Truest statement of the week

If Democrats cared about the Supreme Court they would have done a better job of protecting their senate majority and the presidency itself. Instead they hope to eke out victories while neglecting the issues that the masses of Democrats want them to advance. Democratic Party corruption is at the root of the Republican control of the senate and the courts. All of their deal making has come back to haunt them and the rest of the country.
[. . .]

Democrats routinely keep leftists in line by invoking the federal judiciary. Anyone who wants peace, a protected social safety net or anything else the Democrats don’t care about is told to think about the Supreme Court and keep voting for the party that never fights for them. Democrats are the cause of most of our problems and finger pointing about lifetime appointments is just another ruse to silence anyone who is paying attention to their treachery.

-- Margaret Kimberley, "The Kavanaugh Farce" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).

Truest statement of the week II

If the promoters of the #MeToo campaign had been present at the trial of Tom Robinson in Harper Lee’s novel, they would have denounced Atticus Finch as a “rape apologist.” They would consider the “right” of Mayella Ewell to be believed to be “of far greater importance” than the right of Robinson to be presumed innocent. Finch would have been attacked for “harping on due process” in his appeals to the jury. When Finch posed difficult questions to Mayella and accused her of lying, the attorney would have been slandered for having engaged in “character assassination.” Brenner would say that Finch was helping “perpetrators” escape being “brought to justice.”

-- Eric London, "The #MeToo campaign versus the presumption of innocence" (WSWS).

A note to our readers

Hey --

Monday night.  And we're done. 

Let's 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.

And what did we come up with?

• Truest statement of the week

Margaret Kimberley gets another truest.

• Truest statement of the week II

So does Eric London.

• Editorial: If you are silent about the targeting o...

Iraqi women are being targeted and killed.  Can we not at least take a moment to note this?  If the world is watching, something may be done.

• TV: Who's destroying ABC?

Ava and C.I. answer the question.

• The CIS normative STAR IS BORN

A STAR IS BORN could have been so much more interesting.

• I HATE EVERYONE . . . STARTING WITH ME (Jess)

Jess reviews a book.

• Twitter's Biggest Crybaby

Mr. Jerome has an empty chair waiting.

• Tweet of the week

Margaret Kimberley again.

• Read a book?

Tracking the community book coverage.

• Video of the Week

Cat Power.

• THE PEACE REPORT

A Twitter feed to watch.

• Marcia reviews A STAR IS BORN

Reposting Marcia's film review

• This edition's playlist

What we listened to while working on this edition.

Peace,





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

Editorial: If you are silent about the targeting of Iraqi women, you don't support women

ll

Link to headline article

Former Miss Iraq flees country after models' murderA former Miss Iraq has fled her country days after a string of murders that targeted female models. Shimaa Qassem left for Jordan, the privately-owned Rudaw website reported…

monitoring.bbc.co.uk

Oct 08, 2018

Women are yet again being targeted in Iraq.

Fuad Alakbarov ⁠⁠‏Verified account @DrAlakbarov Sep 29

Three well-known women involved in the beauty industry were reported murdered in #Iraq in last 30 days: Today: Tara Fares, 22, blogger and model Wednesday: Suad al-Ali, human rights activist 4 Weeks ago: Rafeef al-Yaser, surgeon and beauty expert.

6 replies77 retweets64 likes

Who will notice?  Who will care?

In the US, vain assholes like Amy Siskind whine and fret over Brett Kavanaugh being put on the Supreme Court.

w-w-w-what will this mean for our abortions!!!!

Shut the f**k up you stupid bitches.

You'll either fight as women have in the past or you'll cower.

In the meantime, Iraqi women really are being targeted and you would know that if just for once in your damn lives you put someone else first.


We've always wondered if Amy was a racist.  We've wondered that since 2008 and for good reason.  Recently, she was called a racist online -- and for good reason.  Seems she'd help women and herself if she could learn to focus on non-White women for even just one Tweet.

We've never thought Alyssa Milano was a racist.  We've just thought she was incredibly stupid and eager to support and cheer on any war she could.  She poses as a voice for women but even with hundreds of Tweets in the last few days, she's been unable to make time to Tweet about Iraqi women.

It's a small world in Alyssa's mind -- a small world that only includes the US.


Sunday,  Margaret Griffis (ANTIWAR.COM) reports, "In Basra, gunmen killed a woman who owned a beauty shop."  Nishita Jha (BUZZFEED) notes:

“All women entering public life are targets,” Hanaa Edwar, a women’s rights activist based in Baghdad, told BuzzFeed News. “Fares had more than 2 million followers. All of the women killed were courageous, ambitious women with strong personalities.”
As a consequence, Edwar said, many Iraqi women are withdrawing from public life.
“We have seen so many businesswomen in Basra stop their activities; young women in media have gone into hiding; women are deactivating or changing their social media profiles. Some of them have changed homes, are living low-key and under the radar. These killings are spreading fear and terrifying young women and feminists.”




No one's asking the vast useless women in the United States to go to Iraq and lay their bodies on the line to protect Iraqi women.  We're just asking them to be aware and note what these women are going through.

TV: Who's destroying ABC?

In March 1981, Rona Barrett infamously broke the news that a psychic, Beverly Dean,  was running ABC.  Were she on NBC’s TODAY SHOW currently, her breaking news would be that an idiot, Channing Dungey , was running ABC.  She makes that ever more clear with each passing day.

Take Fridays.  She’s decided to bring back TGIF – Thank Goodness It’s Friday.  She even brought some old faces on for the promos – people who used to appear on TGIF programs.  They aren’t on any now.

TGIF programming began in 1989 and would go on to offer shows such as FAMILY MATTERS revolving around Jaleel White’s Urkel, BOY MEETS WORLD revolving around Ben Savage’s Cory and Danielle Fishel’s Topanga, STEP BY STEP revolving around Staci Keanan’s Dana and Sasha Mitchell’s Cody,  and SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH revolving around Melissa Joan Hart’s title character.  As the nineties wound down, so did TGIF.  In 2003, they briefly tried to bring it back with HOPE & FAITH, GEORGE LOPEZ, LIFE WITH BONNIE, LESS THAN PERFECT, 8 SIMPLE RULES, COMPLETE SAVAGES and MARRIED TO THE KELLYS.  It was a failure, a complete failure. 

HOPE & FAITH was often funny, that wasn’t the issue.  The issue was this wasn’t TGIF.  It was never going to be TGIF.  It lasted two years and was quickly gone, a failure. 

It takes a real idiot not to learn from mistakes.  Enter Channing.  She’s returned the TGIF logo.  She hasn’t learned a damn thing. 

Restarting TGIF, for the idiot Channing, meant adding FRESH OFF THE BOAT and SPEECHLESS to the line up that already includes the hour long CHILD SUPPORT and 20/20.  Let’s review.

CHILD SUPPORT is a game show starring Fred Savage.  Fred starred in THE WONDER YEARS which was a sitcom that did not air as part of TGIF.  20/20 is ABC’s attempt to be 60 MINUTES.  

Neither screams “TGIF!”  Honestly, they don’t even whisper it. 

To this mix, she adds two struggling, low rated sitcoms and calls it TGIF. 

Why in the world would moving SPEECHLESS to Friday nights increase the ratings?  It should have gotten the axe at the end of season one after it’s 7.8 million viewers for the debut fell to four million by the end of the season.  Season two saw it frequently struggle with three million viewers.  Moving crap to Friday nights does not make anyone say THANK GOODNESS IT’S FRIDAY!

FRESH OFF THE BOAT has similar ratings problems.  This is season five for the show – a show that loses about a million with each season debut episode and then struggles further the rest of the season.  It ended last season with 3.6 million viewers.  These are flop numbers.

So two shows that should have been axed forever ago are being carried by Channing for what reason? 

And why dump them on Friday as part of a TGIF banner?

SPEECHLESS showed up last Friday with Minnie Driver dragging the gang to London so she could make nice with her father.  That’s not TGIF material.  It may be GOLDEN GIRLS material.  Minnie’s passed the mid-point for middle age, after all. 

How stupid is Channing?

Remember when we went over the golden era of TGIF above?  The focal points were Urkel, Dana, Cody, Topanga, Corey, Sabrina, etc.   All but Cody were kids.  (Cody was a young adult Dana fell in love with.)  The shows focused on kids.  Kids watched because the shows focused on them.  How hard is that to grasp?  It’s fairly obvious. 

More to the point, the shows featured break out characters.  Urkel was someone kids loved, for example.  FRESH OFF THE BOAT and SPEECHLESS have both been on for years now, there are no break out characters.  That’s why around Staci Keanan’s Dana continued to matter to audiences even after Sasha Mitchell’s character was written off the show.

How do you miss that?  In 2003, when ABC attempted –and failed – to resurrect TIGF, they missed it.  You’d think Channing could learn from that but she appears incapable of learning.  And the proof is in the ratings:

ABC’s revived TGIF lineup got off to a rough start, with relocated comedies Fresh off the Boat (0.6, 2.9 million) and Speechless (0.5, 2.5 million) both down sharply from their previous averages to mark across-the-board series lows. At 9 PM, Child Support (0.4, 2.1 million) was down nearly 50% from its season average on Friday last winter. The performance of the four shows was below that of Once Upon a Time and Marvel’s Inhumans in the time period last fall and it was also below the two-hour documentary special Truth and Lies: Jonestown, Paradise Lost (0.6, 3.1 million) the network aired from 8-10 PM last Friday.

That’s from Nellie Andreeva’s report for DEADLINE.

 Women’s March on the Pentagon Retweeted

Women’s March on the Pentagon‏ @WomenMarch4Paz Oct 7

Join us at the Pentagon on October 21st. Hear from Mnar Muhawesh and others as we call for an end to the bipartisan war machine. @MnarMuh @MintPressNews #WomenRise4Peace https://www.marchonpentagon.com/march 

4 replies58 retweets59 likes

  

Those are awful ratings for any network except THE CW.  For ABC, they’re worse than awful because people do tune in on Friday nights, as Nellie Andreeva notes, they just tune in for CBS and to FOX.  In fact, FOX has the highest rated program of the night: LAST MAN STANDING.

The crash you hear is Channing tossing everything on her desk against the wall.

LAST MAN STANDING would be a great TGIF program because the kids on the show are so popular.  And it is a hit Friday night program. 

If that doesn’t bother Channing, certainly the fact that this hit show used to be on ABC until she cancelled it has to bother her.

That’s right, ABC had the biggest hit of Fridays until Channing cancelled it.  Now FOX has the program and now FOX has the highest rated program on Friday nights.  And Channing?

Take it away, Rona.

Rona Barrett, “I am breaking the news today that an idiot is running – and ruining – ABC. . . ”

The CIS normative STAR IS BORN

In the most honest moment of 2018's A STAR IS BORN, Bradley Cooper darts into a drag club.



Sadly, after that his character is supposed to be in love with Lady Gaga's character and only the Harlequin Romance crowd is going to buy that.

In her review of the film -- "An Audience Is Bored" -- Marcia tries to figure out why the film was remade yet again?

It's a very good question.

If there was any reason to remake it, it was to add a modern spin on it.

And the best way to do that?

Make it a story of an up and coming actor.  One who falls for an older actor, an established actor, one who is gay and out of the closet.

Cast Dennis Quaid or someone in that age range for the established star.  Bradley Cooper can play the up and comer.

Bradley's got a future in front of him, his agents insist.  He could be the new Batman!  He could be anything and everything, the biggest star in the world . . . provided he stays in the closet.

That adds a tension -- something missing from the latest remake -- and updates it.

And at the end, after the Dennis Quaid character has died, you've got Bradley announcing to the world who he is and who he loved.

That's as powerful as Judy Garland's climatic moment.

Doing something like that would have given this remake purpose and scope.

Instead, Bradley Cooper, as a director and co-screenwriter, has just retold the same story that the previous three films told better.  He's added nothing at all.  He's just picked the bones of those who came before.

I HATE EVERYONE . . . STARTING WITH ME (Jess)

Joan Rivers was a hilarious comedian.  I almost didn't know that.  Growing up, we could watch PBS -- anything on PBS -- and that was it.  If I knew Joan at all it was from Mel Brooks' film SPACEBALLS.

And then Ava and C.I. wrote a piece calling her out over some remarks made on WBAI.  C.I. knew Joan and she immediately heard from her on the phone.  They debated the remarks and Ava and C.I.'s contention that it was hateful.  Joan's attitude was that it was funny.

I know that because she followed up with e-mails to this site.  I would reply to them.  She was very funny.  And she eventually took her non-defense and made it into the book I HATE EVERYONE . . . STARTING WITH ME.  She e-mailed a little while after it came out and I told her I wasn't sure if Ava or C.I. had read it yet but I'd let them know she wondered what they thought.  She e-mailed back, "No, dummy, what did you think!"  :D



I loved it and I told her that.

This is a great book.  It's even funnier in softcover because more was added.

Joan saw everything as material for jokes.  If you want to judge her or if you're sensitive, don't read her book.  She's about being funny and she's hilarious here.  I love her comments about celebrities -- from Mickey Rooney all the way through the cast of GLEE.  I love her breakdown of every state in the union and -- Hell, I love it all.  This is a hilarious book.

Need an example?

I hate narcissists.  They never talk about me.

That one kills me.

Here's another.

I hate the Emmy Awards ceremony.  It's just an evening to honor actors who are too old, short, homely or uninsurable to work in movies anymore.  I keep mine on the mantle above my fireplace.


It's a very funny book and she was a very funny lady.

I'd call I HATE EVERYONE . . . STARTING WITH ME  a humor classic and a great way to get to know one of the best comedians ever.

Twitter's Biggest Crybaby

Mr. Weeks  ✊🏽‏ @MrDane1982 11h11 hours ago

In 2000 3rd party voters gave us Bush and Iraq In 2010 3rd party gave us an Historical gains of Republicans in congress In 2016 3rd party gave us Trump and Neil Gorsuch & Brett Kavanaugh The problem are not Republicans its the people who say they're on our side who f**ks us

42 replies283 retweets948 likes

We like to think of him as Mr. Jerome because he's like the hair dresser you try to avoid because he rants the same rant every time but, sure enough, it's a Saturday and there's no one else available so you sit in his chair telling yourself you can tune him out if it means not waiting around an hour.  But the thing is, you can never tune him out.

The Green Party is a political party.  For all of Mr. Jerome's foot stomping tantrums, it is a political party and it does have members.

They don't have to vote for Democratic Party candidates.

Third Party Voters did not give the world the Iraq War.  Bill Clinton's work in the 90s. Al Gore's 2002 speech (when he was in favor of it) and Democrats in Congress joined with Bully Boy Bush, the corporate media and Republicans in Congress to give us the Iraq War.

The 2010 mid-term had nothing to do with TPVs.  Mr. Jerome should stick to warming his hot comb.  He really is that stupid.  Mid-term elections are a judgment on the party holding the White House.  That's a historical fact.  We get that Mr. Jerome's too busy studying SOUTHERN HAIR to do much political research but that is the reality.

Third Party Voters did not give anyone Kavanaugh.  Trump and the US Senate did.  TPVs had nothing to do with the Senate vote.

It's funny watching Mr. Jerome stamp his dainty feet and howl at the moon.

As for Mr. Jerome's claim of anyone being someone "who f**ks" him, we'd argue he hasn't gotten any since Bill Clinton was in the White House.

Tweet of the week

Margaret Kimberley‏ @freedomrideblog 1h1 hour ago

Dear democrats, Remember that you hate rapists. So you won’t be attending the new Bill and Hillary tour, right?

3 replies52 retweets120 likes

Read a book?

Readers have e-mailed us asking for more book coverage at community sites.  We've passed this request on.

So far, the book coverage includes:

"I HATE EVERYONE . . . STARTING WITH ME (Jess)" -- Jess.

"Parker Posey's YOU'RE ON AN AIRPLANE" -- Mike.

"Sally Field IN PIECES" -- C.I. 

"Neil deGrasse Tyson and his superficial book" -- Betty.

"Alice Walker's The Chicken Chronicles" -- Marcia.

"The really bad book The Bridge" -- Ann.

"The Third Hotel by Laura Van Den Berg" -- Trina. 

"T.J. Berry's Space Unicorn Blues" -- Marcia.  

"HELLO GORGEOUS by William Mann" -- Stan.

"CLEOPATRA: HISTORIES, DREAMS AND DISTORTIONS" -- Mike.

"Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's and the Dawn of the Modern Woman Paperback" -- Ann.

"No one Peter Bogdanovich knows is ever gay" -- Marcia.

"Seymour Hersh meanders throughout REPORTER: A MEMOIR" -- C.I. 

"Dusty (by Karen Bartlett)" -- Marcia.

"Media critiques -- Nora Ephron's SCRIBBLE SCRABBLE" -- Mike.

"Judy Garland (the biographies)" -- Kat.

"JEAN HARLOW: TARNISHED ANGEL" -- Betty.  

"UNCOMMON TYPES: Let's kill whomever taught Tom Hanks to type" -- Elaine.

"THE YELLOW WALLPAPER" -- Marcia.

"Anne Sexton: THE COMPLETE POEMS" -- C.I.

"Charlotte Chandler's MARLENE" -- Elaine.

"A sexist woman writes She's a Rebel and distorts music history" -- Ann.

"barbara ehrenreich's 'natural causes'" -- Rebecca. 

"Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook" -- Trina.

"IN SEARCH OF OUR MOTHERS' GARDENS" -- Elaine.

"Blackfish City" -- Marcia.

"THE CHICKEN CHRONICLES by Alice Walker" -- Ruth.

"Harry Belafonte" -- Mike.

"THE SAME RIVER TWICE (Alice Walker)" -- Isaiah.

"Elaine Weiss' THE WOMAN'S HOUR: THE GREATEST FIGHT TO WIN THE VOTE" -- Ruth.

"Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II" -- Ann.

"Dancing with Demons: The Authorized Biography of Dusty Springfield" -- Marcia.


"Good for Jimmy Stewart, bad for readers" -- Stan.

"Conversations with Toni Morrison" -- Marcia.

"Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream" -- Ann.

"He Ran All The Way" -- Trina.



And we'll also note Ann's "How a book store could stay alive in today's economy" about the book business.