Big Mix,
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.
What did we come up with?
- Cindy Sheehan and her statement was strong enough that we didn't feel the need for two this week.
Okay. C.I. and I (Jim) roughed out this editorial late Saturday night. All the translations are from her. I would like to note what TV station the Minister of Human Rights spokesperson appeared on. It's one you can stream online because I saw it while C.I. was watching it online. (It may have been Alsumaria TV.) But she was translating what he (the spokesperson) was saying and we knew it would go in the editorial. The editorial was finished late tonight. C.I.'s been at the Grammys and she (and Jess and Ava) didn't help on the editorial -- the writing of it. Again, C.I. roughed it out with sources to cite with me Saturday night.
Ava and C.I. wrote this. They cover Morning Edition and Fox's Alcatraz. This is a really strong piece and all the more so when you grasp this is one of three pieces they wrote for this edition. Because they were cutting out early, they made a point to write three pieces.
This was Jess, Ava, C.I. and Wally's idea. And they had a few photos for it (we use two of those). The idea came to them last week and they thought it would make a solid article. It did and we thank them for the idea and would have loved their input on the writing of it. (That's not a complaint. Just noting it probably would have been tighter with help from the four of them.)
Praise Wally for this one. He brought a box back with him Saturday. When he saw me, the first thing he said was, "I've got something for the TESR Test Kitchen!" I actually liked these cookies a lot but I do eat fortune cookies.
Ava and C.I. didn't want to write anything on Whitney Houston who passed away on Saturday. They had no interest in it. There was talk of a roundtable on it. We tried that while they were working on the TV piece. It did not work out well. People spoke haltingly and often didn't finish thoughts. The news was too fresh. When Ava and C.I. finished the TV piece, they wrote another one. Then they rejoined us and found our roundtable falling apart. At which point, they said they'd grab Whitney. Mainly because they'd heard so many press distortions by that point. And some in the press were calling C.I. for help. One call I wish she'd have included in this piece was from a person with a daily (a weekly magazine reporter would also repeat this) claiming that Whitney's first album won the Rolling Stone magazine award for best album of 1986. C.I. couldn't stop laughing. She finally asked the man at the daily where he got that s**t? He told her it was on Crapapedia (he said Wikipedia, Ava and C.I. call it Crapapedia). He was telling the truth, I looked it up while he was still on speaker. But, as C.I. pointed out, you're talking about 1985 album. Rolling Stone is hugely sexist -- C.I. pointed out that Lauryn Hill lost to the Beastie Boys on Rolling Stone's year end awards -- and they're not really known for giving awards to African-American artists. "Set aside that it's an uneven album and grasp that millions were spent on it and Jann's no fan of Clive [Jann Wenner and Clive Davis, Wenner owns Rolling Stone, Davis groomed Whitney for stardom], Whitney's not a songwriter. And she's doing peppy pop. Rolling Stone didn't give her an award for that album. That's Crapapedia offering more crap. For 1986, the album was Paul Simon's Graceland. And in 1986 -- awards given then for 1985 year -- there were something like four or five albums -- one was Talking Heads -- and there was no Whitney on that list. If someone wants to try to argue 'readers poll!' the fact is that Tina Turner and Madonna were huge audience favorites in 1985 and 1986 and, no, Whitney wouldn't have had the popularity among Rolling Stone readers to win."
- Lynne's sentencing gets re-heard.
Their third piece. Approximately 30 of readers wrote in to say they were offended that Ava and C.I. saw Carnage since Roman Polanski was the director. They address that in this article.
That's tomorrow.
Senator Patty Murray holds a Town Hall.
The Drone War, repost from Workers World.
Mike and the gang wrote this and we thank them for it.
That's it for this week.
Peace.
-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and
C.I.
