Roundtable

Jim: Roundtable time.  Roundtable is limited to Dona, Ty, Ava, C.I. and our erstwhile band member Jess who's joining us for this roundtable.  First up, "MEDIA: Fred Kaplan and other Scurrilous Whores" went up last week.  It was the only thing that went up.  Dona?

Dona: Ava and C.I. wrote that on Sunday.  It covered the movie SNOWDEN and the attacks on the film and on Ed Snowden.  We've long supported whistle-blower Ed Snowden.  They were ready -- Ava and C.I. -- with that on Sunday.  By Monday, we still didn't have our act together here.  So hours into Tuesday morning, Ava and C.I. posted their piece.

Ty: Among the reasons?  Our readership is more likely to go to the movies during the week than on weekends.  I work for a studio and a number of people in the office read this site.  They were all coming up Tuesday and saying, "They are right" -- Ava and C.I. -- "because this really is a weekday film."  And it turns out that this is true.  SNOWDEN made around 7 million last week -- a little over three million was made during the week and Tuesday was one of its strongest days, taking in over a million in ticket sales.  Jess?

Jess: Our original audience was college students back when we were college students.  I work now, Ava's on the road during the week -- she, C.I., Wally and Kat speak out against the ongoing wars.  If I'm seeing a movie, it's going to be during the week.  It's easier to get a babysitter if we need one, it's easier to get in, you have less pre-teens to fool with.  They made an argument and they needed to get it out, Ava and C.I., for the film and they needed to do it as soon as possible because the Fred Kaplan whores were trying to destroy the film, to bury it because they don't want the facts to get out.

Dona: So in reply to those who worried, no, we weren't upset.  Or I wasn't.  Ty wasn't.  Jim may have been.

Jim: I was ticked.  I often am.  But the point was, "This is ready, this needs to be up."  Another point was that we need to get things posted and if we don't have a great edition, so what?  We need to be up on time.  I get that.  I should note that we are late this week due to Ava and C.I.  They both caught a nasty flu on the road and didn't write their piece until Tuesday.

Dona: Not that we had content ready.  Let's be clear on that.  There was a theme we were supposed to have done last time and did not.  We were supposed to carry it out this week.  Ava and C.I. worked on roughing out what sort of pieces we should have and then said, 'We're sick, let us know when you're done and we'll write our piece.'

Jim: Right.  But, yes, I was ticked.  Ticked that they posted it.  It's their piece, it was done, we were late, they had every right to post it.  In fact, I'm kind of surprised that they didn't post it at THE COMMON ILLS.  It was a huge piece -- in terms of writing, yes, but I'm speaking in terms of views.  It's a shame we didn't have content to go with it but that's just how it goes, I guess.  We're going to do that more and more, by the way.  If Ava and C.I. had been well, we would have done it this week.  We actually could have posted at 7:00 pm EST on Tuesday night but we wanted to have this roundtable to address a number of issues being raised in e-mails.  Our e-mail address is thethirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com but we can't get into it currently.

Ty: As always, you can use common_ills@yahoo.com and we'll get those e-mails which a number of you like Rachel already grasped when she didn't get her usual reply from Jim or me at the THIRD e-mail address.

Dona: Yahoo.  Since the end of last week, we've been locked out.  Today we just get error messages.  We're apparently one of the accounts effected or punished by their security breach from two years ago that they just announced.

Ty: So Rachel wants to know if "the band is breaking up?"

Jim: Not yet.

Dona: Maybe next week.

Jim: Jess, are you in or out right now?

Jess: I'm here for the roundtable.  I'll lay down a few bass notes.  Other than that I'm not making promises.

Ty: And Ava and C.I.?

Ava: We're tired.  This wasn't supposed to be a never ending website.  We started in January of 2005 and thought we'd be done before 2008.

Dona: And that US troops would be out of Iraq so we were wrong on both counts.

Ava: But it's 11 years.  And every week, C.I. and I have to write about media.  For the next few weeks, it should be easier because the fall TV season has started.  And next week, especially, we're planning to focus on two new shows that we really love.  But when you ask us -- like Jim did -- can we find a way to cover SNOWDEN, the film, we have to do it in a media critique manner and that's a shelf-life, it comes with a shelf-life.  We need to get it up when we write it.

Jim: We asked some of our regular e-mailers if they had any questions other than are we breaking up. Reader Brody wanted to note this from a July 2006 piece you and C.I. wrote about SUPERNATURAL: "We're not sure what to make of this show. On the one hand, it's like really bad gay porn where the leads forget to take their clothes off. On the other, it's as though someone had a secret fondness for The American Girls."  Brody found THE AMERICAN GIRLS on YOUTUBE and agrees it shares a lot with that show but he points out that the first part, the gay porn, quote, "How did they pick up on that?  That was the first season of the show.  What's kept it alive is all the gay porn fan fiction with MPREGs and all the rest."

C.I.: We picked up on it by watching it.  It sold something more than brotherhood between Dean and what's his face.  That's what the most zealous fans picked up on.  I find it interesting, by the way, that the mountains of fan fiction that exists today appears to largely be written by women.  That would be an interesting sociology paper, how the female fans of SUPERNATURAL want to see the two male leads in a loving and sexual relationship.

Dona: We should note that Ava and C.I. are taking notes for this transcript piece so when one speaks, the other's jotting.  They'll turns answering any questions.

Ty: And back to the point, it's Dean and Sam.  And, as a gay man, I do find the actor who plays Dean appealing but Sam's more for the ones who would have thought Anthony Perkins was sexy back in the day.

Ava: You mean like Paul Newman and Tab Hunter who had sex with Perkins, or the teeny boppers who had crushes on Perkins?

Ty: I was referring more to the teeny boppers.

Jim: Welcome to the we-don't-give-a-f**k period of THIRD.  I'm not joking on that.  We don't anymore.  We're tired of pretty things up.  We've noted before, for example, that Paul Newman slept with men but I don't believe we've named anyone.

Dona: But these days, we just don't care anymore.  So Jane Fonda, you slept with Shelly Winters and the man in bed with you was one of her husbands not Roger Vadim.  So when you gonna get honest about that, dear?  Or are you just going to keep pretending publicly that you only hopped into bed because Roger Vadim was such a mastermind of your life?

Ty: We just don't give a f**k anymore.  Jane writes a book and 'forgets' she slept with women?  That's on you, embarrassing hag.   And it's doubtful she would have even been semi-honest in her 'autobiography' -- ghost writers are so good, aren't they -- if John Phillips hadn't published his book in the 80s where he recounted being in bed with Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda, Michelle Phillips and Roger Vadim -- read PAPA JOHN.

Dona: We're just tired of all your fake assery and all your lying.  And you can tie into Iraq.  You can tie into your whorish ways, Jane Fonda and all the rest, your refusal to Barack accountable on the Iraq War, your decision to whore for War Hawk Hillary after saying the Iraq War mattered, we just don't give a damn anymore about your haggish ass and just wish you'd go away or do you really think your increasingly embarrassing performance in your NETFLIX TV show is quality acting?  Clearly Emmy voters don't think so.

Jim: Ani DiFranco was someone we loved.  And we knew she'd supported Ralph Nader and that didn't bother us one --

Jess: I supported Ralph.

Jim: Jess supported Ralph, couldn't vote in 2000, wasn't old enough but he supported Ralph.

Jim: But we were Ani fans.  It made since that she'd support Ralph.  He was an independent candidate, she was an independent artist.

Ty: Then she supports John Kerry, then Barack Obama and now Hillary Clinton.  She's dead to us.


Jess: And it didn't have to be that way.  I think Conor Oberst -- of the band Bright Eyes -- drank way too much Kool-Aid around the time Ani DiFranco was embarrassing herself.  But he at least had the good sense to reject refills and spoke out:

You'll do good business as an apologist 
If you exaggerate their facts, if you perpetuate their myth 
They made activism trite 
They made honor optional 
They made propaganda news 
They made science radical


Jess (Con't): That's from "The Left Is Right" off the album he did with his other group Desaparecidos.  And he called out everything on that album.

Dona: While Ani DiFranco tried to convince you that sitting back and cheering for Barack was activism and, by the way, the title of the album is PAYOLA, the album "The Left Is Right" appears on.

C.I. And Conor's RUMINATIONS comes out October 14th.

Jim: Expecting integrity from an artist isn't too much.  Ani is one more fake ass whose betrayed everything she stands for.

Ty: And let's toss Joan Baez on that list.  She endorsed Barack Obama and she's never called him out.  What a whore.  The Drone War doesn't bother her.  I think she endorsed him because she thinks he's a "Negro."  I use that word intentionally because I've loathed Joan Baez since she went on Laura Flanders' radio show during Camp Casey and Laura asked her about issues and Joan said something like, "You mean Negroes" -- she used that word -- and started laughing.  That's a sign of how some people are in their own bubble.  Everyone kisses Joan's ass which is why she doesn't get how offensive some of her s**t is.

Dona: Mickey wrote Tuesday of last week, when we could still read our e-mails, and he wanted to say that it seemed like we just hated people because they liked Hillary Clinton.  That's not true but Ill let someone else respond.


C.I.: We haven't said a word against Rickie Lee Jones.  She's a Hillary supporter.  She was one in 2008, as well.  I'm not seeing anything wrong with what she's doing.  What we're objecting to are hypocrites.  Cher supports Hillary.  I have no problem with that.  I have many friends who will vote for Hillary -- and a few who whisper they're voting for Donald -- it's not the end of the world to me.  Unless you're a hypocrite.

Jess: Authenticity used to matter.  Now it's a 'brand.'  Well, Jane Fonda, if it's your brand then be authentic.  Or do we have to wait for your next damn proclamation of "My eyes have just been opened!"  How many times has she claimed it.  She supposedly cared about the Iraq War.  She refused to support Hillary in 2008 due to the Iraq War and now that Hillary has demonstrated her support of the Iraq War was not a loose strand but the very core of her being, Jane's all rah-rah.  It's like shut up.  I can understand on Rickie Lee.  I can understand on Cher.  I can understand on anyone who supported Hillary in 2008 even because that was so brutal.  And I'm not going to knock those people.  But if you claim to be some sort of social justice activist and you're telling people to vote for a War Hawk, you're just a whore.

Ava: If you say you are antiwar, as Jane Fonda did in her DC speech in 2007, then we expect you to be antiwar.  But she's not.  And we don't have time for your fake asses.  We don't have time for your bulls**t careers.  We don't have time for your bulls**t.  However long this site continues, you can expect us to be even more vocal because like the bulk of America, we are disgusted.  The whores don't get it, the Johnny Nichols, the Ruthie Conniffs, they don't get how they are being tuned out because they are whores.


Jim: And Ruth Conniff is a damn good example.  Look at what she wrote against Hillary in 2008 as opposed to the way THE PROGRESSIVE kisses her ass now.  But, Ava, this feeling is growing and it's growing across the country and it's something that you witness first hand.

Ava: About three years ago, maybe four, there was hesitancy when people would speak.  They'd say, "I subscribe to THE NATION but . . ." And then they'd list all the ways the magazine betrayed the left, betrayed causes and apologized for the establishment.  That hesitancy has vanished.  The Katrina vanden Heuvels are hated by politically aware youth in this country.  They are liars who whore and think they can get away with it, think people forget what they said before.  There is no forgetting in the digital age, everything's searchable or cached and their hypocrisy is killing them.

Ty: And let's not leave the blessed Bill Moyers out.  He really wants open debates this go round.  But when an African-American was running for president in 2008, he didn't want them.  He was for bi-racial Barack Obama.  And he didn't care that Cynthia McKinney was shut out.  He didn't even care that Ralph Nader was.  Now he's whining about the debates in that whining way he has.  He should go back to blackmailing gay men the way he did under LBJ.

Jim: So that's where we are currently.  We're late, but we plan to still be here.  And we really don't feel like stomaching the b.s.  This is a rush transcript.