Frankly the most irritating thing about that site is the lack of an email or even comments. I think there is some cowardice in failing to have ANY mode for response or feedback, so I appreciate that you have an email address you provide.
The Nation wrote that last Monday (to C.I.) about us. Well, get on your pony and ride. Get on your pony and ri-i-i-ide. ("Too Late," written by John Phillips, recorded by the Mamas and the Papas on The Papas & The Mamas.)
First of all, we do have an e-mail address posted on our profile.
C.I. got an "Oops!" e-mail after the original from The Nation noting that we did have one.
After we were said to be cowards. The Nation called us cowards? Fine by us. They did the same with Ehren Watada. We'll happily stand with Ehren Watada any day, any hour.
Here's the deal on the e-mail address. It was up when this site started. Awhile back, Blogger/Blogspot made everyone using them switch to Beta. All community sites switched to Beta. When we did, it disappeared the e-mail address from our profiles (all profiles). We never go to them, we had no idea it had happened.
An organization wrote C.I. (in May) about something at another site and noted that there was no e-mail address posted for the site. Jess read the e-mail (Jess and Ava are among those helping C.I. with e-mails), called C.I. who had a few minutes before speaking with some college students about the illegal war. C.I. gave a bit of reply. Ava helped Jess round out some points because she knew what C.I. was talking about. But on that day, all sites (except Kat's) were informed that there was no e-mail address.
As Mike noted that same day, all anyone had to do to contact Rebecca (that's what the e-mail was about) was search her site's name and e-mail address ("Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude" "e-mail") on Google and the address was right there. You didn't even have to click on a result for the search page. When Jess read the e-mail from The Nation, the first thing he did was search "The Third Estate Sunday Review" "e-mail" on Google and there our address was. The second thing listed. And, no, you didn't have to leave the search page to find it.
The Nation wrote last Monday which was July. Our e-mail address has been back up since May. Others at The Nation have written to us in the last six months, readers have written us and all have apparently been able to do a search to find an address.
For whatever reason, The Nation couldn't even click on our profile to get our address which was up last Monday, was up all last month and was up for some of May.
We could call names here right back at The Nation, but let's move on.
We're cowardly for not having an e-mail address (we do have one) and for not allowing comments?
We don't allow comments. We've been over this before.
You'd think the e-mailer would have paid attention to what hurt Cindy Sheehan online, The Nation did write about it after all, but apparently, paying attention isn't a strong suit.
The Common Ills was the first community site. It is not a blog. When it went up, C.I. thought it would be. Comments were allowed. (Sorry to our older and recent readers, we've been over this ground before, but some, like The Nation, are really slow.) Why did comments get pulled from The Common Ills?
Because readers (they were readers then) complained. Specifically African-American readers complained. Keesha led the charge but she was not alone. She'd seen how life is online. She knew how this ended. C.I. e-mailed back that comments would be pulled, that there was no reason for anyone ever to be hurt but, "give me some time to figure out how to do that because I don't know how right now." Two days later, two Blue Dogs who haunted the comment threads let rip at Keesha with racist remarks, including the n-word. C.I. learned in thirty minutes how to close comments. They closed and they've been closed ever since.
Stan Goff has written of how women can end up feeling that they're not welcomed in the commenting. We're glad he has. But what we've heard repeatedly is that African-Americans really aren't welcomed.
Betty can tell you that. She's talked about this, she's blogged about this. She did so last in May at Rebecca's site. (Betty blogs there from time to time. She's also Rebecca's official guest blogger.) She went to many 'left' sites (really Democratic ones) and was welcomed. As long as she never wrote about an issue to African-Americans. If she did and pointed out that the Dems weren't especially strong on it, it was time to heap on the scorn and the ridicule. We didn't know Betty when we started this site. We knew why the comments were closed at The Common Ills from reading the site. We also pumped C.I. that first weekend but really didn't have to. Once C.I. started explaining it, Ty jumped in with his own experiences.
So there were never going to be comments here.
Only one community site allows comments. That's Cedric's site. Every now and then Keesha will post a comment. Most members don't post comments. (Cedric got seveal comments in May.) Cedric's been through the same crap Ty and Betty (and Keesha and Carl and Demetrika and others) have. He checked, when he started his Blogspot/Blogger site. He was already doing his site at Blogdrive. He was already getting the racist e-mails. He announced he'd be switching in the gina & krista round-robin and revealed he was thinking about allowing comments because he thought/hoped it would cut down on the racist e-mails. He shared three of the e-mails so everyone would know what was coming in. His thinking was that if comments were there, some of those types might leave a comment and might curb their racism for public consumption. Gina and Krista polled and not one member objected to Cedric having comments.
No other site does.
Oh, you're thinking, those are old stories. How old are they? Cindy Sheehan, in her announcement that she was regrouping, noted that Democratic Underground had vicious comments about her. DU staff (we're not sure if they're paid or not) responded to note their support for Cindy Sheehan. Those were people leaving comments, that didn't reflect DU.
But here's the thing. A few weeks later, when a woman (presumably African-American) shared her thoughts on Hillary Clinton (mild compared to anything we've ever posted here), she began to get attacked in the thread. F-you was repeated over and over.
We were able to see what Betty has so often described. As long as you don't note the obvious, you're welcome. Raise one issue and you're not slammed, you're attacked.
That woman was attacked. And, just like Betty, she was a Democrat. She was being attacked by other Democrats with the sort of venom you'd expect to be tossed at Jonah Goldberg. Instead it was heaped on her repeatedly.
That's when Democratic Underground got delinked from The Common Ills. Originally, it was offered along with The Green Party. Now it's just The Green Party.
That's no reflection on DU staff. They weren't doing it. But that was the mob mentality that rips apart African-Americans online. The rest of us never doubted Betty, Cedric or Ty's stories. We believed them. But seeing it play out was so different than just hearing about it.
Community members began e-mailing C.I. repeatedly about it when it started. C.I. even commented in a snapshot to the effect of "I've heard about the e-mails, when I'm at a computer, it will be delinked." And it was.
This is a really ugly side of online life. The woman at DU noted she was going to vote for whomever won the Democratic Party (vote in the general election) but shared she didn't trust Hillary Clinton. That led to not a response or two, which would be one thing, but a mob typing away "F-you" and worse.
This is a very real issue. We've heard about from African-American community members. We've heard about it from Betty, Cedric, Ty and other friends. And we saw it at DU.
Cedric thinks it was "about a year ago" that he noted here how one of his relatives wouldn't even go anywhere online now that wasn't "an African-American site." He got tired of it and washed his hands of the other sites. He's a political person. But he can't take the dog pile. In his case, he 'dared' to note that Jesse Jackson had done many good things. But this was when Jesse Jackson was speaking out on Terry Shiavo (and had the non-Democratic side) so he (and Jackson) got ripped apart in a thread. It was vicious and it was ugly. He didn't cry. He just grasped that African-Americans weren't really welcome. A White person could, and often did, sing Wesley Clark's praises (despite the 90s) and nothing ever came of that. But posting, "I don't think it's fair to call Jesse a sell out" resulted in a dog pile.
Why is that? And why are African-Americans more likely to experience that? Gina and Krista did a round-table on that last September. The general consensus was that most going to a thread hopes that others will agree or at least consider a point. They think they're among friends. That's everyone, regardless of race. But, this was the consensus of the roundtable, what happens is some people are suspect. So when an African-American makes a comment, even though they seemed friendly, suddenly they become the 'other' and the dog pile takes place out of shock that they don't agree on every issue 100%.
What's happening, regardless of why, is that some (we'd argue, a lot) of African-Americans are getting the message that you're welcome as long as you bite your tongue. Biting your tongue means every presumed White person can say who they are for and why (even cutting down another candidate) but if you are for, for instance, John Edwards and are asked about, for instance, Hillary and share you don't like her, you've 'opened' yourself up to the attacks.
The so-called free exchange isn't taking place and a lot of sites (Gina and Krista compiled a list) are seen as unwelcoming for African-Americans. That includes a huge chunk of the 'big sites.'
DU may or may not have cleaned up that thread. But it did exist (and may still) and we all saw it. The staff does some strong writing, some amazing writing. They also follow the news closely.
But it wasn't about the staff, it was about "Are we a welcoming site to people on the left or not?" (C.I.) There was no way to continue linking without ignoring the very strong feelings of TCI community members (of all races). The staff wasn't the issue but that didn't change what happened in the threads.
So the next time before The Nation calls someone a coward for not having comments, they might try learning why. We don't have comments (except Cedric) and the reason is not 'cowardice'. The reason is to be welcoming to all members. Keesha's gone through this and we're so late (in writing) that we could call her for a comment without worrying about waking her.
"When I saw that," at DU, "it didn't just make me angry for the woman. I was angry for her. But it also brought back all the times it had happened to me. I don't know how to explain it other than to say it's like you walk into a room and everyone smiles. Then a minute later, when you've got your guard down and think you can just talk, all the sudden you're being attacked and realize, 'No, I can't really be honest. Not unless I want to be attacked.' If you've been through it, any time you see it happen to someone else, you probably relive it."
Note that Keesha was fighting the Blue Dogs when they were commenting at The Common Ills with their crap about how there's nothing more beautiful than a Blue Dog Democrat and blah, blah, blah. They were doing what they always do ('Try to take control of a cool site and destroy it," says Keesha). We're glad she was fighting for the space that was her's. (C.I. will tell you, members deserve all the credit for The Common Ills and that Keesha, more than anyone, determined what it is now. She fought hard and continues to.) We're sad that she had to.
We're sad every time we write about this topic because it means someone will e-mail about how it happened to them. Then we'll realize it's even bigger than we thought. The thing is, all of us, even Betty, Cedric and Ty, think we get it. And then we find out it's even worse.
So, to The Nation, we'll say you didn't know what you were talking about when you wrote in July and stated we didn't have an e-mail address up (we did, it had been back up for over a month by that time and it was always searchable). We'll say you not only didn't know anything about us when you slammed us for not having comments, you also didn't now about a very real problem online. But, hey, pretend it doesn't exist and maybe it will go away. That seems to be the magazine's approach to the illegal war as well.
Get on your pony and ride
Get on your pony and ri-i-i-ide.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Boys & Girls . . . have a good time together
[The title is from "Boys & Girls Together," recorded by the Mamas and the Papas for Deliver and written by John Phillips. All features this edition were supposed to have Mamas and Papas references in their titles except "Highlights" and the TV commentary. We're all tired which is how Jim screwed it up. We can't get into the title box so we can't fix it. Jess is trying to be forgiving.]
So, in a six month period, The Nation ran 181 more men than they did women. Did you know that was our fault? Apparently it is.
The Nation notified us (via an e-mail to C.I. last week): "The imbalance of men to women appearing in print is disturbing and should be corrected; but the extent to which 'third estate' absolutely excoriates the women who DO write is also problematic. There is a cry and a call for more women to write, and then a disproportionate level of criticism of women who write in the magazine than men."
This was the thing that upset C.I. Not get upset and tell them they are full of sh*t. If a complaint comes in, C.I. considers it. If the complaint seems sincere, C.I. takes it so seriously that it's sick to the stomach time. Now the rest of us called it what it was ("sh*t") immediately. C.I., between trips to the bathroom to throw up, kept ticking off the writers and trying to see if that could be true?
It wasn't.
Unless they're saying AlterPunk's a girl? AlterPunk, we didn't say that. In fact, we've acknowledged your wee wenus before. (Remember the parody "The Elector"?)
Were we really unfair to women? Were we focused on them to the extent of ignoring the men?
We've reviewed the topic at length. (After being sick repeatedly and reviewing, C.I. knew it wasn't true Tuesday night.)
Let's talk reality. In "The Nation Stats" figures, any one was up for grabs. That's the last feature we would do (yes, even after the editorials), we were all tired. But read over them. Very few women writers get more than their name and the title of their piece.
The magazine has three columnists who are women: Katha Pollitt, Patricia J. Williams and Naomi Klein.
Katha Pollitt. Pollitt was first critiqued here negatively when we included Virginity or Death! in a book discussion. We immediately included another collection by her in the next book discussion (and critiqued it favorably). That was back when we were Nation cheerleaders. Those days are gone. Page 45 of her book she mocks Kweisi Mfume (then president of the NAACP) for being bothered by the representation of African-Americans on TV. (Pollitt calls it the "absence of black faces.") To back up her point (or hide behind Black face), she mentions the centrist African-American who butters her bread with attacks on Cynthia McKinney among others.
As Betty can tell you, that centrist columnist cannot move freely around Atlanta. "Black people have her number and have had it for years," says Betty.
But let's get to the issue Katha Pollitt says is a non-issue. Katha's White daughter certainly got to see herself growing up on screen. So maybe Katha doesn't grasp the importance. Cedric, Betty and Ty did but, then, they aren't White. Now Katha can talk all her love of The Ego of Us All (didn't write about Coretta though) but is Katha available when Betty's daughter next asks where the people like her are on TV?
Betty's oldest son finally wised up to the score. She now lets both of her sons watch Everybody Hates Chris and the youngest "really is too young for that show but he kept asking and finally said 'It's got people like me on it'." Her daughter, the youngest of the three, has been lulled (briefly) into believing Betty that some of PBS' various animated animals are actually African-American.
So since Katha doesn't think it's a pressing issue, could she please give Betty her phone number because her daughter's about to get to the age her sons were when they finally started asking the very serious question as they saw one program after another without a person of color in the lead and sometimes without even a person of color in the cast.
"She can dismiss it all she wants, but if it was the other way around and it was her child or children, she'd realize how serious this is. It's true of the cartoons, it's true of PBS, it's true of all TV. This isn't a minor issue and I find it insulting that she treated it as something to laugh about. I think White people should think twice before they attempt to tell people of color that representation doesn't matter and that includes David Corn," says Betty.
So that's a very serious issue. It's a serious one to Betty, it's serious to Ty and Cedric and it's serious to all of us. That stood out more than anything else in her book to Ty, Cedric and Betty.
Then there's the issue of what Pollitt has elected to write about. Iraq? "BE HONEST." That's what she said when she finally included the topic in one paragraph of a column. The woman who hadn't written about Iraq in 2006 (slamming CODEPINK isn't writing about Iraq especially when Pollitt ignored Abeer at the same time). In 2007, she finally wrote a column about Iraq. But Abeer Qassim al-Janabi got her first mention in the magazine not by Pollitt but by Alexander Cockburn ("Here Comes Another 'Crime Wave'," April 2nd). Cockburn contribute two paragraphs on Abeer and one of her gang-rapists (Paul Cortez). Pollitt finaly got around to writing about Abeer for the May 28, 2007 issue. Here is her commentary on Abeer in full:
Think of Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, the 14-year-old girl raped and then murdered with her family by US soldiers in Mahmoudiya in March of last year.
Abeer was gang-raped. And an article about violence against women in Iraq might need to mention that both her mother and her five-year-old sister were killed. Seven sentences are spent on the "Romeo & Juliet" love affair of a 17-year-old woman and how she was stoned to death. An Iraqi killed by other Iraqis, Pollitt can call out. (Even though, outside of the footage of the stonings, some say the facts on that remain murky.) But US soldiers that are supposed to be guarding an area instead leering at and touching (Steven D. Green ran his fingers on her) a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, unnerving her so that she tells her parents who make plans for her to leave the area but, before she can, the US soldiers put together the plan to gang-rape her and kill her as well as her family? That's reduced to a single sentence and goes into print a year after Ellen Knickmeyer and others have already told Abeer's story. Pollitt was too busy bird-dogging CODEPINK for bird-dogging Hillary Clinton to write about Abeer last year.
Recently, Katha Pollitt wanted to get down to brass tacks and decry the lack of focus on economics. What is that? In bar tabs? What we mean by that is she also offers her endoresement of the Mud Flap Gals and, yes, we will call that out. The raunch culture passing itself off as feminist is something we'll call out.
But outside of noting how sad it is that a grown woman 'learns' something constantly from a site that's 2006 sole contribution on Iraq appears to be noting only that a book entitled C*nt was brought into an Abu Ghraib hearing (by a woman), we've only said "Sista Katha" and that's in regards to her dismissive treatment of the issue of representation.
Patricia J. Williams. Before Patti went goo-goo for Obama, she never had a harsh word or even a joke from this site. Apparently passion dulls her senses because she's gone all mushy since going public with her crush on Obama. The turning point for Patti came with that embarrassing interview on KPFA (and, no, it wasn't Andrea Lewis' fault). Now we aren't insisting that Patti put down People and pick up Essence, but we do think she needs to be aware of African-American writers. When she stated that only the likes of Fox 'News' was questioning Obama's commitment to race, she revealed she doesn't read Glen Ford, Bruce Dixon and Margaret Kimberely. Her loss. They have more passion and fire than she ever will. In the same interview, a woman from a Middle Eastern country phoned in to talk about how she saw Obama's stance on the illegal war. Patti made like the Cookies ("Don't Say Nothing Bad About My Baby"), cutting off the woman and insisting Obama was against the war while offering as proof that he didn't vote for the authorization in 2002. Now, not having gone slack jawed over the sight of Obama, we're aware he didn't vote for it, he wasn't in the Senate then. How Patti thought offering that up as proof of Obama's strong anti-war credentials would sway an audience, we don't know. Patti came off foolish, light headed and elists when she offered the Harvard Law Review as proof of why Obama was fit to be president. After the anger subsided, we all burned that on disc and we listen to it the way we would a Nichols & May CD. It's hilarious. Cedric is still furious that Patti thought African-Americans and dogs could be compared. Cedric says, "I don't know if she thought it was a step up from gorilla but this African-American never sees 'progress' when someone compares my race to animals. It's sad that a law professor can't see the historic problems with that sort of comparison in this country."
Naomi Klein? Never wrote a word against her. C.I. did note at The Common Ills (we believe it's in April) that a college crowd brought up the fact that Klein's not written about Iraq since returning to the magazine and that the crowd isn't planning on Klein's forthcoming book as a result. Klein left to write that book with a reputation for being one of the strongest writers on the topic of Iraq. That was years ago now.
Who does that leave? Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and she is publisher. She's responsible for not publishing an equal number of women in the end. She's been ridiculed for that. She's been ridiculed for being "The Peace Resister." We stand behind both and would do the same if she were male. We would further add that writing about topics like American Idol when Congress is voting on the supplemental leave her open to ridicule. Ava and C.I. nicely addressed an embarrassing, on air moment by Katrina vanden Heuvel in 2005. She's prone to those moments and, were one to happen today and we couldn't avoid witnessing it, we'd write about it. (C.I. avoided the Democracy Now! episode last week because KvH was on and C.I. didn't want to address it. For those not in the know, KvH's 2005 meltdown left Krista so humiliated by comments she'd shared at The Common Ills, she vowed never to share again. It was only because of Gina and C.I. that Krista agreed to start a private forum to share in, the gina & krista round-robin.)
We've written mockingly/humorously whatever about Matthew Rothschild. And at much greater length. But, thing is, Rothschild's never written a post about American Idol. Let alone written it while Congress was voting on the war supplemental. Nor has Rothschild made a post disappear as KvH did. Days after KvH's gushing over American Idol, Cindy Sheehan issued her goodbye noting that some adults care more about American Idol than they do about the Iraq war. At which point, KvH's post vanished. (Preserved online by this community thanks to a tip off to C.I. from The Nation.) If you don't want to be mocked or treated humorously, don't waste everyone's time, as you close in on fifty, writing about something as dumb and unimportant as American Idol. When KvH was devoted to The Apprentice, C.I. notes, she at least had the good sense not to blog about it.
Who does that leave us with? Lakshme? Exactly what magazine does she write for? C.I. and Ava cover TV for this site. That means when Lazy joined another magazine's staff and decided she would cover TV from time to time, they'd get e-mailed about Lazy's latest blunder, usually being asked, "Is this true?" No, it wasn't. They noted that repeatedly and never named Lakshme. They wrote one piece when Lakshme played dumb (it was playing, right?), went gunning for Nora Eprhon and took Susan J. Douglas' theme over to The Nation. For those not paying attention, the area Lakshme has tried to carve out for herself is already covered, and covered very well, by Susan Douglas. If Lakshme wants to play Eve, better believe we'll defend Margot. (And we're not even going into the whole Mike issue. Mike will be writing an F-you to Lakshme in his final post and there's not any reader of this site, or member of the community, that doesn't know what Mike's going to be writing about.) Lakshme's problems are her own.
Who is the most mocked person at The Nation? The Cindy Brady of the Faux Left, AlterPunk. The Nation can research it. From one liners to whole pieces devoted to him, it's AlterPunk.
Who else at The Nation has gotten a single piece devoted to them? (Lakshme doesn't work at The Nation -- and Ava and C.I. were no harder on her than was CJR. A point The Nation seems to miss.) Well, Dumb Ass got a feature when he wrote the response to Elizabeth Holtzman's call for impeachment. Who else? Christopher Hayes has at least two features, here and here. Who else? Christopher Phelps.
C.I. was informed The Nation Isle has especially pissed off The Nation. (Informed over the phone.) It's a parody and it's funny. People are cast in roles for Gilligan Island. This is one of our allegedly 'error filled pieces'. We love that. We love that The Nation thinks there are errors in a piece set many years in the future, based on Gilligan's Island, obviously played for laughs. (You'd think they'd at least enjoy the illustration!)
Are women treated worse in that? The worst would probably be being turned into Gilligan. No woman's turned into Gilligan. Patti gets made fun of. KvH gets made fun of. In the original draft Liza Featherstone was a joke and a joke for being stupid. Ava and C.I. rewrote all of Liza's lines but two and they did so to make her a strong character. They take serious offense to any suggestion that Featherstone comes off badly in that feature. Prior to the overhaul Ava and C.I. did, Featherstone was a carbon copy Mrs. Howell. (Which is why she's called "Lovey" early on.) They added fire and strength to the character.
Two women are jokes in the feature, Katrina vanden Heuvel and Patricia Williams. Two men are as well, ____ and Richard Dreyfuss. Doug Henwood lost out (we think he's now neutral) because Ava and C.I. were adamant that Featherstone was not going to be a doormat. We think Liza Featherstone, in that feature, is the most likeable character and the response to it, from outside The Nation, demonstrates that most people do as well.
Again, AlterPunk's had multiple features. Christopher Hayes has been loudly called out. Christopher Phelps was rightly called out and mocked. So was a Texas professor who went out East and got discovered by The Nation. The only woman who has gotten the treatment in an article just for her is Lakshme. And technically, she's not really part of The Nation, now is she? We've called out Stab for her dumb ass repeating on NYT lies. She has posts online at The Nation. She writes for another magazine (in print) but we guess The Nation can call us out for that if they like. Strange though, she spits out NYT lies to slam Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda. And does so to get a cheap laugh at a highly public event. She's lucky we've held back. We find her tired, boring and a bad writer. Slam Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda, you get what you deserve. [And to one e-mailer last week, we're not linking. The Gloria Steinem factor. Your writing attacks her. We stand with her. Sorry, no link from us as a result.]
The Nation needs to work on their math skills.
They also need to work on the issue of whom they feature. Amy Goodman has pointed out that when she asks network and cable news why Noam Chomsky can't be a guest, she's told they don't know him personally. The Nation's being run the same way. That's one of the reasons the Slow Creep of the Centrists has taken place. (And people at the magazine know it too.)
Women are not treated more harshly here. If you're a War Hawk, you'll be called out. Regardless of gender. But there's not a word that ever makes it up here about a woman that isn't vetted and re-vetted. Ava and C.I. will ask that a joke be explained. Not for why is it funny but what's underneath it. They will pull jokes that are actually funny because they are uncomfortable with them. (A Madonna joke, that was funny, to a friend who was once involved with her, took three hours of persuasion before they'd agree to it. The friend had told them to put it in. We were telling them to. Jim's father was telling them to. It took three hours to get that joke in.)
Questioning their feminist credentials may make The Nation feel better about their sorry record of publishing women. Pushing the blame for that record off on us may make them feel better. But the reality is that The Nation, led by Katrina vanden Heuvel, is solely responsible for how many women they print or do not print.
Prior to the summer of 2006, we never said a word against the magazine here and noted it repeatedly. Only three people with the magazine wrote about that. (We did hear from friends of C.I.'s but we're not counting them in this tally.) Lately, it's non-stop crying and whining from the magazine. We'll listen to most of it and consider it but when the magazine wants to blame us for their sorry record of publishing women or wants to call into question Ava and C.I.'s commitment to feminism, we won't stand for it.
So, in a six month period, The Nation ran 181 more men than they did women. Did you know that was our fault? Apparently it is.
The Nation notified us (via an e-mail to C.I. last week): "The imbalance of men to women appearing in print is disturbing and should be corrected; but the extent to which 'third estate' absolutely excoriates the women who DO write is also problematic. There is a cry and a call for more women to write, and then a disproportionate level of criticism of women who write in the magazine than men."
This was the thing that upset C.I. Not get upset and tell them they are full of sh*t. If a complaint comes in, C.I. considers it. If the complaint seems sincere, C.I. takes it so seriously that it's sick to the stomach time. Now the rest of us called it what it was ("sh*t") immediately. C.I., between trips to the bathroom to throw up, kept ticking off the writers and trying to see if that could be true?
It wasn't.
Unless they're saying AlterPunk's a girl? AlterPunk, we didn't say that. In fact, we've acknowledged your wee wenus before. (Remember the parody "The Elector"?)
Were we really unfair to women? Were we focused on them to the extent of ignoring the men?
We've reviewed the topic at length. (After being sick repeatedly and reviewing, C.I. knew it wasn't true Tuesday night.)
Let's talk reality. In "The Nation Stats" figures, any one was up for grabs. That's the last feature we would do (yes, even after the editorials), we were all tired. But read over them. Very few women writers get more than their name and the title of their piece.
The magazine has three columnists who are women: Katha Pollitt, Patricia J. Williams and Naomi Klein.
Katha Pollitt. Pollitt was first critiqued here negatively when we included Virginity or Death! in a book discussion. We immediately included another collection by her in the next book discussion (and critiqued it favorably). That was back when we were Nation cheerleaders. Those days are gone. Page 45 of her book she mocks Kweisi Mfume (then president of the NAACP) for being bothered by the representation of African-Americans on TV. (Pollitt calls it the "absence of black faces.") To back up her point (or hide behind Black face), she mentions the centrist African-American who butters her bread with attacks on Cynthia McKinney among others.
As Betty can tell you, that centrist columnist cannot move freely around Atlanta. "Black people have her number and have had it for years," says Betty.
But let's get to the issue Katha Pollitt says is a non-issue. Katha's White daughter certainly got to see herself growing up on screen. So maybe Katha doesn't grasp the importance. Cedric, Betty and Ty did but, then, they aren't White. Now Katha can talk all her love of The Ego of Us All (didn't write about Coretta though) but is Katha available when Betty's daughter next asks where the people like her are on TV?
Betty's oldest son finally wised up to the score. She now lets both of her sons watch Everybody Hates Chris and the youngest "really is too young for that show but he kept asking and finally said 'It's got people like me on it'." Her daughter, the youngest of the three, has been lulled (briefly) into believing Betty that some of PBS' various animated animals are actually African-American.
So since Katha doesn't think it's a pressing issue, could she please give Betty her phone number because her daughter's about to get to the age her sons were when they finally started asking the very serious question as they saw one program after another without a person of color in the lead and sometimes without even a person of color in the cast.
"She can dismiss it all she wants, but if it was the other way around and it was her child or children, she'd realize how serious this is. It's true of the cartoons, it's true of PBS, it's true of all TV. This isn't a minor issue and I find it insulting that she treated it as something to laugh about. I think White people should think twice before they attempt to tell people of color that representation doesn't matter and that includes David Corn," says Betty.
So that's a very serious issue. It's a serious one to Betty, it's serious to Ty and Cedric and it's serious to all of us. That stood out more than anything else in her book to Ty, Cedric and Betty.
Then there's the issue of what Pollitt has elected to write about. Iraq? "BE HONEST." That's what she said when she finally included the topic in one paragraph of a column. The woman who hadn't written about Iraq in 2006 (slamming CODEPINK isn't writing about Iraq especially when Pollitt ignored Abeer at the same time). In 2007, she finally wrote a column about Iraq. But Abeer Qassim al-Janabi got her first mention in the magazine not by Pollitt but by Alexander Cockburn ("Here Comes Another 'Crime Wave'," April 2nd). Cockburn contribute two paragraphs on Abeer and one of her gang-rapists (Paul Cortez). Pollitt finaly got around to writing about Abeer for the May 28, 2007 issue. Here is her commentary on Abeer in full:
Think of Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, the 14-year-old girl raped and then murdered with her family by US soldiers in Mahmoudiya in March of last year.
Abeer was gang-raped. And an article about violence against women in Iraq might need to mention that both her mother and her five-year-old sister were killed. Seven sentences are spent on the "Romeo & Juliet" love affair of a 17-year-old woman and how she was stoned to death. An Iraqi killed by other Iraqis, Pollitt can call out. (Even though, outside of the footage of the stonings, some say the facts on that remain murky.) But US soldiers that are supposed to be guarding an area instead leering at and touching (Steven D. Green ran his fingers on her) a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, unnerving her so that she tells her parents who make plans for her to leave the area but, before she can, the US soldiers put together the plan to gang-rape her and kill her as well as her family? That's reduced to a single sentence and goes into print a year after Ellen Knickmeyer and others have already told Abeer's story. Pollitt was too busy bird-dogging CODEPINK for bird-dogging Hillary Clinton to write about Abeer last year.
Recently, Katha Pollitt wanted to get down to brass tacks and decry the lack of focus on economics. What is that? In bar tabs? What we mean by that is she also offers her endoresement of the Mud Flap Gals and, yes, we will call that out. The raunch culture passing itself off as feminist is something we'll call out.
But outside of noting how sad it is that a grown woman 'learns' something constantly from a site that's 2006 sole contribution on Iraq appears to be noting only that a book entitled C*nt was brought into an Abu Ghraib hearing (by a woman), we've only said "Sista Katha" and that's in regards to her dismissive treatment of the issue of representation.
Patricia J. Williams. Before Patti went goo-goo for Obama, she never had a harsh word or even a joke from this site. Apparently passion dulls her senses because she's gone all mushy since going public with her crush on Obama. The turning point for Patti came with that embarrassing interview on KPFA (and, no, it wasn't Andrea Lewis' fault). Now we aren't insisting that Patti put down People and pick up Essence, but we do think she needs to be aware of African-American writers. When she stated that only the likes of Fox 'News' was questioning Obama's commitment to race, she revealed she doesn't read Glen Ford, Bruce Dixon and Margaret Kimberely. Her loss. They have more passion and fire than she ever will. In the same interview, a woman from a Middle Eastern country phoned in to talk about how she saw Obama's stance on the illegal war. Patti made like the Cookies ("Don't Say Nothing Bad About My Baby"), cutting off the woman and insisting Obama was against the war while offering as proof that he didn't vote for the authorization in 2002. Now, not having gone slack jawed over the sight of Obama, we're aware he didn't vote for it, he wasn't in the Senate then. How Patti thought offering that up as proof of Obama's strong anti-war credentials would sway an audience, we don't know. Patti came off foolish, light headed and elists when she offered the Harvard Law Review as proof of why Obama was fit to be president. After the anger subsided, we all burned that on disc and we listen to it the way we would a Nichols & May CD. It's hilarious. Cedric is still furious that Patti thought African-Americans and dogs could be compared. Cedric says, "I don't know if she thought it was a step up from gorilla but this African-American never sees 'progress' when someone compares my race to animals. It's sad that a law professor can't see the historic problems with that sort of comparison in this country."
Naomi Klein? Never wrote a word against her. C.I. did note at The Common Ills (we believe it's in April) that a college crowd brought up the fact that Klein's not written about Iraq since returning to the magazine and that the crowd isn't planning on Klein's forthcoming book as a result. Klein left to write that book with a reputation for being one of the strongest writers on the topic of Iraq. That was years ago now.
Who does that leave? Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and she is publisher. She's responsible for not publishing an equal number of women in the end. She's been ridiculed for that. She's been ridiculed for being "The Peace Resister." We stand behind both and would do the same if she were male. We would further add that writing about topics like American Idol when Congress is voting on the supplemental leave her open to ridicule. Ava and C.I. nicely addressed an embarrassing, on air moment by Katrina vanden Heuvel in 2005. She's prone to those moments and, were one to happen today and we couldn't avoid witnessing it, we'd write about it. (C.I. avoided the Democracy Now! episode last week because KvH was on and C.I. didn't want to address it. For those not in the know, KvH's 2005 meltdown left Krista so humiliated by comments she'd shared at The Common Ills, she vowed never to share again. It was only because of Gina and C.I. that Krista agreed to start a private forum to share in, the gina & krista round-robin.)
We've written mockingly/humorously whatever about Matthew Rothschild. And at much greater length. But, thing is, Rothschild's never written a post about American Idol. Let alone written it while Congress was voting on the war supplemental. Nor has Rothschild made a post disappear as KvH did. Days after KvH's gushing over American Idol, Cindy Sheehan issued her goodbye noting that some adults care more about American Idol than they do about the Iraq war. At which point, KvH's post vanished. (Preserved online by this community thanks to a tip off to C.I. from The Nation.) If you don't want to be mocked or treated humorously, don't waste everyone's time, as you close in on fifty, writing about something as dumb and unimportant as American Idol. When KvH was devoted to The Apprentice, C.I. notes, she at least had the good sense not to blog about it.
Who does that leave us with? Lakshme? Exactly what magazine does she write for? C.I. and Ava cover TV for this site. That means when Lazy joined another magazine's staff and decided she would cover TV from time to time, they'd get e-mailed about Lazy's latest blunder, usually being asked, "Is this true?" No, it wasn't. They noted that repeatedly and never named Lakshme. They wrote one piece when Lakshme played dumb (it was playing, right?), went gunning for Nora Eprhon and took Susan J. Douglas' theme over to The Nation. For those not paying attention, the area Lakshme has tried to carve out for herself is already covered, and covered very well, by Susan Douglas. If Lakshme wants to play Eve, better believe we'll defend Margot. (And we're not even going into the whole Mike issue. Mike will be writing an F-you to Lakshme in his final post and there's not any reader of this site, or member of the community, that doesn't know what Mike's going to be writing about.) Lakshme's problems are her own.
Who is the most mocked person at The Nation? The Cindy Brady of the Faux Left, AlterPunk. The Nation can research it. From one liners to whole pieces devoted to him, it's AlterPunk.
Who else at The Nation has gotten a single piece devoted to them? (Lakshme doesn't work at The Nation -- and Ava and C.I. were no harder on her than was CJR. A point The Nation seems to miss.) Well, Dumb Ass got a feature when he wrote the response to Elizabeth Holtzman's call for impeachment. Who else? Christopher Hayes has at least two features, here and here. Who else? Christopher Phelps.
C.I. was informed The Nation Isle has especially pissed off The Nation. (Informed over the phone.) It's a parody and it's funny. People are cast in roles for Gilligan Island. This is one of our allegedly 'error filled pieces'. We love that. We love that The Nation thinks there are errors in a piece set many years in the future, based on Gilligan's Island, obviously played for laughs. (You'd think they'd at least enjoy the illustration!)
Are women treated worse in that? The worst would probably be being turned into Gilligan. No woman's turned into Gilligan. Patti gets made fun of. KvH gets made fun of. In the original draft Liza Featherstone was a joke and a joke for being stupid. Ava and C.I. rewrote all of Liza's lines but two and they did so to make her a strong character. They take serious offense to any suggestion that Featherstone comes off badly in that feature. Prior to the overhaul Ava and C.I. did, Featherstone was a carbon copy Mrs. Howell. (Which is why she's called "Lovey" early on.) They added fire and strength to the character.
Two women are jokes in the feature, Katrina vanden Heuvel and Patricia Williams. Two men are as well, ____ and Richard Dreyfuss. Doug Henwood lost out (we think he's now neutral) because Ava and C.I. were adamant that Featherstone was not going to be a doormat. We think Liza Featherstone, in that feature, is the most likeable character and the response to it, from outside The Nation, demonstrates that most people do as well.
Again, AlterPunk's had multiple features. Christopher Hayes has been loudly called out. Christopher Phelps was rightly called out and mocked. So was a Texas professor who went out East and got discovered by The Nation. The only woman who has gotten the treatment in an article just for her is Lakshme. And technically, she's not really part of The Nation, now is she? We've called out Stab for her dumb ass repeating on NYT lies. She has posts online at The Nation. She writes for another magazine (in print) but we guess The Nation can call us out for that if they like. Strange though, she spits out NYT lies to slam Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda. And does so to get a cheap laugh at a highly public event. She's lucky we've held back. We find her tired, boring and a bad writer. Slam Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda, you get what you deserve. [And to one e-mailer last week, we're not linking. The Gloria Steinem factor. Your writing attacks her. We stand with her. Sorry, no link from us as a result.]
The Nation needs to work on their math skills.
They also need to work on the issue of whom they feature. Amy Goodman has pointed out that when she asks network and cable news why Noam Chomsky can't be a guest, she's told they don't know him personally. The Nation's being run the same way. That's one of the reasons the Slow Creep of the Centrists has taken place. (And people at the magazine know it too.)
Women are not treated more harshly here. If you're a War Hawk, you'll be called out. Regardless of gender. But there's not a word that ever makes it up here about a woman that isn't vetted and re-vetted. Ava and C.I. will ask that a joke be explained. Not for why is it funny but what's underneath it. They will pull jokes that are actually funny because they are uncomfortable with them. (A Madonna joke, that was funny, to a friend who was once involved with her, took three hours of persuasion before they'd agree to it. The friend had told them to put it in. We were telling them to. Jim's father was telling them to. It took three hours to get that joke in.)
Questioning their feminist credentials may make The Nation feel better about their sorry record of publishing women. Pushing the blame for that record off on us may make them feel better. But the reality is that The Nation, led by Katrina vanden Heuvel, is solely responsible for how many women they print or do not print.
Prior to the summer of 2006, we never said a word against the magazine here and noted it repeatedly. Only three people with the magazine wrote about that. (We did hear from friends of C.I.'s but we're not counting them in this tally.) Lately, it's non-stop crying and whining from the magazine. We'll listen to most of it and consider it but when the magazine wants to blame us for their sorry record of publishing women or wants to call into question Ava and C.I.'s commitment to feminism, we won't stand for it.
That's leadership on Iraq?
So The Nation magazine wanted us to know that Iraq has been taken seriously by the magazine in 2007. Of course, the examples offered by the magazine reached back to 2005. But were they addressing the illegal war seriously in the first six month of issues for 2007?
These are eye-balled figures. We may be missing something. It's done quickly and the numbers are impressions, not precision. (We've done more research with just that than The Nation did when they dumped their crap in our lap last week.) There were over 250 features, not counting the critics section, so, to be a leader on Iraq, how many features would they have to run? A third, a small number, would mean at least 80. Pay attention as we walk through.
The January 1st issue contained two articles on Hurricane Katrina. Iraq? That was left to Alexander Cockburn who penned the only feature on Iraq. (We're leaving out the critics section -- they don't review Iraq movies, they rarely tackle Iraq books. The e-mail from The Nation pointed to no review, but noted features and and an editorial -- from 2005.)
January 8th? A poem by Calvin Trillin. There's also the Pooper's cover story about a petition signed by active duty military. That's the article that contains the magazine's first ever mention of Ehren Watada and calls him a coward. The sidebar with this article doesn't make up for the lack of (print) coverage nor for printing that nonsense to begin with. But we'll be kind and count the article and the poem. That's three articles.
The January 22st issue (the 8th was an alleged 'double issue')? Calvin does another brief poem and Bruce Shapiro writes about Saddam Hussein. That's five.
January 29th? "No to Escalation" an unsigned editorial. AlterPunk looks into Iraq. That's seven.
February 5th? Empire is more than just Iraq and so is the scope of the article. Zero. We're still at seven pieces (including Calvin's brief poems).
February 12th? The lengthy editorial "Showing Bush the Way" mentions Iraq in only one sentence (and a parenthetical at that). That's not writing about Iraq. John Nichols writes a column about the "Iraq Debate." That's one piece. The total score is now eight pieces.
February 19th? "Which Side Are You On?" ponders the editorial and it's back to lapping up the pits of Jim Webb (former or recovering Republican, now conservative Democrat) and, no, it's not about Iraq. Having pissed on the peace movement online in 2006, Liza Featherbrain now writes an essay, kind of, sort of 'the peace movement' and it's failures. Go Liza! Can someone inform Featherbrain that WalkOn.org is not a part of the peace movement? Most peace movements aren't created to stop the impeachment of Bill Clinton and that's your first clue. We'll count it since it's supposed to be about Iraq (and we're sure light readers think it is). It's once again left to Alexander Cockburn to write about Iraq and, it should be noted, his column (a lengthier version) also publishes at his own CounterPunch. We've got more Obama madness. (He may end up the most covered candidate by the magazine.) Being generous, that's two pieces bring the score to ten. In seven issues (one of which was a 'double issue' -- should we count it as two?).
February 26th? Not a single piece. Eight issues (we're counting double issues as one issue) and our score is ten articles ("articles" for this piece refers to features, columns or editorials).
March 5th they come to life! Two articles, in the front of the magazine!, one an editorial, about war! Of course it's Iran, so it doesn't count. Calvin does another poem that touches on Iraq (Douglas Feith) and Alexander Cockburn remains the most consistent means by which Iraq gets covered (here he's addressing Michael Gordon). But then, Cockburn knows their life beyond The Nation. Patti Williams writes at least the third piece on Obama this year (and a cover story! who knew drool could be printed!). We're not at nine issues and twelve pieces.
March 12th? By going historical (Lincoln) Eric Foner writes about Iraq. 13 pieces, ten issues.
March 19th? One article (by Christian Parenti). 14 pieces, 11 issues.
March 26th? One article (C.I.: "Stephen F. Cohen had little competition but even if there had been some, it was the best article the magazine's printed on Iraq. I'm not counting columns.")
15 pieces, 12 issues.
April 2nd? Jeremy Scahill writes as if he's at another magazine (that's a compliment), Calvin offers another poem on Iraq, and by running two unsigned editorials, the second one manages to cover Iraq. 18 pieces, 13 issues. Oh and a coffee fetcher (now with the Chris Dodd campaign, and one prone to attacking Alexander Cockburn's writing) writes about the war and students. 19 pieces, 13 issues.
April 9th? With Anne Hull and Dana Priest's incredible work on the veterans issue in The Washington Post, The Nation decides they better touch on the issue and do so with two pieces. Some might argue why they didn't cover it before? Some might even note that Mother JonesThe Washington Post to cover it first didn't need . 21 pieces, 14 issues.
April 16th? We're going to be real generous and call the crap on the Pelosi-Reid measure a short story, piece of fiction on Iraq. Alexander Cockburn keeps it real about the measure (and gets Abeer's name finally into the magazine), Calvin does a poem. 24 pieces, 15 issues. Chrissy rewrites history about the SDS and wants to pass off his rant as about students today. Not enough Iraq to qualify. But good news, more Obama features. What is that, the fourth article on Obama?
April 23rd? Another Iran war article. Juan Cole writes about Iraq and he blew any trust factor when, as Steve Rendell rightly noted, he came out in favor of continuing the illegal war and occupation (a fact Cole wants to pretend didn't happen but Rendell is correct, it did). 25 pieces, 16 issues.
April 30th? Calvin writes another brief poem on Iraq (this time on Senator Crazy's visit to Baghdad). 26 pieces, 17 issues.
May 7th? Zero. Still 26 pieces. Now 18 issues.
May 14th? Thanks to Calvin's poem, Iraq is not forgotten. 27 pieces, 19 issues.
May 21st? Editorial on Iraq. (Well, on Congress.) David Corn actually covers Iraq (unlike the editorial -- by the same staff, remember, who applauded the 'benchmarks' for Iraqis in the Pelosi-Reid measure). 29 pieces, 20 issues.
May 28th? Katha Pollitt finally weighs in on Iraq for 2007. (No, the insulting "BE HONEST" paragraph doesn't count and didn't for that craptacualr column.) She manages to mention Abeer finally as well. Strange isn't it, that Cockburn wrote about her before Pollitt could. 30 pieces, 21 issues.
June 4th? Spencer Ackerman writes about Iraq. It's about Iraq. A bit pedestrian. A bit centrist actually. What does the mag tell us? Slug line page 20 that he's "a senior correspondent for The American Prospect and a national security correspondent for The Washington Monthly." Oh, those Democratic Bibles. The ones that couldn't call out the illegal war for the longest, but could argue for a 'smarter' illegal war. Hmmm. But there's something that C.I. and Ava just really feel is being left out. What could it be? Oh, that's right! He was an associate editor for The New Republic(an). Well why not. It's not like the magazines really had any different outlooks to begin with, right? (Slow Creep of the Centrists.) Moving to cowardly, ____ (couldn't mention Darrell Anderson was a war resister when quoting him in the Guardian of London, so he will not be named here) writes about Tony Blair and mentions Iraq every now and then. (Very little, strange since he thinks Iraq is the biggest issue, or that's what he writes in this column.) 32 pieces, 22 issues.
June 11th? By running three unsigned editorials, they manage to write on about Iraq and, yes, it's the last editorial printed. Nick Turse's online piece is pruned (severely, online originally and fully at TomDispatch) and run. They also offer Iraqi refugees. 35 pieces, 23 issues.
June 18th? John Nichols writes about Cindy Sheehan's announcement. The party organ for the Democratic Party announces, in an unsigned editorial, "The Honeymoon Is Over." We say, "Yes, we see the bruises on your face." But it's not about Iraq. Iraq's mentioned in three sentences. Not even three sentences about Iraq, mind you, Iraq is a subclause in all. The third time probably sums up the magazine's attitude best: "Beyond ending the war . . ." They're always moving "beyond" Iraq at the magazine. This doesn't count for crap. It's about progressives and health care and the 100 days, and corporations and, probably, daisies growing out of someone's ass. 36 pieces, 24 issues. Naomi Klein includes "Baghdad" in her title but she's writing about Canada's natural resources and it doesn't count either.
June 25th? Nothing on Iraq. Apparently the issue of People magazine Patti Williams was using as a social science resource didn't cover Iraq. 37 pieces, 25 issues.
Now, if we take out Calvin's seven brief poems (no offense to him or poetry), we're left with 30 pieces. If we take out Alexander Cockburn the figure drops even lower. Maybe we should take him out after that shameful note the magazine recently wrote about him. As we remember it, when they ran that anti-Palestinian ad, activists had to organize writes in, start a petition and protest to get that weak-ass "We take money, we do not necessarily agree with ad content" nonsense. But Cockburn rates something akin to The New York Times non-mea-culpa.
So leaving out Calvin's poetry (and we didn't count poetry in the critical section that they run reviews in), we're left with 30 articles. Some of which, like ___'s article on Gordon Brown replacing Tony Blair, only touched on Iraq, didn't focus on it. So while the US was engaged in a declared war -- an illegal one -- 30 articles could touch on Iraq? How proud they must be.
Not one article on war resisters ran. (A sidebar is not an article.) Liza Featherstone's laughable 'peace movement' article is included. This is the magazine stepping up?
During the six month period, there was a special issue on the environment (May 7th) and a special issue on Cuba (May 14th). We've already had the special issue on food in 2006. July's already offered the special issue on health care. We're told a special issue on Iraq is on the way. It's nice that 4 years and 4 months after the start of the illegal war, they finally think it warrants a special issue. Over 250 articles and 30 can be ranked as having to do with Iraq. That includes Calvin's poems. That includes Cockburn's columns. That includes editorials. 30? A bit like Charlie Gibson reducing Iraq to two minutes in a broadcasting week if you ask us. Even more so when you grasp that 70% of Americans turned against the war, that the war decided the 2006 elections and that The Nation is seen as the strongest magazine speaking out against the illegal war. (It's based on what they used to do. Not what they do today.)
Meanwhile, the cover we never saw on Iraq in 2006? We noted it in 2006. We still haven't seen. Not of any individual war resister. In fact, there's not been one article in print that covered a war resister (a sidebar is not an article).
These are eye-balled figures. We may be missing something. It's done quickly and the numbers are impressions, not precision. (We've done more research with just that than The Nation did when they dumped their crap in our lap last week.) There were over 250 features, not counting the critics section, so, to be a leader on Iraq, how many features would they have to run? A third, a small number, would mean at least 80. Pay attention as we walk through.
The January 1st issue contained two articles on Hurricane Katrina. Iraq? That was left to Alexander Cockburn who penned the only feature on Iraq. (We're leaving out the critics section -- they don't review Iraq movies, they rarely tackle Iraq books. The e-mail from The Nation pointed to no review, but noted features and and an editorial -- from 2005.)
January 8th? A poem by Calvin Trillin. There's also the Pooper's cover story about a petition signed by active duty military. That's the article that contains the magazine's first ever mention of Ehren Watada and calls him a coward. The sidebar with this article doesn't make up for the lack of (print) coverage nor for printing that nonsense to begin with. But we'll be kind and count the article and the poem. That's three articles.
The January 22st issue (the 8th was an alleged 'double issue')? Calvin does another brief poem and Bruce Shapiro writes about Saddam Hussein. That's five.
January 29th? "No to Escalation" an unsigned editorial. AlterPunk looks into Iraq. That's seven.
February 5th? Empire is more than just Iraq and so is the scope of the article. Zero. We're still at seven pieces (including Calvin's brief poems).
February 12th? The lengthy editorial "Showing Bush the Way" mentions Iraq in only one sentence (and a parenthetical at that). That's not writing about Iraq. John Nichols writes a column about the "Iraq Debate." That's one piece. The total score is now eight pieces.
February 19th? "Which Side Are You On?" ponders the editorial and it's back to lapping up the pits of Jim Webb (former or recovering Republican, now conservative Democrat) and, no, it's not about Iraq. Having pissed on the peace movement online in 2006, Liza Featherbrain now writes an essay, kind of, sort of 'the peace movement' and it's failures. Go Liza! Can someone inform Featherbrain that WalkOn.org is not a part of the peace movement? Most peace movements aren't created to stop the impeachment of Bill Clinton and that's your first clue. We'll count it since it's supposed to be about Iraq (and we're sure light readers think it is). It's once again left to Alexander Cockburn to write about Iraq and, it should be noted, his column (a lengthier version) also publishes at his own CounterPunch. We've got more Obama madness. (He may end up the most covered candidate by the magazine.) Being generous, that's two pieces bring the score to ten. In seven issues (one of which was a 'double issue' -- should we count it as two?).
February 26th? Not a single piece. Eight issues (we're counting double issues as one issue) and our score is ten articles ("articles" for this piece refers to features, columns or editorials).
March 5th they come to life! Two articles, in the front of the magazine!, one an editorial, about war! Of course it's Iran, so it doesn't count. Calvin does another poem that touches on Iraq (Douglas Feith) and Alexander Cockburn remains the most consistent means by which Iraq gets covered (here he's addressing Michael Gordon). But then, Cockburn knows their life beyond The Nation. Patti Williams writes at least the third piece on Obama this year (and a cover story! who knew drool could be printed!). We're not at nine issues and twelve pieces.
March 12th? By going historical (Lincoln) Eric Foner writes about Iraq. 13 pieces, ten issues.
March 19th? One article (by Christian Parenti). 14 pieces, 11 issues.
March 26th? One article (C.I.: "Stephen F. Cohen had little competition but even if there had been some, it was the best article the magazine's printed on Iraq. I'm not counting columns.")
15 pieces, 12 issues.
April 2nd? Jeremy Scahill writes as if he's at another magazine (that's a compliment), Calvin offers another poem on Iraq, and by running two unsigned editorials, the second one manages to cover Iraq. 18 pieces, 13 issues. Oh and a coffee fetcher (now with the Chris Dodd campaign, and one prone to attacking Alexander Cockburn's writing) writes about the war and students. 19 pieces, 13 issues.
April 9th? With Anne Hull and Dana Priest's incredible work on the veterans issue in The Washington Post, The Nation decides they better touch on the issue and do so with two pieces. Some might argue why they didn't cover it before? Some might even note that Mother JonesThe Washington Post to cover it first didn't need . 21 pieces, 14 issues.
April 16th? We're going to be real generous and call the crap on the Pelosi-Reid measure a short story, piece of fiction on Iraq. Alexander Cockburn keeps it real about the measure (and gets Abeer's name finally into the magazine), Calvin does a poem. 24 pieces, 15 issues. Chrissy rewrites history about the SDS and wants to pass off his rant as about students today. Not enough Iraq to qualify. But good news, more Obama features. What is that, the fourth article on Obama?
April 23rd? Another Iran war article. Juan Cole writes about Iraq and he blew any trust factor when, as Steve Rendell rightly noted, he came out in favor of continuing the illegal war and occupation (a fact Cole wants to pretend didn't happen but Rendell is correct, it did). 25 pieces, 16 issues.
April 30th? Calvin writes another brief poem on Iraq (this time on Senator Crazy's visit to Baghdad). 26 pieces, 17 issues.
May 7th? Zero. Still 26 pieces. Now 18 issues.
May 14th? Thanks to Calvin's poem, Iraq is not forgotten. 27 pieces, 19 issues.
May 21st? Editorial on Iraq. (Well, on Congress.) David Corn actually covers Iraq (unlike the editorial -- by the same staff, remember, who applauded the 'benchmarks' for Iraqis in the Pelosi-Reid measure). 29 pieces, 20 issues.
May 28th? Katha Pollitt finally weighs in on Iraq for 2007. (No, the insulting "BE HONEST" paragraph doesn't count and didn't for that craptacualr column.) She manages to mention Abeer finally as well. Strange isn't it, that Cockburn wrote about her before Pollitt could. 30 pieces, 21 issues.
June 4th? Spencer Ackerman writes about Iraq. It's about Iraq. A bit pedestrian. A bit centrist actually. What does the mag tell us? Slug line page 20 that he's "a senior correspondent for The American Prospect and a national security correspondent for The Washington Monthly." Oh, those Democratic Bibles. The ones that couldn't call out the illegal war for the longest, but could argue for a 'smarter' illegal war. Hmmm. But there's something that C.I. and Ava just really feel is being left out. What could it be? Oh, that's right! He was an associate editor for The New Republic(an). Well why not. It's not like the magazines really had any different outlooks to begin with, right? (Slow Creep of the Centrists.) Moving to cowardly, ____ (couldn't mention Darrell Anderson was a war resister when quoting him in the Guardian of London, so he will not be named here) writes about Tony Blair and mentions Iraq every now and then. (Very little, strange since he thinks Iraq is the biggest issue, or that's what he writes in this column.) 32 pieces, 22 issues.
June 11th? By running three unsigned editorials, they manage to write on about Iraq and, yes, it's the last editorial printed. Nick Turse's online piece is pruned (severely, online originally and fully at TomDispatch) and run. They also offer Iraqi refugees. 35 pieces, 23 issues.
June 18th? John Nichols writes about Cindy Sheehan's announcement. The party organ for the Democratic Party announces, in an unsigned editorial, "The Honeymoon Is Over." We say, "Yes, we see the bruises on your face." But it's not about Iraq. Iraq's mentioned in three sentences. Not even three sentences about Iraq, mind you, Iraq is a subclause in all. The third time probably sums up the magazine's attitude best: "Beyond ending the war . . ." They're always moving "beyond" Iraq at the magazine. This doesn't count for crap. It's about progressives and health care and the 100 days, and corporations and, probably, daisies growing out of someone's ass. 36 pieces, 24 issues. Naomi Klein includes "Baghdad" in her title but she's writing about Canada's natural resources and it doesn't count either.
June 25th? Nothing on Iraq. Apparently the issue of People magazine Patti Williams was using as a social science resource didn't cover Iraq. 37 pieces, 25 issues.
Now, if we take out Calvin's seven brief poems (no offense to him or poetry), we're left with 30 pieces. If we take out Alexander Cockburn the figure drops even lower. Maybe we should take him out after that shameful note the magazine recently wrote about him. As we remember it, when they ran that anti-Palestinian ad, activists had to organize writes in, start a petition and protest to get that weak-ass "We take money, we do not necessarily agree with ad content" nonsense. But Cockburn rates something akin to The New York Times non-mea-culpa.
So leaving out Calvin's poetry (and we didn't count poetry in the critical section that they run reviews in), we're left with 30 articles. Some of which, like ___'s article on Gordon Brown replacing Tony Blair, only touched on Iraq, didn't focus on it. So while the US was engaged in a declared war -- an illegal one -- 30 articles could touch on Iraq? How proud they must be.
Not one article on war resisters ran. (A sidebar is not an article.) Liza Featherstone's laughable 'peace movement' article is included. This is the magazine stepping up?
During the six month period, there was a special issue on the environment (May 7th) and a special issue on Cuba (May 14th). We've already had the special issue on food in 2006. July's already offered the special issue on health care. We're told a special issue on Iraq is on the way. It's nice that 4 years and 4 months after the start of the illegal war, they finally think it warrants a special issue. Over 250 articles and 30 can be ranked as having to do with Iraq. That includes Calvin's poems. That includes Cockburn's columns. That includes editorials. 30? A bit like Charlie Gibson reducing Iraq to two minutes in a broadcasting week if you ask us. Even more so when you grasp that 70% of Americans turned against the war, that the war decided the 2006 elections and that The Nation is seen as the strongest magazine speaking out against the illegal war. (It's based on what they used to do. Not what they do today.)
Meanwhile, the cover we never saw on Iraq in 2006? We noted it in 2006. We still haven't seen. Not of any individual war resister. In fact, there's not been one article in print that covered a war resister (a sidebar is not an article).
Those wonderful Republicans
Have you noticed what's been going on with your boy Jim Rutenberg in The New York Times for the last two weeks? ("Your boy?" He's not ours.)
Richard Luger speaks out against the war. Did you catch that fawning press? Pete Domenici joins him last week and BOOM! Ruten-tootin-Rutenberg's got an article in the paper.
Those Republicans, they care.
Right?
You might think that. We warned you about it, actually.
Remember?
The country's turned against the war. The Republicans know they need more than their base to win. You'd see defections. By the time the general election rolled around, conventional wisdom would be on the side on the Repubes. They'd be the party that woke up. Remember all of that?
If not, your homework is to read "Editorial: The Party of Stella Toddler" which ran the last Sunday of May.
You'll grasp what's going on.
You may grasp why we, unlike Lotta Links and other alleged left sites, haven't run fawning coverage. We ignored the idiot who backed down when Bully Boy called him French in 2002. But we're not fawning over Dick and Pete. Others are.
Amazing considering they haven't done anything. They've talked, but it's not like they crossed party lines for a vote yet. It'll happen.
But are you noticing the narrative already emerging in the press. Just focus on Rutenberg's stories from last week and the week before. Isn't it strange that Republicans get named. Dems? They're "Democrats." It's almost as though no Democratic running for president or in Congress has spoken out.
This is how the GOP attempts their 2008 wins. They have to dump the war. (All but Senator Crazy know that.) They've got to step away from it. It's not a campaign winner. So they move away and the same press that, for example, ignored Ted Kennedy's call for a withdrawal years ago, now rushes in pieces about these 'maverick' Republicans. Look at 'em go, bucking the system.
While Dems stood still, Republicans were ahead of the game. All all you Dem sites posing as left, grab some common sense and quit propping up the narrative with your nonsense headlines about Dick and Pete and "Oh look!" b.s.
This was their plan, the Republicans, all along if the country turned against the war in this large of numbers. It's the roll out and if you're a Dem site, quit playing GOP advance team.
Pete and Dick have talked. They haven't done anything.
But they talked! Contrast the press treatment they're getting with what Kennedy or Dennis Kuckinich or any other Democrat, making the same or stronger statements, got.
That wasn't news, argues the press. This is 'bucking' a system! Ted Kennedy's lone voice in the Senate wasn't bucking the system?
Of course it was. But the war's gone, beyond lost, and the press needs a hero and an excuse. So it's build up the Republicans. And, back them up, because if they only wised up, it's cover for the press as well. It's a mutually self-serving relationship which is why the narrative may work. Dems don't need to be assisting.
Richard Luger speaks out against the war. Did you catch that fawning press? Pete Domenici joins him last week and BOOM! Ruten-tootin-Rutenberg's got an article in the paper.
Those Republicans, they care.
Right?
You might think that. We warned you about it, actually.
Remember?
The country's turned against the war. The Republicans know they need more than their base to win. You'd see defections. By the time the general election rolled around, conventional wisdom would be on the side on the Repubes. They'd be the party that woke up. Remember all of that?
If not, your homework is to read "Editorial: The Party of Stella Toddler" which ran the last Sunday of May.
You'll grasp what's going on.
You may grasp why we, unlike Lotta Links and other alleged left sites, haven't run fawning coverage. We ignored the idiot who backed down when Bully Boy called him French in 2002. But we're not fawning over Dick and Pete. Others are.
Amazing considering they haven't done anything. They've talked, but it's not like they crossed party lines for a vote yet. It'll happen.
But are you noticing the narrative already emerging in the press. Just focus on Rutenberg's stories from last week and the week before. Isn't it strange that Republicans get named. Dems? They're "Democrats." It's almost as though no Democratic running for president or in Congress has spoken out.
This is how the GOP attempts their 2008 wins. They have to dump the war. (All but Senator Crazy know that.) They've got to step away from it. It's not a campaign winner. So they move away and the same press that, for example, ignored Ted Kennedy's call for a withdrawal years ago, now rushes in pieces about these 'maverick' Republicans. Look at 'em go, bucking the system.
While Dems stood still, Republicans were ahead of the game. All all you Dem sites posing as left, grab some common sense and quit propping up the narrative with your nonsense headlines about Dick and Pete and "Oh look!" b.s.
This was their plan, the Republicans, all along if the country turned against the war in this large of numbers. It's the roll out and if you're a Dem site, quit playing GOP advance team.
Pete and Dick have talked. They haven't done anything.
But they talked! Contrast the press treatment they're getting with what Kennedy or Dennis Kuckinich or any other Democrat, making the same or stronger statements, got.
That wasn't news, argues the press. This is 'bucking' a system! Ted Kennedy's lone voice in the Senate wasn't bucking the system?
Of course it was. But the war's gone, beyond lost, and the press needs a hero and an excuse. So it's build up the Republicans. And, back them up, because if they only wised up, it's cover for the press as well. It's a mutually self-serving relationship which is why the narrative may work. Dems don't need to be assisting.
Highlights
Here's how it's going to work. Titles will be e-mailed to this site because Blogger/Blogspot still won't let us put in titles. (This problem started on Friday night. Have they fixed it? No.)
When titles go up, we will then go in and copy and paste the features already written. There will be very few links because we can copy and paste without them much more quickly. (It has to do with using the "Edit Html" option in the "Create" box instead of "Compose." "Edit" allows us to have the spacing right. But copy and pasting in "Edit" does not carry over links. If you're lost, sorry.)
If they counted right, they told us there are 9 features more to go up after this one. However, make it ten. There was a promised feature last week that we all forgot about. Dona says it will be a short feature and (2 paragraphs is her desire). So it will go up slowly but it will go up.
The core six and Kat are doing final edits on the other pieces. C.I.'s about to fall over and probably will only do an entry this morning. Due to the issue with titles, we doubt C.I. will even post Isaiah this morning. Kat's review? Unless she has a burst of speed when she wakes up, postponed again. (Blame The Nation.)
So this is Elaine, Rebecca, Betty, Wally, Cedric and Mike selecting the week's highlights and writing this feature.
"Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you must have a penis"
"Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis"
"Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis"
"Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis"
"Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis"
"Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis"
"Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis"
"Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis"
"Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis"
"Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis"
-- the July 4th feature posted at all sites. We're all still pretty proud of it. Be sure to check it out.
"The Side Saddle Friedman" -- Betty's latest. She says it's nothing. Whatever, get your laughing pants on. :D
"Pizza in the kitchen. Pizza in the kitchen. This ..." -- Friday posts have titles like this because they couldn't be written -- Blogger/Blogspot. This is Jess filling in for Trina.
"About the 60s . . . It's Friday. Were I back on t..." -- amazing post by Elaine. Betty says it's "perfect." It's addressing the realities of the '60s.' Something many males seem unable to do today.
"iraq, draft, sexism, more" -- Rebecca breaking down some realities as well. About the '60s.'
"And the war drags on . . ." & "Iraq snapshot" -- C.I.'s two pieces explaining the realities of the draft regarding college campus actions in the '60s.'
"Marjorie Cohn, Laura Flanders & more I'm adding t..." -- Mike explains that we all love the feature that ran on the Fourth and screw those who didn't. (Among other things.)
"THE WOULD BE BULLY BOY" & "Boreass Obama Bullies Up" -- Wally and Cedric give the 411 on Obama's latest campaign 'move.'
"Talking Post" -- Mike explains (some of) how The Nation ruined our 4th of July.
Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts" The Quotable Bully Mama" -- Big Babs breaks it down in Isaiah's comic.
"NYT, guess who they don't name (again) today" -- who is the unnameable? For The New York Times, it's Abeer. Always.
"THIS JUST IN! SCOOTER WALKS!" & "Scooter Scoots" -- Wally and Mike on the walk Bully Boy took, hand-in-hand, with Scooter.
When titles go up, we will then go in and copy and paste the features already written. There will be very few links because we can copy and paste without them much more quickly. (It has to do with using the "Edit Html" option in the "Create" box instead of "Compose." "Edit" allows us to have the spacing right. But copy and pasting in "Edit" does not carry over links. If you're lost, sorry.)
If they counted right, they told us there are 9 features more to go up after this one. However, make it ten. There was a promised feature last week that we all forgot about. Dona says it will be a short feature and (2 paragraphs is her desire). So it will go up slowly but it will go up.
The core six and Kat are doing final edits on the other pieces. C.I.'s about to fall over and probably will only do an entry this morning. Due to the issue with titles, we doubt C.I. will even post Isaiah this morning. Kat's review? Unless she has a burst of speed when she wakes up, postponed again. (Blame The Nation.)
So this is Elaine, Rebecca, Betty, Wally, Cedric and Mike selecting the week's highlights and writing this feature.
"Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you must have a penis"
"Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis"
"Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis"
"Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis"
"Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis"
"Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis"
"Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis"
"Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis"
"Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis"
"Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis"
-- the July 4th feature posted at all sites. We're all still pretty proud of it. Be sure to check it out.
"The Side Saddle Friedman" -- Betty's latest. She says it's nothing. Whatever, get your laughing pants on. :D
"Pizza in the kitchen. Pizza in the kitchen. This ..." -- Friday posts have titles like this because they couldn't be written -- Blogger/Blogspot. This is Jess filling in for Trina.
"About the 60s . . . It's Friday. Were I back on t..." -- amazing post by Elaine. Betty says it's "perfect." It's addressing the realities of the '60s.' Something many males seem unable to do today.
"iraq, draft, sexism, more" -- Rebecca breaking down some realities as well. About the '60s.'
"And the war drags on . . ." & "Iraq snapshot" -- C.I.'s two pieces explaining the realities of the draft regarding college campus actions in the '60s.'
"Marjorie Cohn, Laura Flanders & more I'm adding t..." -- Mike explains that we all love the feature that ran on the Fourth and screw those who didn't. (Among other things.)
"THE WOULD BE BULLY BOY" & "Boreass Obama Bullies Up" -- Wally and Cedric give the 411 on Obama's latest campaign 'move.'
"Talking Post" -- Mike explains (some of) how The Nation ruined our 4th of July.
Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts" The Quotable Bully Mama" -- Big Babs breaks it down in Isaiah's comic.
"NYT, guess who they don't name (again) today" -- who is the unnameable? For The New York Times, it's Abeer. Always.
"THIS JUST IN! SCOOTER WALKS!" & "Scooter Scoots" -- Wally and Mike on the walk Bully Boy took, hand-in-hand, with Scooter.
What's going on?
We're almost finished.
Notice the title of this piece.
There is none.
One of the many problems with Blogger/Blogspot currently.
We think we can get around that problem but we're not sure.
If everyone's patient, we may be able to get in a roundtable. (We're finishing our revisions on our editorial right now.) Theme?
"Sense of Purpose" (think of Pretenders' song by that name).
Also.
If you love nothing else this edition, you will love Ava and C.I.'s TV commentary.
It's a return to the epic.
It's not the drama they planned to return with.
They were planning to do George Lopez. But Saturday night, the calls came in on one topic. When two friends called ("How do we say no to legends?" they ask) weighing in, that program replaced George Lopez. This may be the hardest hitting one they've done this year. We know for sure it's the funniest.
We're almost finished.
Notice the title of this piece.
There is none.
One of the many problems with Blogger/Blogspot currently.
We think we can get around that problem but we're not sure.
If everyone's patient, we may be able to get in a roundtable. (We're finishing our revisions on our editorial right now.) Theme?
"Sense of Purpose" (think of Pretenders' song by that name).
Also.
If you love nothing else this edition, you will love Ava and C.I.'s TV commentary.
It's a return to the epic.
It's not the drama they planned to return with.
They were planning to do George Lopez. But Saturday night, the calls came in on one topic. When two friends called ("How do we say no to legends?" they ask) weighing in, that program replaced George Lopez. This may be the hardest hitting one they've done this year. We know for sure it's the funniest.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis
The 2007 year for The Nation was kicked off at the end of December with a January 1, 2007 issue. The cover pictured Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson. For reasons still unclear, except a possible deficiency that makes anything beyond the obvious impossible, the fifty-five-year-old, be speckled, John Denver-like mayor was depicted shirtless, sporting chest hair, flashing his manly pits at the readers, while both arms were thrown straight in the air and, did we mention, his hands were clad in boxing gloves.
For those who missed the obvious, Rocky Anderson was portrayed as Rocky because, after all, what's lefter than Sylvester Stallone? The Nation, intentionally or not, was telegraphing to one and all that they could "cowboy up" as well as any Bully Boy in the White House. Any who couldn't grasp the non-subtle point had only turn to page 25.
As Ava and C.I. noted in real time, and as Ruth noted this spring, that is where you would find a book 'review' by centrist Peter Bergen entitled "Waltzing With Warlords" which allegedly would address three books: Sarah Chayes' The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban; Ann Jones' Kabul In Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan; and Rory Stewart's The Places in Between. Page wise, the smallest of three was the one written by Rory Stewart in . . . 2004. Reviewed for the January 2007 issue, a 2004 book. [An expanded version was published in May of 2006. Still far too old to qualify for a review in a January 2007 issue.] Why include a book that was three years old at this point? One of the many puzzling questions pertaining to males the magazine has consistently raised in the last six months.
Our guess is when you want to cook the book 'review' against women, you'll go to any lengths. Centrist and pig Bergen opens his alleged book review reflecting on the obvious image for a war-torn Afghanistan:
I open it and step into a world far removed from the dust-blown avenues of Kabul, where most women wear burqas and the vast majority of the population live in grinding poverty.
At one end of a long room is a well-stocked bar tended by a Chinese madam who assesses us with a practiced calculus. In front of her are more than a dozen scantily clad smiling young Chinese women sprawled over a series of bar stools and couches.
What does that have to do with the three books? Not a damn thing. But Bergen wants his jollies and apparently feels everyone needs to know that he visits bordellos. How proud his parents must be! His former classmates, probably not at all surprised.
Having set the (low-brow) tone, Bergen quickly rushes to explain not all women, apparently, know their place. No, apparently, some women reach beyond their 'natural' abilities such as Chayes and Jones, both of whom are too 'emotional' to write about Afghanistan.
Bergen finds Chayes "angry," "disillusioned," prone to "a smidge of self-congratulations" and not at all trust worthy (". . . we have to take Chayes's word for it"). Bergen finds Jones even more of the text book example of the female 'hysteria' noting that she fell for "trope," that she, too, is "angry" (we're guessing most women Bergen's encounters are angry and that Bergen can find the reason for that just by looking in the mirror), that she suffers from a "tendency to see sinister conspiracies where they don't exist" (so irrational, those women), and much more! The funnin' never stops for Bergen.
Then it's time to turn to the male writer and all the troubles with (women) writers go out the window as Bergen informs us of "Stewart's beautifully written book," offering "picaresque stories, of adventures on the road is a critical point that is often overlooked by Westerners with dreams of transforming Afghanistan into a place where women enjoy equal rights" (killjoys!), "skeptical" (as opposed to the "disillusioned" Chayes), "erudite" and so, so much more.
The book 'review' is nothing but a pig going Oink-Oink-Oink! For those who know no better, Sarah Chayes is a Harvard graduate and a professional reporter who left NPR to live in Afghanistan and work to improve conditions in that country. While she was doing that, Bill Moyers didn't find her 'emotional' and, in fact, had her on as a guest for a lengthy segment of what was then Now with Bill Moyers where she spoke with David Branccacio. Journalists, including Amy Goodman, have interviewed Chayes since she has written her book and we're aware of no on air meltdowns.
In fact, most feel Chayes, a professionally trained and respected journalist, is a reliable source for what she observed with her own eyes while in Afghanistan. To assist gas bag Bergen, what Chayes does is considered reporting. That may be confusing in a new world disorder where 'reporters' are encouraged to run with official statements and given them complete weight -- even when they contradict with the journalist's own observations. Who, what, where, when -- the journalism basics -- are what Chayes covers and Bergen can't handle that kind of reality (from a woman) so he has to point out that, in a first-hand recounting, we [gasp!] are dependent upon the author's observations.
Ann Jones has contributed to The Nation before and, we're sure, is quite aware that there is no more damning phrase from that magazine than being said to possess "a tendency to see conspiracy theories." That is The Nation's equivalent of "Your mother!"
Not only is Jones an author, she's also a journalist and photographer -- with a doctorate as opposed to Bergen's B.A. and, we're sure, the B.S. he's more than earned from years of gas baggery. As for her alleged conspiracy theories, Nation Books only bestsellers, both by Gore Vidal, also argue the (true) narrative that, in the 90s, a proposed pipeline in Afghanistan trumped all other concerns for the US government. That's not a controversial theory to anyone but pigs who 'reported' for commercial TV 'journalism' (which is where Bergen hails from -- the lowest of all forms of journalism). Those not late to the party (that would be feminists) were calling out Afghanistan in the 90s while paid lobbyists were presenting PG-friendly versions of the country to Americans. Jones knows what she's writing about. Gore Vidal knows what he's writing about. The only one lost, intentionally or not, is Peter Bergen. [The February 25, 2007 "The Nation Stats" notes that Jones weighed in with a letter and that Bergen elected to ignore the bulk of it.]
That a three page plus book 'review' trafficking in the worst forms of sexism raised no flags to those in charge of the magazine goes a long, long way towards explaining how readers ended up with the first six months of The Nation this year.
Backstory, in the summer of 2006, a group of women journalists (some established, some emerging) asked to meet with C.I. C.I. knew most of them, who were welcome to come by anytime, but they wanted a scheduled meeting. At that point, Jess, Ava and Ty were already living with C.I. and Dona and Jim were there as guests (they, too, would soon be live in guests).Knowing several of the women who would be attending, Ava checked with the woman organizing the meeting to see if it would be okay to attend? It was more than okay and she was told she could invite anyone else.
The women wanted to lodge a formal complaint about The Nation which was ignoring women writers. Despite having a woman, Katrina vanden Heuvel, as editor and as a publisher, women were hearing tales of freelance pieces being dismissed quickly (and rudely) which had nothing to do with any journalism issue since the pieces would be picked up by other magazines. ("Snapped up," say Ava and C.I.) They'd been following it and they were tired of it. They wanted C.I. to track the issue at The Common Ills.
Jim, Dona and Ty came late to the meeting (Jess attended the full meeting) but were there for that and many other points. C.I.'s response was that The Common Ills focused on Iraq (at the request of members) and that, this far into 2006, it would require a great deal of work to go backwards at this point. (Despite that, C.I. wrote a column for Polly's Brew citing the 2006 statistics for women being published by The Nation.) But, C.I. offered, what if 2007 was charted? What if 2007 was charted and done so at The Third Estate Sunday Review? At which point Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava all readily agreed that they'd be happy to do that. With only full four months left in the 2006 year, the women agreed that was acceptable.
On December 24, 2006, in an edition steered by Ava and C.I., The Third Estate Sunday Review began tracking the number of males printed versus the number of women printed. All knew it would not be pretty. None expected it to be as bad as it was.
For one thing, we assumed when the feature entitled "The Nation Stats" began regularly appearing, The Nation would quickly move to address the imbalance. By that point, it was not at all uncommon for people with The Nation to e-mail The Third Estate Sunday Review and C.I. knows several people with the magazine. This, we wrongly thought, would not require much coverage to prompt quick improvement. During the six month review period (which ended Sunday), seven people with the magazine e-mailed The Third Estate Sunday Review. The online magazine (Third) was not an unknown quantity to all at the magazine.
The Nation fancies itself as the leading magazine of the left. Therefore, it should have not required anyone to chart the sorry numbers of women published when contrasted with the overly 'healthy' number of males.
In the early months, we would often arrive at the 3.8 or 3.7 males published for every one female. That women had 'leaped' to the one woman for every 3.4 males with a byline by the time our six month study concluded may be seen as some 'improvement.' It may also be seen as shocking considering that during this time, The Third Estate Sunday Review heard from seven with the magazine over a six month period.
As bad as the ratio is, more shocking is the hard numbers. Over a six month period, the 'weekly' (some issues are 'double' issues -- whether they have twice as many pages or the same as a so-called regular issue) published 255 male bylines and 74 female ones. (We've exempted one byline for reasons cited in our coverage -- links offered at the end. Look it up. One article is not counted and only one. Addressing why here will take this feature in another direction about the problem with who gets selected as an intern.) We stopped the count (Sunday) with the last June issue. July issues have since published, but for women to achieve equal presence in the magazine, the first issue of July would have had to begin publishing women, and only women, 181 times.
That the leading magazine of the left could reach that point says a great deal. That this could take place when a woman held both the position of editor and publisher says a great deal.
We were shocked, for instance, when the February 12, 2007 issue managed to feature only one female byline-- Elizabeth Holtzman, whose opinions on impeachment were quickly called out -- in the same issue -- by a male. An unqualified male, one could argue, since Holtzman had experience with impeachment due to her work during Watergate and the male had . . . musty academic b.s. We were appalled when the April 16, 2007 issue appeared with 12 bylines and not one, not one, was a woman's.
In May, we began sharing this feature was coming, that the six month study would run on July 4th. [Following FAIR's example of six months studies.] We shared that online, we shared that with various organizations (all but one had asked, the one that didn't was told only that we were far more concerned with The Nation's record of publishing women than we were with anything having to do with any other organization or outlet), and C.I., Ava and Elaine had shared it with friends at the magazine. That was in May.
We began working on the write up two weeks ago. That write up got trashed completely despite the fact that we'd worked ahead of time so that all sites would be able to post something on July 4th without having to give up their holiday. The write up got trashed because despite this feature being announced in May, despite the fact that the feature "The Nation Stats" began running at The Third Estate Sunday Review on December 24, 2006, neither the magazine proper nor anyone connected with it elected to contact us about this feature.
That changed on Monday. Kind of, sort of.
In a pattern well known to any member doing a site, when someone has a problem with something, they run straight to C.I. They rush to tattle to C.I. The e-mail has 12:24 stamped on it and we'll assume that was noon PST (no time zone is given). It was one of 18,342 e-mails waiting to be read in the public account on Tuesday. Jess was working the public account and came across a "woops" e-mail from The Nation and then passed by several pages of e-mails (Yahoo displays 25 e-mail messages per page) to find the original and figure out what the "woops" was about. In that e-mail, the noon one, he found that The Nation was finally commenting on a feature (which runs at The Third Estate Sunday Review, not The Common Ills) that began on December 24, 2006.
Jess was thirty minutes into a reply when Ava asked what he was so focused on. When she saw the e-mail, she said, "No way in hell does a man who wants to lecture C.I. and I on what women should do get a personal reply." A reply will go up at The Third Estate Sunday Review this weekend. The e-mail was meant to be "shared" ("pass on" was the term used) so it was shared with all participating in the writing of it. Whether the name was meant to be shared or not, we don't know. So we will leave him unnamed but, let's be clear, if a man with the magazine thinks he can lecture women on what they should do, we'd argue that goes a long way towards explaining some of the problems that allows 181 more males to be printed in a six month period than women.
We will not claim credit for the news that the issue of women is (finally) being addressed. (More on that in a minute.) We spent six months tracking it. We cannot make changes at the magazine. The magazine deserves credit for seeing the problem and addressing it (however late). By the same token, we will not take the blame for the number of women the magazine has run and find it laughable that a magazine which regularly boasts of its huge circulation numbers wants to attempt to pin the blame for their own failures on us.
The Nation advises, "On the subject of women and the magazine; you should also know that the magazine is more than aware of the imbalance, and has taken steps in the last several months to recruit and bring in more women writers. Between now and the Fall there are six new writers being added to our blogs, as well as new staff added to the editorial ranks."
Let's be clear, because we ran the above by the woman who organized the meeting last summer, that is largely nothing. Awareness may, in and of itself, be a good thing. But writers of print pieces receive more money than writers of 'online exclusives.' More to the point, our six month study focused solely on the print edition of the magazine. We did that for a number of reasons (including, we were warned ahead of time, of the website's tendency to make things that didn't turn out so good disappear -- as we all saw when a post on "American Idol" -- written while Congress was voting on the supplemental -- disappeared after, days later, Cindy Sheehan rightly called out adults who would rather focus on American Idol than the illegal war). But it has been clear even to the most dense that we were addressing the print edition. Nothing in The Nation's response above addressed the print edition.
"Blogs" are not print. Editorial staff doesn't mean more bylines for women. Nothing that is offered addresses the imbalance in print. The Nation goes on to inform us that, "Its worth noting, I think, the extent to which women ARE the leadership of the magazine -- from the editorial side (print, web, and almost all of our senior and executive editors) to the business side (President and the heads of advertising and fundraising) -- but there is an ongoing effort to bring in more women in to the magazine and the website."
More women are in leadership? Our generic response to that is to quote from Ava and C.I.'s "TV Review: Commander-in-Chief aka The Nah-Nah Sisterhood" (The Third Estate Sunday Review, November 20, 2005):
What really frightens us, besides the fact that a backlash only takes root when people who should know better applaud this junk, is an elitist attitude that seems to greet this show."We got our woman president!"
Consider us too grass-rooty but we don't see that as an end all be all. We weren't among the ones saying "At least we still got Martin Sheen on TV" so maybe we're missing it. But honestly, we'll take an Alice over a Commander-in-Chief. Give us working class women who pull together over a queen bee living a rarified life.We've never doubted that a woman could be president (and at some point will be). But we've never assumed that gender would be an answer. A woman who supports equality? Absolutely, that's a great thing. A woman who makes her way as an exception, backs up an agenda she doesn't believe in and does nothing to help other women? We don't see the point in applauding that.
It's a pertinent issue as two women are repeatedly named as potential candidates in the real world: Condi Rice and Hillary Clinton. If either woman (or both) runs, will we get the same giddy "It's a woman!" nonsense? Under no circumstance would either of us vote for Rice. We'd be reluctant to vote for Clinton considering her waffles on the issue of choice and her stance on the war. But will those issues be silenced in the giddy cry of, "It's a woman! It's a first!"
That's troubling.
Again, that is our generic response. Our specific response?
Is Katrina vanden Heuvel the editor and publisher or not? This is a point that's a bit hard for the e-mailer to grasp. (As evidenced as his attempts to slam our work.) The masthead says she is the editor and publisher. When she goes on TV, she is billed as the editor and publisher of The Nation. If she is indeed editor and publisher (yes, we know she is) then she bears the ultimate responsibility for what does and does not get printed. To repeat, our focus has been the print edition. What women do or do not do online has not been the scope of our study. We have never claimed it was. We have noted, in each "The Nation Stats," which issue or issues we were covering in that feature.
We will note this from The Nation, "I did want you to know as well that our July 12th issue is a double issue devoted entirely to Iraq. Two writers have completed a piece that is by far the largest collection of soldiers on the record about their experiences in Iraq done by any publication. It clearly depicts, we think, the horror of the war in Iraq, the illegality, and the extent to which soldiers were sent in unprepared and ill-equipped, and the toll that's taken. I would patently disagree that we have 'refused to cover Iraq as an ongoing illegal war,' and if I had the time for the research project I would quote piece after piece, on print and online, to make the point. The work of Jeremy Scahill, Joshua Kors and our lead edit from November of 05 come to mind as starting points. Regardless, I respect your opinion and wanted you to know that we do have a double issue coming out given over almost entirely to the war."
We are glad to know that an issue finally is devoted to Iraq. We do not claim credit for that although C.I. has led at The Common Ills (see "2006: The Year of Living Dumbly" for the first really hard hitting piece by C.I. and that issue has been addressed at The Common Ills regularly since). We're not really sure why the magazine feels the need to tell us that we are wrong (apparently patently) while also noting that there's no "time for the research project" which would prove us wrong?
We do not doubt that the magazine feels it has covered the illegal war seriously. We also do not doubt that they thought they were presenting women in equal numbers to men until we pointed the obvious culminating with the magazine running 181 more male bylines than female ones. Is it too much to point out the obvious? That the bylines mentioned in the quote above are male bylines? As Laura Flanders has rightly noted, women are being sidelined on the discussion of the illegal war in the media -- all media.
Again, the magazine wants to bring up what was online. We have repeatedly and clearly stated that we are covering the print edition in "The Nation Stats" and all sites (with C.I. leading) noting the Iraq coverage have regularly noted the difference between "online exclusives" and what makes it into print. We'll respond in full to that and other comments on Sunday.
We reject any claims of credit for any changes The Nation is discussing, addressing or considering. We also reject any blame for what the magazine has elected to print. We believe either credits us with more power than we have which is not us rejecting claims of our own power. Each of us has the power to be agents of change within our own lives. However, not being on staff at The Nation, we will not hog credit for needed changes that are (hopefully) now going to be made and we reject any blame for what has appeared in the magazine's print version.
We would further add that when the magazine wants to charge that writing at The Third Estate Sunday Review is "riddled with errors and inaccuracies," it's incumbent upon them to name them and not make baseless charges. Are there typos? There are. Are there factual errors? We're not aware of any and we're not really sure that, if there were, The Nation is any place to lecture on that topic having repeatedly refused to correct errors that made it into print. We'll provide at least one example of that (we've noted many at The Third Estate Sunday Review) on Sunday. Our numbers were not questioned so we'll assume The Nation has accepted those.
We have noted frequently that if our math is off, please e-mail. We have never received any e-mail about the numbers. On Sunday, we thought we were done when C.I. insisted that our number for the ratio had to be wrong. We redid it and it was. We corrected before it went up. Since our numbers may have been the only thing not challenged in the e-mail (our character appears to have been challenged, Ava and C.I.'s feminist status appears to have been questioned, etc.) we'll assume they are correct and note that anyone can check them out for themselves using the links posted at the end of this feature.
The Third Estate Sunday Review is composed of six people: Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I. C.I. has worked on every edition (only C.I. and Ava can make that claim). When the site started, the reason it started, was C.I. was speaking on an East Coast campus, Jim realized it was "C.I." and, after the talk (on Iraq, of course), approached C.I. and said, "You are C.I. of The Common Ills." Jim, Dona, Ty and Jess had spoken of doing a site. Ava rightly notes that she wasn't a planned participant. She was Dona's roommate and Dona brought her along. It is also true that, when Dona asked, everyone was for it. (Jess especially, he and Ava are now a couple.) Though C.I. helped on every edition (some pieces had no involvement from C.I. during those weeks), C.I. refused to be billed as part of The Third Estate Sunday Review noting, "It's your site." Over a year later, C.I. finally agreed. The writing is a group process with one exception.
Ava and C.I. do the TV commentaries. That is ironic since neither even thought we should do a TV piece in the very first edition of The Third Estate Sunday Review. During that first month, Ava and C.I.'s contributions to the TV reviews were what readers responded to. The e-mails would note a sentence or a paragraph and how much they agreed with it or how they'd never thought about it from that angle. ("Or complain," Ava and C.I. note.) Their jokes were always mentioned as well. Jim will admit he was the last to grasp what they were doing (a feminist take on TV -- "a," not "the"). By February 2005, even Jim grasped it and the TV commentaries were turned over to Ava and C.I.
They were not orginally credited for them, in February 2005, because we were doing group writing, believe in it, and they did not want the credit. The credit only went up when the others got tired of explaining, after being congratulated in e-mails or face to face by friends, parents or professors, that Ava and C.I. wrote those pieces. No one is prouder of the work Ava and C.I. do than are Jim, Dona, Ty and Jess. The TV commentaries are the calling card for The Third Estate Sunday Review. (Ava and C.I. are both groaning but we're putting this in.)
They are always the most popular feature any week. They have been linked to (when little else we've done ever has), they have been run in student and feminist papers, they have been run in three feminist publications by college women. On the latter, if any feminist organization thinks they can raise funds or merely pad out a collection with one of their TV reviews, Ava and C.I. have been all for it. In May, they did a commentary that got far too much attention for their comfort level. With the exception of a friend with PBS who phoned shortly after the piece went up [and a note was added to the commentary on that call], the response was all positive. It was also overwhelming for them (as Dona noted the first Friday of June in the gina & krista round-robin). They do not want to hear about the e-mails on their reviews. (Unless it's negative and then it's no problem with them.) With the May commentary, even shielding them from the e-mails wasn't enough because friends (close and distant) were calling them to sing the praises of that commentary.
They have repeatedly turned down interviews since requests first began coming in for those in the spring of 2005. That wasn't something Jim got because a write up somewhere would bring attention to the site. (It also took months of Dona pointing out to Jim that his encouraging praise -- "lavish," says Ava -- offered before Ava and C.I. were about to start work on that week's commentary was too much, raised the bar of expectations too high and freaked them out.) They have offered shorter commentaries since the overwhelming response in May. They will be returning to their epic commentaries shortly. (A review of a drama planned for this month will be their return.) But we say all of that to note that they are not attention seekers, they do need or want flattery and they try to keep their heads down and do the work required.
We value what they do, whether it's an in depth look or something they complete in 15 minutes. We say all that to note that we will never let stand some man questioning their feminist credentials.
When the man represents a magazine that has published 181 more males than women in a six month period you damn well better believe we won't let it stand or any 'suggestions' of what women should or should not say or should or should not write. Ruth was the most adament that this be included. As an over-sixty-years-old woman there at the start of the second wave of feminism in this country, she said there is no way she can tolerate silence with regard to that nonsense of "a man whose shown no known interest in gender equality suddenly rushing in to question two feminist's commitment." We will go into more detail on that Sunday. For now, we will note that no woman needs a lecture from any man about what women should do nor do they deserve to have their feminist qualifications questioned by anyone at a magazine that allows 181 more men than women to be published in a six month period.
Some at The Nation may enjoy writing The Common Ills because, if Ava reads it and it's a whine, she'll rip the whiner apart. Far be it from us to deny anyone their pleasure, even if it's masochism. But this e-mail was directed to C.I. and we are all sick of that.
"Allow me to introduce myself, I'm another person in the room."-- Rhoda (Valerie Harper) speaking to Mary's (Mary Tyler Moore) date in "Today I Am A Ma'Am," written by Treva Silverman, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, episode two, first aired September 26, 1970.
Like Rhoda, we're all a little sick of it and for a number of reasons.
In addition to the public account there are two main accounts for members and there are also backup acocunts. The Common Ills gets more mail than any other site which is why Martha, Shirley, Eli, Ava and Jess help C.I. with the e-mails. Every site that sprung up, or Ruth's Report, did so because of The Common Ills. Before any other site started, we were all members of The Common Ills community and still are. As such, we are as sick as other members of people running to C.I. about something that's been written elsewhere. It strikes us as tattling and a "woops" doesn't change that. If people are doing that thinking it provides cover (due to C.I.'s policy on e-mails), it should be clear that, from now on, there is no cover when you run to C.I. to complain about the rest of us. In this case, the points were supposed to be "passed on." It doesn't matter whether they're supposed to be passed on or not from now on. If you run to C.I. to complain about us (as happens repeatedly), your e-mail is not about The Common Ills and you have no guarantee of privacy.
Redoing this already written feature meant that everyone had to give up their holiday time on what was a planned 'easy' day. [It also means Kat did not have the time to complete her review of Mavis Staples' latest CD. The plan for that is now to go up no later than Sunday morning.] Unlike The Nation, no one doing a site is paid for it. We run no ads, we beg for no money.
Stealing from the Mamas and the Papas, our approach has always been to be professional without being "professionals" (a subtly lost on some). All of us have busy lives. This isn't employment for any of us. We do it because we feel it needs to be done and because we enjoy it. We don't need to hear from those who refuse to take Iraq seriously and we will not put our own private lives on hold ever again.
In addition to announcing this piece publicly some time ago, we also noted a Labor Day piece. Let's be clear, only one thing will change the Labor Day piece from running. A last minute e-mail from The Nation will not change the Labor Day piece. We will be disclosing something that should have already been addressed in The Nation at length. If anyone wants that piece killed, they can address it (at The Nation) between now and the week before Labor Day. A last minute e-mail will not kill our piece or cause it to be rewritten. Only it running in the print edition of The Nation will. An e-mail saying, "It'll be out two weeks after Labor Day" will not result in us killing our piece or even rewriting it. Comments will not be added to it from a last minute e-mail. We will be using Labor Day for down time. If professional journalists are bothered by the feature (we're not sure they know what the scope is, we've attempted to keep that piece much more on the down low than this one), they have it in their power to pre-empt it only by addressing it themselves.
On what should have been a relaxed Fourth of July for us, we have instead had to do a conference call Tuesday evening about the e-mail and then spend six hours plus writing and debating this piece. If The Nation feels their e-mail hasn't been treated fairly, we don't feel it was fair to do the equivalent of a Friday government news dump on us at the last minute.
This feature was announced in May. "The Nation Stats" began running December 24, 2006. Writing us two days before the feature ran (correction, writing C.I.) appears to us to be nothing more than an end run around our announced and planned feature. To repeat, 7 with The Nation have written The Third Estate Sunday Review during the period that "The Nation Stats" has been running. No one ever raised any issues about that feature.
There is no legitimate claim that The Nation was unaware of the feature. The e-mail mentions not only C.I.'s "And the war drags on . . ." from last Thursday, it also appears to note the week before. In addition, both weeks, The Nation's attempted fundraiser (for rising print costs) were noted at The Common Ills only because The Nation e-mailed the public account. All of that (and more) goes to the fact that the both The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review are known quantities to The Nation by people other than friends of C.I., Elaine or Ava. In addition, Cedric heard last month from The Nation. And, of course, the Cindy Brady of the faux left long ago tried to both correct Elaine and share the new swear word he'd just learned. (Ava and Jess note that others with the magazine, not friends of any involved in the writing of this piece, have written The Common Ills -- with the coffee fetchers showing up in strong numbers beginning in January.)
That alone makes us question the sincerity of an e-mail that starts off so nice. By the time the e-mail begins asserting that The Third Estate Sunday Review's features and/or editorials are "riddled with errors and inaccuracies," we don't see it as a friendly e-mail. We'll assume the man needs time to 'research' that claim. In the meantime, we'll note we stand by what we have written. If there's an error (not surprising considering how much we write and how late we write it), we'll be happy to note it. We will not be noting that someone disagrees with a joke or an opinion. Those are not errors nor are they inaccuracies. In addition, C.I. gets called each Thursday about what's just gone into the new print edition of The Nation. C.I. also gets plenty of office gossip. If the man wants to challenge anything like that, feel free to do so. If it was conveyed by a friend at the magazine to C.I., we will note that.
But we will not ever again drop anything we have planned because someone shows up late to the party. And, again, we will be responding to the most offensive charge this Sunday as well as other points in the e-mail. If you make a charge such as "riddled with errors and inaccuracies," you need to back it up. We will note that, with few exceptions, none of our words of praise for The Nation has ever resulted in a thank you e-mail. Bad manners began showing up in large numbers in the summer of 2006. If they're suddenly desiring to become our e-mail buddies, a tip, charging that writing is "riddled with errors and inaccuracies" doesn't get anyone added to an I.M. buddy list.
Not only is no proof offered of that assertion, to make it one would presumably have to be very aware of our work. As C.I. has often said, "Well it's nice to be read."
We'll end as we began, with Pig Bergen. Ann Jones saw what was wrong with that article and publicly responded. A question worth asking is why no one at the magazine did? A better question worth asking is why Pig Bergen serves not only to announce the sexism that will be on display for the first six months of 2007 but also the slow creep of centrists into the magazine. The 'leading magazine of the left' should not attempt to present itself as such when it repeatedly runs centrists. The center is not the left, it is not even the faux left. For the record, Pig Bergen is, as noted by the magazine, a "senior fellow at the New America Foundation". The magazine fails to alert readers that the New American Foundation is a centrist organization.
We recently (and rightly) noted "Let Laura Be Laura" and we would also add Let The Left Be The Left. That will not result from The Nation's current fondness for centrists. There are plenty of left writers around who can and should be featured. The board of Bergen's organization includes such 'notables' as Fareed Zakaria, the safety czar Christy Todd Whitman and the charm free Francis Fukuyama. At a time when The Nation wants readers to be concerned about with reclaiming the Democratic Party, it's rather appalling that they also feel featuring centrists is what a left magazine does. (Not everyone with the magazine endorses the slow creep of the centrists which is how we first learned of it. "Slow Creep of the Centrist" is actually a phrase said to us by a writer for the magazine face to face.)
Ava and C.I. were in charge of the December 24, 2006 edition and that was the first week that a 2007 issue had arrived (January 1, 2007 issue). They immediately started up "The Nation Stats." "The Nation Stats" ran again in our December 31st edition (covering the magazine's January 8, 2007 issue -- a "double issue"). January 21st, we covered the January 22nd issue in "The Nation Stats." January 28th, "The Nation Stats" covered two issues since two arrived the same day for three of us participating in this feature (January 29th and Febuary 5th). February 4th, we covered the Feb 12th issue in "The Nation Stats." February 11th we covered the February 19th issue in "The Nation Stats." February 25th, we coved the February 26th issue in "The Nation Stats." March 4th we covered the March 5th and March 12th issues of the magazine in "The Nation Stats." March 11th, we covered the March 19th issue in "The Nation Stats." April 1st, we covered the March 26th and April 2nd issues in "The Nation Stats." April 8th, we covered the April 9th and April 16th issues in "The Nation Stats." April 22nd, we covered the April 23rd and April 30 issues in"The Nation Stats." April 29th, "The Nation Stats" addressed the May 7th issue. May 20th, "The Nation Stats" covered four issues -- May 14th, May 21st, May 28th and June 4th. June 10th, "The Nation Stats" covered the June 11th and June 18th issue. On July 1st, we concluded a six month study of the number of male bylines versus female bylines in "The Nation Stats." All "The Nation Stats" with links should take you to the feature in question. Check our math. Check our figures. Non-subscribers can go to The Nation magazine, click on "past issues" and fact check us themselves. We think checking first is incumbent before making charges of errors.
-- The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and Jim,
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,
Ruth of "Ruth's Report"
Trina of Trina's Kitchen
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz,
and Wally of The Daily Jot
For those who missed the obvious, Rocky Anderson was portrayed as Rocky because, after all, what's lefter than Sylvester Stallone? The Nation, intentionally or not, was telegraphing to one and all that they could "cowboy up" as well as any Bully Boy in the White House. Any who couldn't grasp the non-subtle point had only turn to page 25.
As Ava and C.I. noted in real time, and as Ruth noted this spring, that is where you would find a book 'review' by centrist Peter Bergen entitled "Waltzing With Warlords" which allegedly would address three books: Sarah Chayes' The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban; Ann Jones' Kabul In Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan; and Rory Stewart's The Places in Between. Page wise, the smallest of three was the one written by Rory Stewart in . . . 2004. Reviewed for the January 2007 issue, a 2004 book. [An expanded version was published in May of 2006. Still far too old to qualify for a review in a January 2007 issue.] Why include a book that was three years old at this point? One of the many puzzling questions pertaining to males the magazine has consistently raised in the last six months.
Our guess is when you want to cook the book 'review' against women, you'll go to any lengths. Centrist and pig Bergen opens his alleged book review reflecting on the obvious image for a war-torn Afghanistan:
I open it and step into a world far removed from the dust-blown avenues of Kabul, where most women wear burqas and the vast majority of the population live in grinding poverty.
At one end of a long room is a well-stocked bar tended by a Chinese madam who assesses us with a practiced calculus. In front of her are more than a dozen scantily clad smiling young Chinese women sprawled over a series of bar stools and couches.
What does that have to do with the three books? Not a damn thing. But Bergen wants his jollies and apparently feels everyone needs to know that he visits bordellos. How proud his parents must be! His former classmates, probably not at all surprised.
Having set the (low-brow) tone, Bergen quickly rushes to explain not all women, apparently, know their place. No, apparently, some women reach beyond their 'natural' abilities such as Chayes and Jones, both of whom are too 'emotional' to write about Afghanistan.
Bergen finds Chayes "angry," "disillusioned," prone to "a smidge of self-congratulations" and not at all trust worthy (". . . we have to take Chayes's word for it"). Bergen finds Jones even more of the text book example of the female 'hysteria' noting that she fell for "trope," that she, too, is "angry" (we're guessing most women Bergen's encounters are angry and that Bergen can find the reason for that just by looking in the mirror), that she suffers from a "tendency to see sinister conspiracies where they don't exist" (so irrational, those women), and much more! The funnin' never stops for Bergen.
Then it's time to turn to the male writer and all the troubles with (women) writers go out the window as Bergen informs us of "Stewart's beautifully written book," offering "picaresque stories, of adventures on the road is a critical point that is often overlooked by Westerners with dreams of transforming Afghanistan into a place where women enjoy equal rights" (killjoys!), "skeptical" (as opposed to the "disillusioned" Chayes), "erudite" and so, so much more.
The book 'review' is nothing but a pig going Oink-Oink-Oink! For those who know no better, Sarah Chayes is a Harvard graduate and a professional reporter who left NPR to live in Afghanistan and work to improve conditions in that country. While she was doing that, Bill Moyers didn't find her 'emotional' and, in fact, had her on as a guest for a lengthy segment of what was then Now with Bill Moyers where she spoke with David Branccacio. Journalists, including Amy Goodman, have interviewed Chayes since she has written her book and we're aware of no on air meltdowns.
In fact, most feel Chayes, a professionally trained and respected journalist, is a reliable source for what she observed with her own eyes while in Afghanistan. To assist gas bag Bergen, what Chayes does is considered reporting. That may be confusing in a new world disorder where 'reporters' are encouraged to run with official statements and given them complete weight -- even when they contradict with the journalist's own observations. Who, what, where, when -- the journalism basics -- are what Chayes covers and Bergen can't handle that kind of reality (from a woman) so he has to point out that, in a first-hand recounting, we [gasp!] are dependent upon the author's observations.
Ann Jones has contributed to The Nation before and, we're sure, is quite aware that there is no more damning phrase from that magazine than being said to possess "a tendency to see conspiracy theories." That is The Nation's equivalent of "Your mother!"
Not only is Jones an author, she's also a journalist and photographer -- with a doctorate as opposed to Bergen's B.A. and, we're sure, the B.S. he's more than earned from years of gas baggery. As for her alleged conspiracy theories, Nation Books only bestsellers, both by Gore Vidal, also argue the (true) narrative that, in the 90s, a proposed pipeline in Afghanistan trumped all other concerns for the US government. That's not a controversial theory to anyone but pigs who 'reported' for commercial TV 'journalism' (which is where Bergen hails from -- the lowest of all forms of journalism). Those not late to the party (that would be feminists) were calling out Afghanistan in the 90s while paid lobbyists were presenting PG-friendly versions of the country to Americans. Jones knows what she's writing about. Gore Vidal knows what he's writing about. The only one lost, intentionally or not, is Peter Bergen. [The February 25, 2007 "The Nation Stats" notes that Jones weighed in with a letter and that Bergen elected to ignore the bulk of it.]
That a three page plus book 'review' trafficking in the worst forms of sexism raised no flags to those in charge of the magazine goes a long, long way towards explaining how readers ended up with the first six months of The Nation this year.
Backstory, in the summer of 2006, a group of women journalists (some established, some emerging) asked to meet with C.I. C.I. knew most of them, who were welcome to come by anytime, but they wanted a scheduled meeting. At that point, Jess, Ava and Ty were already living with C.I. and Dona and Jim were there as guests (they, too, would soon be live in guests).Knowing several of the women who would be attending, Ava checked with the woman organizing the meeting to see if it would be okay to attend? It was more than okay and she was told she could invite anyone else.
The women wanted to lodge a formal complaint about The Nation which was ignoring women writers. Despite having a woman, Katrina vanden Heuvel, as editor and as a publisher, women were hearing tales of freelance pieces being dismissed quickly (and rudely) which had nothing to do with any journalism issue since the pieces would be picked up by other magazines. ("Snapped up," say Ava and C.I.) They'd been following it and they were tired of it. They wanted C.I. to track the issue at The Common Ills.
Jim, Dona and Ty came late to the meeting (Jess attended the full meeting) but were there for that and many other points. C.I.'s response was that The Common Ills focused on Iraq (at the request of members) and that, this far into 2006, it would require a great deal of work to go backwards at this point. (Despite that, C.I. wrote a column for Polly's Brew citing the 2006 statistics for women being published by The Nation.) But, C.I. offered, what if 2007 was charted? What if 2007 was charted and done so at The Third Estate Sunday Review? At which point Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava all readily agreed that they'd be happy to do that. With only full four months left in the 2006 year, the women agreed that was acceptable.
On December 24, 2006, in an edition steered by Ava and C.I., The Third Estate Sunday Review began tracking the number of males printed versus the number of women printed. All knew it would not be pretty. None expected it to be as bad as it was.
For one thing, we assumed when the feature entitled "The Nation Stats" began regularly appearing, The Nation would quickly move to address the imbalance. By that point, it was not at all uncommon for people with The Nation to e-mail The Third Estate Sunday Review and C.I. knows several people with the magazine. This, we wrongly thought, would not require much coverage to prompt quick improvement. During the six month review period (which ended Sunday), seven people with the magazine e-mailed The Third Estate Sunday Review. The online magazine (Third) was not an unknown quantity to all at the magazine.
The Nation fancies itself as the leading magazine of the left. Therefore, it should have not required anyone to chart the sorry numbers of women published when contrasted with the overly 'healthy' number of males.
In the early months, we would often arrive at the 3.8 or 3.7 males published for every one female. That women had 'leaped' to the one woman for every 3.4 males with a byline by the time our six month study concluded may be seen as some 'improvement.' It may also be seen as shocking considering that during this time, The Third Estate Sunday Review heard from seven with the magazine over a six month period.
As bad as the ratio is, more shocking is the hard numbers. Over a six month period, the 'weekly' (some issues are 'double' issues -- whether they have twice as many pages or the same as a so-called regular issue) published 255 male bylines and 74 female ones. (We've exempted one byline for reasons cited in our coverage -- links offered at the end. Look it up. One article is not counted and only one. Addressing why here will take this feature in another direction about the problem with who gets selected as an intern.) We stopped the count (Sunday) with the last June issue. July issues have since published, but for women to achieve equal presence in the magazine, the first issue of July would have had to begin publishing women, and only women, 181 times.
That the leading magazine of the left could reach that point says a great deal. That this could take place when a woman held both the position of editor and publisher says a great deal.
We were shocked, for instance, when the February 12, 2007 issue managed to feature only one female byline-- Elizabeth Holtzman, whose opinions on impeachment were quickly called out -- in the same issue -- by a male. An unqualified male, one could argue, since Holtzman had experience with impeachment due to her work during Watergate and the male had . . . musty academic b.s. We were appalled when the April 16, 2007 issue appeared with 12 bylines and not one, not one, was a woman's.
In May, we began sharing this feature was coming, that the six month study would run on July 4th. [Following FAIR's example of six months studies.] We shared that online, we shared that with various organizations (all but one had asked, the one that didn't was told only that we were far more concerned with The Nation's record of publishing women than we were with anything having to do with any other organization or outlet), and C.I., Ava and Elaine had shared it with friends at the magazine. That was in May.
We began working on the write up two weeks ago. That write up got trashed completely despite the fact that we'd worked ahead of time so that all sites would be able to post something on July 4th without having to give up their holiday. The write up got trashed because despite this feature being announced in May, despite the fact that the feature "The Nation Stats" began running at The Third Estate Sunday Review on December 24, 2006, neither the magazine proper nor anyone connected with it elected to contact us about this feature.
That changed on Monday. Kind of, sort of.
In a pattern well known to any member doing a site, when someone has a problem with something, they run straight to C.I. They rush to tattle to C.I. The e-mail has 12:24 stamped on it and we'll assume that was noon PST (no time zone is given). It was one of 18,342 e-mails waiting to be read in the public account on Tuesday. Jess was working the public account and came across a "woops" e-mail from The Nation and then passed by several pages of e-mails (Yahoo displays 25 e-mail messages per page) to find the original and figure out what the "woops" was about. In that e-mail, the noon one, he found that The Nation was finally commenting on a feature (which runs at The Third Estate Sunday Review, not The Common Ills) that began on December 24, 2006.
Jess was thirty minutes into a reply when Ava asked what he was so focused on. When she saw the e-mail, she said, "No way in hell does a man who wants to lecture C.I. and I on what women should do get a personal reply." A reply will go up at The Third Estate Sunday Review this weekend. The e-mail was meant to be "shared" ("pass on" was the term used) so it was shared with all participating in the writing of it. Whether the name was meant to be shared or not, we don't know. So we will leave him unnamed but, let's be clear, if a man with the magazine thinks he can lecture women on what they should do, we'd argue that goes a long way towards explaining some of the problems that allows 181 more males to be printed in a six month period than women.
We will not claim credit for the news that the issue of women is (finally) being addressed. (More on that in a minute.) We spent six months tracking it. We cannot make changes at the magazine. The magazine deserves credit for seeing the problem and addressing it (however late). By the same token, we will not take the blame for the number of women the magazine has run and find it laughable that a magazine which regularly boasts of its huge circulation numbers wants to attempt to pin the blame for their own failures on us.
The Nation advises, "On the subject of women and the magazine; you should also know that the magazine is more than aware of the imbalance, and has taken steps in the last several months to recruit and bring in more women writers. Between now and the Fall there are six new writers being added to our blogs, as well as new staff added to the editorial ranks."
Let's be clear, because we ran the above by the woman who organized the meeting last summer, that is largely nothing. Awareness may, in and of itself, be a good thing. But writers of print pieces receive more money than writers of 'online exclusives.' More to the point, our six month study focused solely on the print edition of the magazine. We did that for a number of reasons (including, we were warned ahead of time, of the website's tendency to make things that didn't turn out so good disappear -- as we all saw when a post on "American Idol" -- written while Congress was voting on the supplemental -- disappeared after, days later, Cindy Sheehan rightly called out adults who would rather focus on American Idol than the illegal war). But it has been clear even to the most dense that we were addressing the print edition. Nothing in The Nation's response above addressed the print edition.
"Blogs" are not print. Editorial staff doesn't mean more bylines for women. Nothing that is offered addresses the imbalance in print. The Nation goes on to inform us that, "Its worth noting, I think, the extent to which women ARE the leadership of the magazine -- from the editorial side (print, web, and almost all of our senior and executive editors) to the business side (President and the heads of advertising and fundraising) -- but there is an ongoing effort to bring in more women in to the magazine and the website."
More women are in leadership? Our generic response to that is to quote from Ava and C.I.'s "TV Review: Commander-in-Chief aka The Nah-Nah Sisterhood" (The Third Estate Sunday Review, November 20, 2005):
What really frightens us, besides the fact that a backlash only takes root when people who should know better applaud this junk, is an elitist attitude that seems to greet this show."We got our woman president!"
Consider us too grass-rooty but we don't see that as an end all be all. We weren't among the ones saying "At least we still got Martin Sheen on TV" so maybe we're missing it. But honestly, we'll take an Alice over a Commander-in-Chief. Give us working class women who pull together over a queen bee living a rarified life.We've never doubted that a woman could be president (and at some point will be). But we've never assumed that gender would be an answer. A woman who supports equality? Absolutely, that's a great thing. A woman who makes her way as an exception, backs up an agenda she doesn't believe in and does nothing to help other women? We don't see the point in applauding that.
It's a pertinent issue as two women are repeatedly named as potential candidates in the real world: Condi Rice and Hillary Clinton. If either woman (or both) runs, will we get the same giddy "It's a woman!" nonsense? Under no circumstance would either of us vote for Rice. We'd be reluctant to vote for Clinton considering her waffles on the issue of choice and her stance on the war. But will those issues be silenced in the giddy cry of, "It's a woman! It's a first!"
That's troubling.
Again, that is our generic response. Our specific response?
Is Katrina vanden Heuvel the editor and publisher or not? This is a point that's a bit hard for the e-mailer to grasp. (As evidenced as his attempts to slam our work.) The masthead says she is the editor and publisher. When she goes on TV, she is billed as the editor and publisher of The Nation. If she is indeed editor and publisher (yes, we know she is) then she bears the ultimate responsibility for what does and does not get printed. To repeat, our focus has been the print edition. What women do or do not do online has not been the scope of our study. We have never claimed it was. We have noted, in each "The Nation Stats," which issue or issues we were covering in that feature.
We will note this from The Nation, "I did want you to know as well that our July 12th issue is a double issue devoted entirely to Iraq. Two writers have completed a piece that is by far the largest collection of soldiers on the record about their experiences in Iraq done by any publication. It clearly depicts, we think, the horror of the war in Iraq, the illegality, and the extent to which soldiers were sent in unprepared and ill-equipped, and the toll that's taken. I would patently disagree that we have 'refused to cover Iraq as an ongoing illegal war,' and if I had the time for the research project I would quote piece after piece, on print and online, to make the point. The work of Jeremy Scahill, Joshua Kors and our lead edit from November of 05 come to mind as starting points. Regardless, I respect your opinion and wanted you to know that we do have a double issue coming out given over almost entirely to the war."
We are glad to know that an issue finally is devoted to Iraq. We do not claim credit for that although C.I. has led at The Common Ills (see "2006: The Year of Living Dumbly" for the first really hard hitting piece by C.I. and that issue has been addressed at The Common Ills regularly since). We're not really sure why the magazine feels the need to tell us that we are wrong (apparently patently) while also noting that there's no "time for the research project" which would prove us wrong?
We do not doubt that the magazine feels it has covered the illegal war seriously. We also do not doubt that they thought they were presenting women in equal numbers to men until we pointed the obvious culminating with the magazine running 181 more male bylines than female ones. Is it too much to point out the obvious? That the bylines mentioned in the quote above are male bylines? As Laura Flanders has rightly noted, women are being sidelined on the discussion of the illegal war in the media -- all media.
Again, the magazine wants to bring up what was online. We have repeatedly and clearly stated that we are covering the print edition in "The Nation Stats" and all sites (with C.I. leading) noting the Iraq coverage have regularly noted the difference between "online exclusives" and what makes it into print. We'll respond in full to that and other comments on Sunday.
We reject any claims of credit for any changes The Nation is discussing, addressing or considering. We also reject any blame for what the magazine has elected to print. We believe either credits us with more power than we have which is not us rejecting claims of our own power. Each of us has the power to be agents of change within our own lives. However, not being on staff at The Nation, we will not hog credit for needed changes that are (hopefully) now going to be made and we reject any blame for what has appeared in the magazine's print version.
We would further add that when the magazine wants to charge that writing at The Third Estate Sunday Review is "riddled with errors and inaccuracies," it's incumbent upon them to name them and not make baseless charges. Are there typos? There are. Are there factual errors? We're not aware of any and we're not really sure that, if there were, The Nation is any place to lecture on that topic having repeatedly refused to correct errors that made it into print. We'll provide at least one example of that (we've noted many at The Third Estate Sunday Review) on Sunday. Our numbers were not questioned so we'll assume The Nation has accepted those.
We have noted frequently that if our math is off, please e-mail. We have never received any e-mail about the numbers. On Sunday, we thought we were done when C.I. insisted that our number for the ratio had to be wrong. We redid it and it was. We corrected before it went up. Since our numbers may have been the only thing not challenged in the e-mail (our character appears to have been challenged, Ava and C.I.'s feminist status appears to have been questioned, etc.) we'll assume they are correct and note that anyone can check them out for themselves using the links posted at the end of this feature.
The Third Estate Sunday Review is composed of six people: Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I. C.I. has worked on every edition (only C.I. and Ava can make that claim). When the site started, the reason it started, was C.I. was speaking on an East Coast campus, Jim realized it was "C.I." and, after the talk (on Iraq, of course), approached C.I. and said, "You are C.I. of The Common Ills." Jim, Dona, Ty and Jess had spoken of doing a site. Ava rightly notes that she wasn't a planned participant. She was Dona's roommate and Dona brought her along. It is also true that, when Dona asked, everyone was for it. (Jess especially, he and Ava are now a couple.) Though C.I. helped on every edition (some pieces had no involvement from C.I. during those weeks), C.I. refused to be billed as part of The Third Estate Sunday Review noting, "It's your site." Over a year later, C.I. finally agreed. The writing is a group process with one exception.
Ava and C.I. do the TV commentaries. That is ironic since neither even thought we should do a TV piece in the very first edition of The Third Estate Sunday Review. During that first month, Ava and C.I.'s contributions to the TV reviews were what readers responded to. The e-mails would note a sentence or a paragraph and how much they agreed with it or how they'd never thought about it from that angle. ("Or complain," Ava and C.I. note.) Their jokes were always mentioned as well. Jim will admit he was the last to grasp what they were doing (a feminist take on TV -- "a," not "the"). By February 2005, even Jim grasped it and the TV commentaries were turned over to Ava and C.I.
They were not orginally credited for them, in February 2005, because we were doing group writing, believe in it, and they did not want the credit. The credit only went up when the others got tired of explaining, after being congratulated in e-mails or face to face by friends, parents or professors, that Ava and C.I. wrote those pieces. No one is prouder of the work Ava and C.I. do than are Jim, Dona, Ty and Jess. The TV commentaries are the calling card for The Third Estate Sunday Review. (Ava and C.I. are both groaning but we're putting this in.)
They are always the most popular feature any week. They have been linked to (when little else we've done ever has), they have been run in student and feminist papers, they have been run in three feminist publications by college women. On the latter, if any feminist organization thinks they can raise funds or merely pad out a collection with one of their TV reviews, Ava and C.I. have been all for it. In May, they did a commentary that got far too much attention for their comfort level. With the exception of a friend with PBS who phoned shortly after the piece went up [and a note was added to the commentary on that call], the response was all positive. It was also overwhelming for them (as Dona noted the first Friday of June in the gina & krista round-robin). They do not want to hear about the e-mails on their reviews. (Unless it's negative and then it's no problem with them.) With the May commentary, even shielding them from the e-mails wasn't enough because friends (close and distant) were calling them to sing the praises of that commentary.
They have repeatedly turned down interviews since requests first began coming in for those in the spring of 2005. That wasn't something Jim got because a write up somewhere would bring attention to the site. (It also took months of Dona pointing out to Jim that his encouraging praise -- "lavish," says Ava -- offered before Ava and C.I. were about to start work on that week's commentary was too much, raised the bar of expectations too high and freaked them out.) They have offered shorter commentaries since the overwhelming response in May. They will be returning to their epic commentaries shortly. (A review of a drama planned for this month will be their return.) But we say all of that to note that they are not attention seekers, they do need or want flattery and they try to keep their heads down and do the work required.
We value what they do, whether it's an in depth look or something they complete in 15 minutes. We say all that to note that we will never let stand some man questioning their feminist credentials.
When the man represents a magazine that has published 181 more males than women in a six month period you damn well better believe we won't let it stand or any 'suggestions' of what women should or should not say or should or should not write. Ruth was the most adament that this be included. As an over-sixty-years-old woman there at the start of the second wave of feminism in this country, she said there is no way she can tolerate silence with regard to that nonsense of "a man whose shown no known interest in gender equality suddenly rushing in to question two feminist's commitment." We will go into more detail on that Sunday. For now, we will note that no woman needs a lecture from any man about what women should do nor do they deserve to have their feminist qualifications questioned by anyone at a magazine that allows 181 more men than women to be published in a six month period.
Some at The Nation may enjoy writing The Common Ills because, if Ava reads it and it's a whine, she'll rip the whiner apart. Far be it from us to deny anyone their pleasure, even if it's masochism. But this e-mail was directed to C.I. and we are all sick of that.
"Allow me to introduce myself, I'm another person in the room."-- Rhoda (Valerie Harper) speaking to Mary's (Mary Tyler Moore) date in "Today I Am A Ma'Am," written by Treva Silverman, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, episode two, first aired September 26, 1970.
Like Rhoda, we're all a little sick of it and for a number of reasons.
In addition to the public account there are two main accounts for members and there are also backup acocunts. The Common Ills gets more mail than any other site which is why Martha, Shirley, Eli, Ava and Jess help C.I. with the e-mails. Every site that sprung up, or Ruth's Report, did so because of The Common Ills. Before any other site started, we were all members of The Common Ills community and still are. As such, we are as sick as other members of people running to C.I. about something that's been written elsewhere. It strikes us as tattling and a "woops" doesn't change that. If people are doing that thinking it provides cover (due to C.I.'s policy on e-mails), it should be clear that, from now on, there is no cover when you run to C.I. to complain about the rest of us. In this case, the points were supposed to be "passed on." It doesn't matter whether they're supposed to be passed on or not from now on. If you run to C.I. to complain about us (as happens repeatedly), your e-mail is not about The Common Ills and you have no guarantee of privacy.
Redoing this already written feature meant that everyone had to give up their holiday time on what was a planned 'easy' day. [It also means Kat did not have the time to complete her review of Mavis Staples' latest CD. The plan for that is now to go up no later than Sunday morning.] Unlike The Nation, no one doing a site is paid for it. We run no ads, we beg for no money.
Stealing from the Mamas and the Papas, our approach has always been to be professional without being "professionals" (a subtly lost on some). All of us have busy lives. This isn't employment for any of us. We do it because we feel it needs to be done and because we enjoy it. We don't need to hear from those who refuse to take Iraq seriously and we will not put our own private lives on hold ever again.
In addition to announcing this piece publicly some time ago, we also noted a Labor Day piece. Let's be clear, only one thing will change the Labor Day piece from running. A last minute e-mail from The Nation will not change the Labor Day piece. We will be disclosing something that should have already been addressed in The Nation at length. If anyone wants that piece killed, they can address it (at The Nation) between now and the week before Labor Day. A last minute e-mail will not kill our piece or cause it to be rewritten. Only it running in the print edition of The Nation will. An e-mail saying, "It'll be out two weeks after Labor Day" will not result in us killing our piece or even rewriting it. Comments will not be added to it from a last minute e-mail. We will be using Labor Day for down time. If professional journalists are bothered by the feature (we're not sure they know what the scope is, we've attempted to keep that piece much more on the down low than this one), they have it in their power to pre-empt it only by addressing it themselves.
On what should have been a relaxed Fourth of July for us, we have instead had to do a conference call Tuesday evening about the e-mail and then spend six hours plus writing and debating this piece. If The Nation feels their e-mail hasn't been treated fairly, we don't feel it was fair to do the equivalent of a Friday government news dump on us at the last minute.
This feature was announced in May. "The Nation Stats" began running December 24, 2006. Writing us two days before the feature ran (correction, writing C.I.) appears to us to be nothing more than an end run around our announced and planned feature. To repeat, 7 with The Nation have written The Third Estate Sunday Review during the period that "The Nation Stats" has been running. No one ever raised any issues about that feature.
There is no legitimate claim that The Nation was unaware of the feature. The e-mail mentions not only C.I.'s "And the war drags on . . ." from last Thursday, it also appears to note the week before. In addition, both weeks, The Nation's attempted fundraiser (for rising print costs) were noted at The Common Ills only because The Nation e-mailed the public account. All of that (and more) goes to the fact that the both The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review are known quantities to The Nation by people other than friends of C.I., Elaine or Ava. In addition, Cedric heard last month from The Nation. And, of course, the Cindy Brady of the faux left long ago tried to both correct Elaine and share the new swear word he'd just learned. (Ava and Jess note that others with the magazine, not friends of any involved in the writing of this piece, have written The Common Ills -- with the coffee fetchers showing up in strong numbers beginning in January.)
That alone makes us question the sincerity of an e-mail that starts off so nice. By the time the e-mail begins asserting that The Third Estate Sunday Review's features and/or editorials are "riddled with errors and inaccuracies," we don't see it as a friendly e-mail. We'll assume the man needs time to 'research' that claim. In the meantime, we'll note we stand by what we have written. If there's an error (not surprising considering how much we write and how late we write it), we'll be happy to note it. We will not be noting that someone disagrees with a joke or an opinion. Those are not errors nor are they inaccuracies. In addition, C.I. gets called each Thursday about what's just gone into the new print edition of The Nation. C.I. also gets plenty of office gossip. If the man wants to challenge anything like that, feel free to do so. If it was conveyed by a friend at the magazine to C.I., we will note that.
But we will not ever again drop anything we have planned because someone shows up late to the party. And, again, we will be responding to the most offensive charge this Sunday as well as other points in the e-mail. If you make a charge such as "riddled with errors and inaccuracies," you need to back it up. We will note that, with few exceptions, none of our words of praise for The Nation has ever resulted in a thank you e-mail. Bad manners began showing up in large numbers in the summer of 2006. If they're suddenly desiring to become our e-mail buddies, a tip, charging that writing is "riddled with errors and inaccuracies" doesn't get anyone added to an I.M. buddy list.
Not only is no proof offered of that assertion, to make it one would presumably have to be very aware of our work. As C.I. has often said, "Well it's nice to be read."
We'll end as we began, with Pig Bergen. Ann Jones saw what was wrong with that article and publicly responded. A question worth asking is why no one at the magazine did? A better question worth asking is why Pig Bergen serves not only to announce the sexism that will be on display for the first six months of 2007 but also the slow creep of centrists into the magazine. The 'leading magazine of the left' should not attempt to present itself as such when it repeatedly runs centrists. The center is not the left, it is not even the faux left. For the record, Pig Bergen is, as noted by the magazine, a "senior fellow at the New America Foundation". The magazine fails to alert readers that the New American Foundation is a centrist organization.
We recently (and rightly) noted "Let Laura Be Laura" and we would also add Let The Left Be The Left. That will not result from The Nation's current fondness for centrists. There are plenty of left writers around who can and should be featured. The board of Bergen's organization includes such 'notables' as Fareed Zakaria, the safety czar Christy Todd Whitman and the charm free Francis Fukuyama. At a time when The Nation wants readers to be concerned about with reclaiming the Democratic Party, it's rather appalling that they also feel featuring centrists is what a left magazine does. (Not everyone with the magazine endorses the slow creep of the centrists which is how we first learned of it. "Slow Creep of the Centrist" is actually a phrase said to us by a writer for the magazine face to face.)
Ava and C.I. were in charge of the December 24, 2006 edition and that was the first week that a 2007 issue had arrived (January 1, 2007 issue). They immediately started up "The Nation Stats." "The Nation Stats" ran again in our December 31st edition (covering the magazine's January 8, 2007 issue -- a "double issue"). January 21st, we covered the January 22nd issue in "The Nation Stats." January 28th, "The Nation Stats" covered two issues since two arrived the same day for three of us participating in this feature (January 29th and Febuary 5th). February 4th, we covered the Feb 12th issue in "The Nation Stats." February 11th we covered the February 19th issue in "The Nation Stats." February 25th, we coved the February 26th issue in "The Nation Stats." March 4th we covered the March 5th and March 12th issues of the magazine in "The Nation Stats." March 11th, we covered the March 19th issue in "The Nation Stats." April 1st, we covered the March 26th and April 2nd issues in "The Nation Stats." April 8th, we covered the April 9th and April 16th issues in "The Nation Stats." April 22nd, we covered the April 23rd and April 30 issues in"The Nation Stats." April 29th, "The Nation Stats" addressed the May 7th issue. May 20th, "The Nation Stats" covered four issues -- May 14th, May 21st, May 28th and June 4th. June 10th, "The Nation Stats" covered the June 11th and June 18th issue. On July 1st, we concluded a six month study of the number of male bylines versus female bylines in "The Nation Stats." All "The Nation Stats" with links should take you to the feature in question. Check our math. Check our figures. Non-subscribers can go to The Nation magazine, click on "past issues" and fact check us themselves. We think checking first is incumbent before making charges of errors.
-- The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and Jim,
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,
Ruth of "Ruth's Report"
Trina of Trina's Kitchen
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz,
and Wally of The Daily Jot
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