A highlight of our weekends is always reading Ruth's latest Ruth's Morning Edition Report. We especially enjoy it when she provides commentary (as she did last week taking on Bill O'Lielly's claims of a war on Christmas). This week, she provides some commentary on Time's Joe Klein.
While we're noting this, we'll also note our thanks to Ruth for participating in our roundtable on 2006 which will go up shortly. Finally, we'll note that if you think to get your news on radio, you're dependent on NPR, you really need to read Ruth's reports. There's a whole world of public radio that never feels the need to get Cokie Roberts or Juan Williams' opinions on anything. Explore it with Ruth.
"Ruth's Morning Edition Report"
Ruth: CounterSpin, which I listen to on WBAI, featured Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and journalist Michael Massing of The New York Review of Books and Columbia Journalism Review. Before the interview segments, the show provided a run down of "the week's press" as it does each week.
What is Time Magazine's Joe Klein's issues with teachers? Did he wet himself in the second grade and some teacher didn't have a clean pair of children's under pants on hand? In a recent column, Joe Klein praises California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for "taking on public school teachers." Mr. Klein apparently believes that the real terrorists are to be found at our chalkboards across the country. Mr. Klein also had praise for the Bully Boy for his freedom lip service regarding Lebanon, Senator Lindsey Grahm for his efforts to privatize Social Security and Senator Obama Barrak for his condemning advocacy groups opposed to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts' nomination. Why does Mr. Klein hate us for our freedoms?
Another item addressed a recent study by NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin who studied the use of think tanks by NPR. In 2004, FAIR, the parent organization of CounterSpin, studied NPR's use of think tanks and concluded that it relied on right-of-center think tanks. Now Mr. Dvorkin has come to similar conclusions, one year later. Mr. Dvorkin found that 239 guests were from right-wing think tanks and that 141 guests were from left-wing think tanks. To reach those totals, Mr. Dvorkin had to classify the centrist Brookings Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) as left-wing. "Without them, the study would have shown zero progressive think tanks," Steve Rendell noted. However, the CSIS has "historically been rather conservative" and, when arguing FAIR's 2004 study, Mr. Dvorkin stated that FAIR's classification of CSIS was wrong because "they have left and right on staff." Which means that in 2004, Mr. Dvorkin felt that CSIS was, at best, a centrist think tank; however, one year later, Mr. Dvorkin feels that CSIS is now left-wing one.
A lot can, apparently, happen in a year. Or perhaps Mr. Dvorkin changed his own classification because, as Mr. Rendell noted, "Without them [Brookings and CSIS], the study would have shown zero progressive think tanks."
Janine Jackson was on this week. Ms. Jackson, Mr. Rendall and Peter Hart host CounterSpin with two appearing on air each week. Two apologies are in order. First, apologies to Mr. Rendall whose name I have spelled "Rendell" in the past. Reading through the latest issue of Extra!, also put out by FAIR, I saw the C-Span article that had been highlighted here this week and noticed the correct spelling of Mr. Rendall's name. My apologies for having mispelled it in the past. The second apology goes to Ms. Jackson and members who enjoy her commentaries. I enjoy them too but I rarely note them because she just tickles me. This week, I swore I would take notes and include her. I know she addressed an academic study by two professors. I remember that they were claiming liberal bias in the media. But her delivery always delights me and I find myself laughing and not taking notes. So my apologies to Ms. Jackson and members who enjoy her commentaries that have e-mailed asking why I rarely go over them here. It is because I am laughing too hard to take notes.
Michael Ratner was interviewed by Steve Rendall and they discussed a number of issues in the news. This included the NSA tapping of American citizens and the administration's attempts to justify this spying. Mr. Ratner found the argument "absurd. It's an assertion of power that goes way beyond anything I've seen. . . . It's really the usurping of our Constitution and our checks and balances. . . . It's criminal and impeachable."
Mr. Ratner tied the administration's argument to earlier administration arguments. Such as when President Dwight Eisenhower attempted to seize steel mills during the Korean war and the Supreme Court found that he did not have that power and President Richard Nixon's argument that could "wiretap without a warrant domestic activists opposing the war" which was also found to be a power that he did not have.Mr. Rendall raised the issue of the New York Times sitting on the story of the N.S.A. tapping for over a year and Mr. Ratner found that "chicken hearted" and wondered, "How they could have waited a year on something the president was saying 'I am above the law'?"
On the issue of domestic spying, the Pentagon spying on activists, Mr. Ratner traced that back to the actions of then Attorney General John Ashcroft following 9/11. He noted that we are now back to fighting battles that we won in the seventies and eighties all over again.
The so-called torture ban that has been so widely applauded by the mainstream media was not something that Mr. Ratner found praise worthy. He noted that the ban had "always been there" but that the McCain amendment now provides a loophole where, if you torture and if there is a government memo or legal opinion authorizing the torture, the person conducting torture now has a legal out should their be criminal or civil prosecution for his or her actions.
The Grahm-Levin amdendment also raised issues because it strips Guantanamo detainees of their right to be heard in the courts and allows them to be held for any length of time at the whim of the executive branch and based upon "evidence" that resulted from torture.
Ms. Jackson conducted the next interview which was with journalist Michael Massing. Mr. Massing had previously explored external issues that impact the press and is currently exploring internal issues such as "the need for access. Access journalism has become a big part of our reporting . . . and often inhibits them [the press] from doing the kind of reporting that we need."
He also addressed self-censorship and felt that following 9/11 there was self-censoship within the profession and that it was "a big factor that doesn't get talked about in the profession." He noted that the press on Iraq has not given as much attention to issues such as checkpoints in Iraq despite the number of Iraqis killed as a result of misunderstanding hand signals and other issues. This is a story that is a component of life in Iraq but it is not addressed in a manner that reflects how common place the tragic events are.
Ms. Jackson asked about the idea of balance and, while defending the model itself, Mr. Massing took issue with a number of distortions it can provide. "Journalists too often don't let their readers know what the reality is," Mr. Massing stated. "Readers are often sort of not clued in as to what the reality is."
Touching on the reaction of the press to poverty in New Orleans, Ms. Jackson noted that they seemed to be "discovering poverty. Are most reporters out of touch?"
Mr. Massing felt that as the profession has become more professionalized and more prestigious, many reporters have been cut off from various groups of people that earlier generations would have mixed with. He noted the D.C. correspondents dinner and how news organizations and the elected and appointed officials easily mix at that. He also noted that many reporters in D.C. send their children to the same schools as the officials.
Pacifica's WBAI is the station I listen to CounterSpin on as well as Law & Disorder which aired Monday. [Note WBAI archived broadcasts can be accessed here.] The hosts of Law & Disorder are Michael Ratner, Dalia Hashad, Michael Smith and Heidi Bohosian. Unless Law & Disorder is now a weekly show, which would please me, I am unable to figure out the schedule.
The issue of air marshalls moving from planes to land travel was discussed. Trains and ferries will now be their scope as well and they will be working in larger teams. Also addressed was what to do when the F.B.I. comes calling? "If the F.B.I. wants to talk to you, call a lawyer," Michael Ratner stated. "Call the ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild, the Center for Constitonal Rights." The ACLU provides a pamphlet you can download, in various languages, entitled "Know Your Rights." In addition, you can request one at (212) 549-2517.
Two guests addressed developments in Mumia Abu-Jamal's case. The third circuit has agreed to "to hear some of the infractions" involved in the case that resulted in Mr. Abu-Jamal being on death row. The two guests were Jaff Mcakler and Robert R. Bryan, both attornies of Mr. Abu-Jamal, who addressed the issues the third circuit appears ready to hear which included the prosecutor instructing the jury that "You can feel okay about finding him guilty because even if you do find him guilty, he's going to have appeal after appeal" which may have resulted in the jury dismissing reasonable doubt and the burden of proof being lowered. In addition racial bias will be reviewed. As has long been part of the public record, a court stenographer has stated she overheard the judge stating, "Yeah, I'm going to help fry the n___."
A third attorney was brought on, Bill Moffet, to discuss his successful defense of professor Sami Al-Arian. Professor Al-Arian is the man whom the government attempted to get terrorism convictions on due to his support for Palestinian causes. Mr. Moffet stated that rather than play on the government's field, the defense he argued was based upon First Amendment rights and that the jury's verdicts supported those grounds.
Lori e-mailed to ask if I heard "Woodstock" played during one of the moments between segments. I did hear the song but I believe it was Joni Mitchell's version from her Ladies of the Canyon album due to the piano. However, it may have been Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's version.
The final guests were the authors of Actions Speak Louder Than Bumper Stickers which is a book featuring cathy bumper stickers with facts on the back of each one. Some of the slogans on the bumper stickers include:
"One Person One Vote Offer Not Valid In Florida"
Mark Twain's "Suppose You Were An Idiot, Suppose You Were A Member of Congress. But I Repeat Myself."
"Democrats Think That The Glass Is Full, Republicans Think That The Glass Is Their's."
KPFA's The Morning Show featured Michael Ratner as a guest on Thursday. Philip Maldari conducted the interview and they addressed the topics of spying and torture. The Jose Padilla case was also addressed. The administration wanted to avoid the Supreme Court ruling on whether Mr. Padilla could be an enemy combantant so they moved him from a military tribunal to a civilian court, dropped the enemy combantant tag and attempted to force the courts to play along. "The court said you are toying with us," Mr. Ratner noted commenting on the court's refusal to grant the change in venue. "This was a serious blow to the administration." The issues of whether or not Padilla can be transferred from the category of enemy combantant to a criminal court and whether or not the government can detain citizens without trial will now be addressed by the Supreme Court.
Later in the program, Andrea Lewis interviewed two authors, Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry, who provided tips for would be authors. The authors have written Putting Your Passion Into Print: Get Your Book Published Successfully! and the interview is filled with information and humor. Ms. Lewis worked in publishing so not only were her questions informed, she was also able to provide publishing suggestions as well. If you missed Thursday's broadcast, you also missed Jennifer Stone's commentary which included discussing the Mary Poppins books and the author of the series, P. L. Travers. The Morning Show airs on KPFA Mondays through Friday and is a two hour blend of news, public interest, arts and much more. Cindy e-mailed requesting that members check out the show and to remember that you can listen to it (and all Pacifica programs) online.
counterspin
janine jackson
steve rendall
michael ratner
michael massing
wbai
law and disorder
kpfa
the morning show
andrea lewis
ruths morning edition report
the common ills
radio
public radio
pacifica
jennifer stone
philip maldari
arielle eckstut
david henry sterry
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Blog Spotlight: Elaine on medical ethics
When we were still doing our news review, one issue that was touched upon was the issue of the ethics of the medical professionals participating with interrogations. Elaine and C.I. felt very strongly about the issue and we once had a commentary for the news review by Elaine that we ran out of time for. We kept hoping to include it at a future date but, to quote John Lennon, life is what happens while you're busy making other plans. So when Elaine tackled this issue, we knew we'd have to highlight it because it's an important one.
"Expectations (personal and professional)"
Happy holidays. I hope you are enjoying the weekend whether it's a time for celebration or not. Gatherings this time of year can be filled with expectations and frustrations so if you're struggling or worried, do not feel that you are alone or that "It's just you." Rebecca wrote about this last night in her "christmas and no nerves of steel" post. If you think you can relate to that, please check it out. If you don't think it has anything to do with you, please consider reading it because it probably will reflect someone in any gathering. Expectations, both real and imagined, weigh heavy this time of year.
Also check out Mike's Mikey Likes It! because he's writing at the same time. We're in his room and he's on his computer and I'm on my laptop. Which is a good time to say thank you to the McKinnon family for inviting me to spend the holidays with them. (A thank you to Nina, Mike's girlfriend, as well.) I know I noted this at The Third Estate Sunday Review and, I believe, also at Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude while I was filling in for Rebecca, but I'm not sure it's up here. So if anyone's wondering why I'm spending Christmas with the McKinnons or spent Thanksgiving with C.I., my parents died while I was a young teenager. My only surviving family is a very wonderful older brother who now lives in Europe. Originally, he would fly in for the holidays but, quite honestly, the two of us together at the holidays can sometimes be depressing. He now makes a point to avoid the holidays. I usually grab Thanksgiving with C.I. who is a friend of many years and I'm welcome (C.I. would say "more than welcome") to grab Christmas as well. However, the guest list at Christmas triples from the list for Thanksgiving and I'll usually either spend Christmas alone, with a date's family or with friends. This year I'm very fortunate to be spending it with friends and I thank the McKinnon's for their hospitality.Now here are two items from Democracy Now! Friday that you're hopefully already aware of but are worth noting.
Federal Judge Calls Gitmo Detentions "Unlawful" (Democracy Now!)
This news on Guantanamo Bay: the Washington Post is reporting a federal judge has ruled the detention of two ethnic Uighurs at the U.S. prison is "unlawful", but says he does not have the authority to release them. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge James Robertson said the government has taken too long to release Abu Bakker Qassim and Adel Abdu Hakim -- who have been jailed for four years. The two have been cleared for release, but not returned to China where they would likely face torture or execution.. The two men are among nine detainees that remain at Guantanamo despite having been declared "no longer enemy combatants." In his ruling, Judge Robertson wrote: "The government's use of the Kafka-esque term 'no longer enemy combatants' deliberately begs the question of whether these petitioners ever were enemy combatants."
Justice Dept. Admits Spy Program Does Not Comply With FISA (Democracy Now!):
The disclosure comes as the Justice Department has admitted that the President's eavesdropping program does not comply with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Along with another wiretapping statute, FISA defines itself as: "the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance . . . may be conducted." The admission came in a letter to Congress Thursday.
Mike's providing commentary on those so be sure to check out his site; I'm just noting them because there's something else I want to focus on.
I'm utilizing two articles for this, an Associated Press article that ran in most papers (including the New York Times) and an article from The Nation. The link I provide to the AP article is care of the Mercury News which does not require registration to be read. With regards to The Nation, you need to be a subscriber to read the article online. I don't subscribe to The Nation. That's not a slap at that magazine. I subscribe to periodicals and journals for my profession. Otherwise, I utilize book stores. (Sadly, a very large chain.) I prefer to purchase magazines. I usually purchase every issue of The Nation (so subscribing would be cheaper) but I enjoy walking up to the sales counter with my purchases as well as having the ability not to purchase an issue of any magazine containing a story or stories that I have no interest in (or may have a strong objection to). One of the things my father was big on was taking us to the bookstore every Saturday. We'd be encouraged to pick out a book or magazine (toys weren't as prevalent at bookstores when I was a child and videos -- videotapes or DVD -- had yet to emerge). From there, we'd go to lunch at my father's favorite deli. (My mother, in case you're wondering, had Saturday afternoon's "off." This was something that began after I was born when my mother, rightly, gave an ultimatum that she couldn't work full time, be the primary person responsible for keeping the house clean and raise two children without any break. For the first seven years of my brother's life she had struggled to be everything to everyone. After I was born, she stayed home three weeks with me before returning to work and quickly realized that attempting to do everything would drive her crazy. Fortunately, my father was smart enough to grasp both that she was serious and that she did, indeed, deserve at least five hours to herself once a week.)
I thought I was just attempting to make sure that no Nation reader took it as an insult that I didn't subsribe (I do read the magazine regularly); however, probably due to the season, I obviously wanted to take a trip down memory lane. Thanks to everyone reading for their indulgence.
Thank you as well to C.I. because I didn't pack the issue, the December 26th issue devoted to exploring torture, and the article isn't available to nonsubscribers online. C.I. scanned the article and e-mailed it to me. The link I'll provide for the article does allow you to read the opening.
Starting Thursday, and continuing through today, various papers have run an obit onHeinrich Gross who passed away December 15th at the age of 90. The name may not be familiar to you. "Heinrich Gross, accused of Nazi experiments" is the headline the AP article ran under in the San Jose Mercury News. In the New York Times, on Thursday, the article ran under the heading "Heinrich Gross, 90, Psychiatrist At Nazi Death Clinic in Austria."
"Heinrich Gross, accused of Nazi experiments: PROMINENT DOCTOR ESCAPED PROSECUTION" (William J. Cole, Associated Press):
Dr. Heinrich Gross, a psychiatrist who worked at a clinic where the Nazis killed and conducted cruel experiments on thousands of children, died Dec. 15, his family announced Thursday. He was 90.Dr. Gross, who was implicated in nine deaths as part of a Nazi plot to eliminate "worthless lives,'' had escaped trial in March after a court ruled he suffered from severe dementia. No cause of death was given in a brief statement issued by his family.
Dr. Gross was a leading doctor in Vienna's infamous Am Spiegelgrund clinic. Historians and survivors of the clinic had accused him of killing or taking part in the clinic's experiments on thousands of children deemed by the Nazis to be physically, mentally or otherwise unfit for Adolf Hitler's vision of a perfect world.
The article explains how three times, Gross (I'm refusing to call him "Doctor") was tried but escaped conviction. In the 50s, "the case was thrown out because of a legal technicality." In the eighties, a case was "dismissed because the 30-year statute of limitations on manslaughter had expired." When Gross stood trial in 2000, he escaped conviction because he was found "unfit for trial because of advanced dementia."
Gross is accused (in my opinion, for good reason) of perverting science and his oath to aid the Nazis in torture and killings. This is a perversion of his profession.
He misused science. (Gross maintained his innocence until the end, again, my opinion is he was guilty.) He forsook his oath, he betrayed the principle of first do no harm. He placed a government's interest over the interests of of providing care. He allowed politics to trump medicine. We can look back in horror (and should) but despite all the "never again"s that greeted the revelations of the crimes committed under the Nazi regimes (torture, genocide, etc.), we shouldn't take comfort in the fact that we all learned something from it.That's not the case. Were it the case, the revelations in Jane Mayer's "The Experiment" (The New Yorker) wouldn't have been so appalling. I've addressed this topic at The Third Estate Sunday Review and C.I.'s addressed it several times at The Common Ills.
"Jane Mayer's 'The Experiment' (The New Yorker)" (The Common Ills):
I'll try to summarize the article but that's not an easy task. Mayer's taken a trip to Guantanamo Bay. It was an orchestrated trip by the military. At one point, a prisoner starts speaking to her of how he's been treated and her military guide hustles her out of the area quickly and to the charges made by the prisoner offers a "joke" about how the prisoner can speak English pretty well.
Time and again, Mayer's told there's no problem, that it's isolated individuals when there are problems. But via other sources, she's able to make an argument that the incidents are not only not isolated, they're the result of research and planning.SERE comes into the story. SERE is a military unit that pops up in the aftermath of WWII. It was supposed to gather information that would help American troops to withstand pressure (and torture) if they were captured. SERE stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. Originally created for the Air Force, post Vietnam, it grows to include the Navy and the Army.
At Guantamano, there are "bisquits." Bisquits is "military jargon" for Behavioral Science Consultation Teams. These behavioral scientists appear to be utilizing techniques developed to help American troops resist during capture in an inverse manner -- using techniques to break the imprisoned at Guantamano down.
This raises ethical issues (which Mayer deals with, this is a summary of her article). Apparently prisoners medical files (containing information gathered by doctors) are raided to help with brainstorming ideas. Is someone afraid of the dark? Well, let's use that.
While the bisquists (Behavioral Science Consultation Teams) have apparent free access to medical files, that's not the case for everyone. Dr. John S. Edmondson ("a Navy captain who oversees the facility's medical command") claims that, "I believe we've complied with the requests [for medical records] that have reached me." Rob Kirsh ("who represents six Guantanamo detaineeds") has a paper trail that proves otherwise. Even with waivers from his clients, his requests for their medical records has been denied in multiple letters "from the Justice Department." Regarding this denial, Mayer quotes Arthur Caplan ("a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania") who notes, "Prisoners, even terrorists, have the right to their medical records, according to federal laws, common laws, the American Medical Association, and court trials."
With various documents and various sources (including a graduate of SERE who had posted at Juan Cole's Informed Comment) "The Experiment" gathers together the "isolated incidents" and demonstrates a pattern (in my reading of the article).
Techniques and actions used on American soldiers to keep them from "cracking" (my term, not Mayer's) are apparently now being used to "crack" (see previous parenthetical) prisoners.
The SERE program has always been shrouded in the secrecy of national security. Which is not unlike the attempts to find out what the Bully Boy did or did not authorize (or Donald Rumsfeld for that matter).
Would someone crack to stop a woman from being raped? Well, hey, let's try that. That appears to be the motivation and why one prisoner was told if he talked the (fake) rape would stop. There's also the case of a man and a woman having sex in a computer room next to an interrogation room with the door open.
How does that get approved? "Give it up for your country?" I'm not quite sure and I'm trying very hard not to interject my own thoughts here and provide a summary of the article so I'll move on.
There have been people pointing out that the actions were unethical or illegal or immoral (or two or all three). One person who speaks to Mayer, former FBI official who was at Guantanamo, states that he and other FBI agents did not want to participate in these actions:
Some of these techniques, I don't want to see, or be part of. I took an oath to the Constitution to uphold the laws against enemies both inside the U.S. and out. The D.O.D. [Department of Defense] guy got really upset. He said he took the oath, too. I told him that we must have different interpretations.
Concerns are raised regarding "force drift." That's when "interrogators encountering resistance begin to lose the ability to restrain themselves." If you'll think of it in terms of parenting, you'll relate that to the "power struggle." There's also a "seductive" component of these techniques, as an attorney for several prisoners -- Marc Falkoff -- notes. Falkoff asserts that "a mass suicide attempt at Guantanamo, in August 2003, in which two dozens or so detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves, was provoked by Koran mistreatment . . ."
That's a SERE technique. Only on American soil, while "testing" American soldiers, they used a Bible. They might tear pages out of it or kick it around or some other method. But it was developed here with the Bible. (Again, I'm holding my tongue and just attempting to summarize.)
The question is posed (and I'd argue throughout the article) by at least one person in the article of what are we becoming? What does it say about us when we "do things that our enemies do, like using torture?"
We'll close out this summary by noting that doctors have participated as "bisquits" (though not all "bisquits" are doctors -- some are p.h.d.s) with the comments of Jonathan Moreno (bioethicist):
Guantanamo is going to haunt us for a long time. The Hippocratic oath is the oldest ethical code we have. We might abandon our morality about other professions. But the medical profession is sort of the last gasp. If we give that up, we've given up our core values.What does it say about us when we accept this behavior?
A debate has raged in the medical professions largely behind closed doors. The Nation addresses this debate.
"The Silence of the Doctors" (Jonathan H. Marks, The Nation):
After 9/11 some American healthcare personnel were once again asked to step into the breach and help Army interrogators conduct aggressive interrogations. They have, among others, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller -- former camp commander at Guantanamo Bay -- to thank for this. Miller considered the participation of Behavioral Science Consultation Teams -- known colloquially as "Biscuits" -- to be an "essential" part of the interrogation process. Having introduced the first Biscuit to the Guantanamo facility in late 2002, Miller urged the deployment of a similar team at Abu Ghraib in late 2003. These Biscuits were staffed at various times by psychologists and/or psychiatrists.
[. . .]
One of the functions of Biscuit health professionals is to help interrogators tailor interrogation "stressors" to the personality of each detainee -- particularly "high-value detainees." In one example -- reported by Neil [A.] Lewis in the New York Times -- interrogators were told by a Biscuit that a detainee's medical files recorded his severe phobia of the dark, and the Biscuit suggested ways that fear could be manipulated to make the detainees cooperate.
[. . .]
According to a resolution of the General Assembly adopted without dissent in 1982, it is a "gross contravention of medical ethics" for health professionals to be complicit in torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. They are also required not to use their knowledge and skills to assist with an interrogation that may adversely affect a detainee's health and is not in accordance with international law. Medical personnel who helped design and monitor aggressive interrogations like those [. . .] have undoubtedly fallen afoul of this ethical mandate.
Marks notes that the American Psychiatric Association, Physicians for Human Rights, and Physicians for Social Responsibility have spoken out against medical professional participating in programs that aid torture; however, the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association have struggled (to put it mildly) to find their voice. As C.I. noted (no link because I'm rushing to finish this) at some point, Marks does as well, the American Psychological Association included on its task force to explore this issue "psychologists who work or have worked for the military -- in some cases at SERE schools."
As I stated, I'm rushing. (I'm attending mass with the McKinnons shortly.) But to nutshell this, what is going on is unacceptable. The death of Heinrich Gross should be an occasion to review how a climate for perversion of medical ethics can take place and it should make us take a serious look at what road we're currently on when medical professionals are using their skills and knowledge to assist interrogators in devising 'pressure points' (my term) for interrogations. That is a perversion of the profession. If we allow this perversion to continue, we aid in the creation of a climate that allowed Gross and others actions to be seen as worthy to their own government, as useful, as helping. We have duties and obligations. We take an oath. We betray that, our training and our very reason for existance when we put serving a governmental policy ahead of the aims of our profession.
In closing, I'll recommend that you check out "Kat's Korner: Breaking through the 'conventional truths' with No Secrets" and "Kat's Korner: Blunt's got the goods" which are two musical commentaries Kat has provided and a third one will go up Sunday at The Common Ills so look for that as well.
Happy Holidays and Peace on Earth.
"Expectations (personal and professional)"
Happy holidays. I hope you are enjoying the weekend whether it's a time for celebration or not. Gatherings this time of year can be filled with expectations and frustrations so if you're struggling or worried, do not feel that you are alone or that "It's just you." Rebecca wrote about this last night in her "christmas and no nerves of steel" post. If you think you can relate to that, please check it out. If you don't think it has anything to do with you, please consider reading it because it probably will reflect someone in any gathering. Expectations, both real and imagined, weigh heavy this time of year.
Also check out Mike's Mikey Likes It! because he's writing at the same time. We're in his room and he's on his computer and I'm on my laptop. Which is a good time to say thank you to the McKinnon family for inviting me to spend the holidays with them. (A thank you to Nina, Mike's girlfriend, as well.) I know I noted this at The Third Estate Sunday Review and, I believe, also at Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude while I was filling in for Rebecca, but I'm not sure it's up here. So if anyone's wondering why I'm spending Christmas with the McKinnons or spent Thanksgiving with C.I., my parents died while I was a young teenager. My only surviving family is a very wonderful older brother who now lives in Europe. Originally, he would fly in for the holidays but, quite honestly, the two of us together at the holidays can sometimes be depressing. He now makes a point to avoid the holidays. I usually grab Thanksgiving with C.I. who is a friend of many years and I'm welcome (C.I. would say "more than welcome") to grab Christmas as well. However, the guest list at Christmas triples from the list for Thanksgiving and I'll usually either spend Christmas alone, with a date's family or with friends. This year I'm very fortunate to be spending it with friends and I thank the McKinnon's for their hospitality.Now here are two items from Democracy Now! Friday that you're hopefully already aware of but are worth noting.
Federal Judge Calls Gitmo Detentions "Unlawful" (Democracy Now!)
This news on Guantanamo Bay: the Washington Post is reporting a federal judge has ruled the detention of two ethnic Uighurs at the U.S. prison is "unlawful", but says he does not have the authority to release them. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge James Robertson said the government has taken too long to release Abu Bakker Qassim and Adel Abdu Hakim -- who have been jailed for four years. The two have been cleared for release, but not returned to China where they would likely face torture or execution.. The two men are among nine detainees that remain at Guantanamo despite having been declared "no longer enemy combatants." In his ruling, Judge Robertson wrote: "The government's use of the Kafka-esque term 'no longer enemy combatants' deliberately begs the question of whether these petitioners ever were enemy combatants."
Justice Dept. Admits Spy Program Does Not Comply With FISA (Democracy Now!):
The disclosure comes as the Justice Department has admitted that the President's eavesdropping program does not comply with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Along with another wiretapping statute, FISA defines itself as: "the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance . . . may be conducted." The admission came in a letter to Congress Thursday.
Mike's providing commentary on those so be sure to check out his site; I'm just noting them because there's something else I want to focus on.
I'm utilizing two articles for this, an Associated Press article that ran in most papers (including the New York Times) and an article from The Nation. The link I provide to the AP article is care of the Mercury News which does not require registration to be read. With regards to The Nation, you need to be a subscriber to read the article online. I don't subscribe to The Nation. That's not a slap at that magazine. I subscribe to periodicals and journals for my profession. Otherwise, I utilize book stores. (Sadly, a very large chain.) I prefer to purchase magazines. I usually purchase every issue of The Nation (so subscribing would be cheaper) but I enjoy walking up to the sales counter with my purchases as well as having the ability not to purchase an issue of any magazine containing a story or stories that I have no interest in (or may have a strong objection to). One of the things my father was big on was taking us to the bookstore every Saturday. We'd be encouraged to pick out a book or magazine (toys weren't as prevalent at bookstores when I was a child and videos -- videotapes or DVD -- had yet to emerge). From there, we'd go to lunch at my father's favorite deli. (My mother, in case you're wondering, had Saturday afternoon's "off." This was something that began after I was born when my mother, rightly, gave an ultimatum that she couldn't work full time, be the primary person responsible for keeping the house clean and raise two children without any break. For the first seven years of my brother's life she had struggled to be everything to everyone. After I was born, she stayed home three weeks with me before returning to work and quickly realized that attempting to do everything would drive her crazy. Fortunately, my father was smart enough to grasp both that she was serious and that she did, indeed, deserve at least five hours to herself once a week.)
I thought I was just attempting to make sure that no Nation reader took it as an insult that I didn't subsribe (I do read the magazine regularly); however, probably due to the season, I obviously wanted to take a trip down memory lane. Thanks to everyone reading for their indulgence.
Thank you as well to C.I. because I didn't pack the issue, the December 26th issue devoted to exploring torture, and the article isn't available to nonsubscribers online. C.I. scanned the article and e-mailed it to me. The link I'll provide for the article does allow you to read the opening.
Starting Thursday, and continuing through today, various papers have run an obit onHeinrich Gross who passed away December 15th at the age of 90. The name may not be familiar to you. "Heinrich Gross, accused of Nazi experiments" is the headline the AP article ran under in the San Jose Mercury News. In the New York Times, on Thursday, the article ran under the heading "Heinrich Gross, 90, Psychiatrist At Nazi Death Clinic in Austria."
"Heinrich Gross, accused of Nazi experiments: PROMINENT DOCTOR ESCAPED PROSECUTION" (William J. Cole, Associated Press):
Dr. Heinrich Gross, a psychiatrist who worked at a clinic where the Nazis killed and conducted cruel experiments on thousands of children, died Dec. 15, his family announced Thursday. He was 90.Dr. Gross, who was implicated in nine deaths as part of a Nazi plot to eliminate "worthless lives,'' had escaped trial in March after a court ruled he suffered from severe dementia. No cause of death was given in a brief statement issued by his family.
Dr. Gross was a leading doctor in Vienna's infamous Am Spiegelgrund clinic. Historians and survivors of the clinic had accused him of killing or taking part in the clinic's experiments on thousands of children deemed by the Nazis to be physically, mentally or otherwise unfit for Adolf Hitler's vision of a perfect world.
The article explains how three times, Gross (I'm refusing to call him "Doctor") was tried but escaped conviction. In the 50s, "the case was thrown out because of a legal technicality." In the eighties, a case was "dismissed because the 30-year statute of limitations on manslaughter had expired." When Gross stood trial in 2000, he escaped conviction because he was found "unfit for trial because of advanced dementia."
Gross is accused (in my opinion, for good reason) of perverting science and his oath to aid the Nazis in torture and killings. This is a perversion of his profession.
He misused science. (Gross maintained his innocence until the end, again, my opinion is he was guilty.) He forsook his oath, he betrayed the principle of first do no harm. He placed a government's interest over the interests of of providing care. He allowed politics to trump medicine. We can look back in horror (and should) but despite all the "never again"s that greeted the revelations of the crimes committed under the Nazi regimes (torture, genocide, etc.), we shouldn't take comfort in the fact that we all learned something from it.That's not the case. Were it the case, the revelations in Jane Mayer's "The Experiment" (The New Yorker) wouldn't have been so appalling. I've addressed this topic at The Third Estate Sunday Review and C.I.'s addressed it several times at The Common Ills.
"Jane Mayer's 'The Experiment' (The New Yorker)" (The Common Ills):
I'll try to summarize the article but that's not an easy task. Mayer's taken a trip to Guantanamo Bay. It was an orchestrated trip by the military. At one point, a prisoner starts speaking to her of how he's been treated and her military guide hustles her out of the area quickly and to the charges made by the prisoner offers a "joke" about how the prisoner can speak English pretty well.
Time and again, Mayer's told there's no problem, that it's isolated individuals when there are problems. But via other sources, she's able to make an argument that the incidents are not only not isolated, they're the result of research and planning.SERE comes into the story. SERE is a military unit that pops up in the aftermath of WWII. It was supposed to gather information that would help American troops to withstand pressure (and torture) if they were captured. SERE stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. Originally created for the Air Force, post Vietnam, it grows to include the Navy and the Army.
At Guantamano, there are "bisquits." Bisquits is "military jargon" for Behavioral Science Consultation Teams. These behavioral scientists appear to be utilizing techniques developed to help American troops resist during capture in an inverse manner -- using techniques to break the imprisoned at Guantamano down.
This raises ethical issues (which Mayer deals with, this is a summary of her article). Apparently prisoners medical files (containing information gathered by doctors) are raided to help with brainstorming ideas. Is someone afraid of the dark? Well, let's use that.
While the bisquists (Behavioral Science Consultation Teams) have apparent free access to medical files, that's not the case for everyone. Dr. John S. Edmondson ("a Navy captain who oversees the facility's medical command") claims that, "I believe we've complied with the requests [for medical records] that have reached me." Rob Kirsh ("who represents six Guantanamo detaineeds") has a paper trail that proves otherwise. Even with waivers from his clients, his requests for their medical records has been denied in multiple letters "from the Justice Department." Regarding this denial, Mayer quotes Arthur Caplan ("a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania") who notes, "Prisoners, even terrorists, have the right to their medical records, according to federal laws, common laws, the American Medical Association, and court trials."
With various documents and various sources (including a graduate of SERE who had posted at Juan Cole's Informed Comment) "The Experiment" gathers together the "isolated incidents" and demonstrates a pattern (in my reading of the article).
Techniques and actions used on American soldiers to keep them from "cracking" (my term, not Mayer's) are apparently now being used to "crack" (see previous parenthetical) prisoners.
The SERE program has always been shrouded in the secrecy of national security. Which is not unlike the attempts to find out what the Bully Boy did or did not authorize (or Donald Rumsfeld for that matter).
Would someone crack to stop a woman from being raped? Well, hey, let's try that. That appears to be the motivation and why one prisoner was told if he talked the (fake) rape would stop. There's also the case of a man and a woman having sex in a computer room next to an interrogation room with the door open.
How does that get approved? "Give it up for your country?" I'm not quite sure and I'm trying very hard not to interject my own thoughts here and provide a summary of the article so I'll move on.
There have been people pointing out that the actions were unethical or illegal or immoral (or two or all three). One person who speaks to Mayer, former FBI official who was at Guantanamo, states that he and other FBI agents did not want to participate in these actions:
Some of these techniques, I don't want to see, or be part of. I took an oath to the Constitution to uphold the laws against enemies both inside the U.S. and out. The D.O.D. [Department of Defense] guy got really upset. He said he took the oath, too. I told him that we must have different interpretations.
Concerns are raised regarding "force drift." That's when "interrogators encountering resistance begin to lose the ability to restrain themselves." If you'll think of it in terms of parenting, you'll relate that to the "power struggle." There's also a "seductive" component of these techniques, as an attorney for several prisoners -- Marc Falkoff -- notes. Falkoff asserts that "a mass suicide attempt at Guantanamo, in August 2003, in which two dozens or so detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves, was provoked by Koran mistreatment . . ."
That's a SERE technique. Only on American soil, while "testing" American soldiers, they used a Bible. They might tear pages out of it or kick it around or some other method. But it was developed here with the Bible. (Again, I'm holding my tongue and just attempting to summarize.)
The question is posed (and I'd argue throughout the article) by at least one person in the article of what are we becoming? What does it say about us when we "do things that our enemies do, like using torture?"
We'll close out this summary by noting that doctors have participated as "bisquits" (though not all "bisquits" are doctors -- some are p.h.d.s) with the comments of Jonathan Moreno (bioethicist):
Guantanamo is going to haunt us for a long time. The Hippocratic oath is the oldest ethical code we have. We might abandon our morality about other professions. But the medical profession is sort of the last gasp. If we give that up, we've given up our core values.What does it say about us when we accept this behavior?
A debate has raged in the medical professions largely behind closed doors. The Nation addresses this debate.
"The Silence of the Doctors" (Jonathan H. Marks, The Nation):
After 9/11 some American healthcare personnel were once again asked to step into the breach and help Army interrogators conduct aggressive interrogations. They have, among others, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller -- former camp commander at Guantanamo Bay -- to thank for this. Miller considered the participation of Behavioral Science Consultation Teams -- known colloquially as "Biscuits" -- to be an "essential" part of the interrogation process. Having introduced the first Biscuit to the Guantanamo facility in late 2002, Miller urged the deployment of a similar team at Abu Ghraib in late 2003. These Biscuits were staffed at various times by psychologists and/or psychiatrists.
[. . .]
One of the functions of Biscuit health professionals is to help interrogators tailor interrogation "stressors" to the personality of each detainee -- particularly "high-value detainees." In one example -- reported by Neil [A.] Lewis in the New York Times -- interrogators were told by a Biscuit that a detainee's medical files recorded his severe phobia of the dark, and the Biscuit suggested ways that fear could be manipulated to make the detainees cooperate.
[. . .]
According to a resolution of the General Assembly adopted without dissent in 1982, it is a "gross contravention of medical ethics" for health professionals to be complicit in torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. They are also required not to use their knowledge and skills to assist with an interrogation that may adversely affect a detainee's health and is not in accordance with international law. Medical personnel who helped design and monitor aggressive interrogations like those [. . .] have undoubtedly fallen afoul of this ethical mandate.
Marks notes that the American Psychiatric Association, Physicians for Human Rights, and Physicians for Social Responsibility have spoken out against medical professional participating in programs that aid torture; however, the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association have struggled (to put it mildly) to find their voice. As C.I. noted (no link because I'm rushing to finish this) at some point, Marks does as well, the American Psychological Association included on its task force to explore this issue "psychologists who work or have worked for the military -- in some cases at SERE schools."
As I stated, I'm rushing. (I'm attending mass with the McKinnons shortly.) But to nutshell this, what is going on is unacceptable. The death of Heinrich Gross should be an occasion to review how a climate for perversion of medical ethics can take place and it should make us take a serious look at what road we're currently on when medical professionals are using their skills and knowledge to assist interrogators in devising 'pressure points' (my term) for interrogations. That is a perversion of the profession. If we allow this perversion to continue, we aid in the creation of a climate that allowed Gross and others actions to be seen as worthy to their own government, as useful, as helping. We have duties and obligations. We take an oath. We betray that, our training and our very reason for existance when we put serving a governmental policy ahead of the aims of our profession.
In closing, I'll recommend that you check out "Kat's Korner: Breaking through the 'conventional truths' with No Secrets" and "Kat's Korner: Blunt's got the goods" which are two musical commentaries Kat has provided and a third one will go up Sunday at The Common Ills so look for that as well.
Happy Holidays and Peace on Earth.
Blg Spotlight: Cedric explains it all
As noted last edition, we were unable to work our statement on the olive branch with thorns that managed to screw up an edition we had ready to go two Sundays ago. As noted last edition, Cedric was working on a post about the whole thing. Here it is.
"Three Cool Old Guys and about megabully"
So here's the thing, I started this on Saturday and finished it a few minutes ago. The time may flip because of that. I'm taking Jim's advice about the links. I think there are enough here. If I wasn't rushing for time, I would provide more.
Thank you to Three Cool Old Guys and all their friends who were so encouraging Thursday night when we tried out our caroling program. We really want to do a great job and we appreciated all the input on what six songs we should perform in church Christmas Day. I also thank them for their public praise (and C.I. for mentioning them) Friday.
They get a kick out of it when they get a mention here or at The Common Ills. Or at the gina & krista round-robin. Now Gina and Krista are great and I'll give them their due and then some. But they really deserve more due than that. I have Three Cool Old Guys and Gina & Krista's permission to announce this. If you read your Friday round-robin, you know they each wrote about the first time it hit them that color was an issue. Not the first time their parents had told them but the first time when they saw something that told the truth about a society still pretending.
I really loved their feature. And Gina & Krista persuaded them to make it a monthly feature for the round-robin. So once a month, you'll get perspectives from Three Cool Old Guys on how much we've changed as a society or how much we haven't and on where we are headed. Those men have lived long lives and are a wealth of history and information so I'm really thrilled about this.
And I've been on their backs for them to do that on a website of their own because I think it's important. How much have I been on their backs? They've taken to telling me to "get up out my grill." That makes me laugh because it's funny to hear them say that and also because, since they got online, they are able to stay in touch with their families and specifically their grandkids.
That means so much to them and I'm really glad that's happened.
But even with me, their friend, urging them to do a site, they didn't want to. I told them if it was a technical thing, I would help them out and I know C.I. would be available for any phone call. But they didn't want to. So I offered they could write it in an e-mail and I'd set up the site and copy and paste their e-mails into posts their.
They didn't want that.
In the time since they've become Common Ills members and started getting the round-robin, they've seen what Gina and Krista are able to do in that and they've agreed with C.I.'s remarks that it's a more private way to have a conversation. They did an interview with Gina and Krista for the round-robin and never told me that they'd asked Gina and Krista if they might be interested in any writing?
Of course G&K were. So this was the first of their monthly contributions this week. They wanted to see how they felt about it after it was in the round-robin and they're pretty pleased with themselves as they should be. So with their permission and Gina & Krista's permission, let me be the first to note that this is now a monthly feature of the round-robin.
When we were talking this morning, they explained why they were more comfortable with this format. They feel the round-robin is supportive and geared towards a supportive audience. They really aren't in the mood for "flamers" who would post racist remarks or for the nonsense that people like C.I. and Ava have to put up with (all the threats for silly stuff like not presenting Wentworth Miller as the second coming of acting).
They agreed that their was a need to share their experiences as Black men who lived before the civil rights movement and lived after. But they weren't comfortable talking about specifics where someone could attack them or someone in their family. You know one of them spoke of seeing their strong father have to "play the fool" when a White employer started hollering at him in front of his kids. They didn't want someone insulting their father's memory or some right-wing website chuckling about it.
While they were talking to Gina and Krista, they never let on to me. They said it's their Christmas gift to me since I've been urging them to share their experiences publicly and I think it's the greatest gift I'll get this year.
But they did sound out Betty, C.I. and Ruth for feedback. All three were supportive and encouraging. They were thrilled by the idea. But I think it was the comfort Gina and Krista instilled that helped decide it for them as well as the fact that Gina's an African-American and Krista is White and that they try to address race and racial interaction seriously in the round-robin. They felt this was to place to share their experiences and memories.
I spoke with both Gina and Krista but Gina, like Seth, is living a nightmare these days because she's in retail and this is a busy time for them. She kept trying to think of a quote to go up here and finally begged off saying that she and Krista had spoken at length about this so use a quote from Krista and everyone should know that Krista's speaking for the both of them.
Krista says that they are very honored that Three Cool Old Guys have chosen to share with the round-robin readers. She said she and Gina both see tremendous value in hearing from people who lived through the times and not just someone born after weighing in.
Three Cool Old Guys told me to put in that Ava & C.I.'s commentary last week was the deciding "push" because "we are losing ground." They appreciated that Ava and C.I. didn't shy from noting an obvious but often unremarked fact, African-Americans are leads less and less. Ava & C.I. were focusing on women in their feminist critique and that certainly includes women of color but they were really glad that Ava & C.I. also worked in the fact that when the groups who are being stereotyped and shut out work together, they can put the pressure on.
They also told me this morning that I better note that review because they think it covered a great deal and felt it was "speaking truth when some are just wanting to keep it light." The title of the commentary is "TV: We're losing ground and now is not the time for silence." That was pretty powerful, I agree. And I spoke to Jess and Ty about it Friday to check on the e-mail reaction. The feedback's been incredible on that. Ty joked that they should have just made the edition the commentary and "War Got Your Tongue" because those two pieces spoke powerfully to readers.I'm going to talk a bit about that edition because I wrote Thursday about the problems that some have caused the community. We had a really strong edition ready to go and the pieces were set but needing some polish. The only thing we hadn't done was the book discussion. As we were on what we thought was our final break, C.I. checks the public e-mail account and there's Christine whining and saying she wants "peace."C.I. conveyed the e-mail to us, which I won't quote from though I groaned at it as did several others, and felt the need to respond to it.
Christine seems to be offended that anyone would call her out on anything. There's the treatment of Kat which I noted on Thursday, but there's also the fact that she can't grasp why anyone would object to her site pushing The New Republic? If she can't grasp that, she needs to find out information about what she chooses to promote. Her other big beef is that she was called out on her silence about the war.
C.I.'s feelings, expressed to us, were that she was hurting and if she was hurting as much as she said we might want to consider the edition. The edition wasn't focused on her but it did talk about people like her, and she's sadly not alone in her silence.
C.I. took the time to respond to what might have been a genuine e-mail. C.I. took the time to, as was done in the roundtable, attempt to see their side. A lot of us were mad, not at C.I. because C.I. will try to be fair.
But we didn't think the e-mail was a genuine offer of peace or that it was anything but someone whining for being called on what they should be called on.
But in the spirit of the season, we agreed to scrap the edition. That and C.I.'s taking the time to reply to her, cost us a huge amount of time because we suddenly had to come up with an entirely new edition.
Ava and C.I. had written their TV commentary. They wanted to polish it and C.I. needed to call a friend at a TV show to confirm the facts that were passed on by a guest star on the show. The show was Veronica Mars and all last year Veronica was saying she was raped. This year it turns out she's with Duncan who was the man who raped her. (Read on, as Ava and C.I. would say.)Jim and Rebecca were very angry about scrapping the edition and very vocal about their anger.
Although no one blamed C.I. for the mess Christine was creating or for doing the "in fairness" bit, there were a few remarks that both Jim and Rebecca apologized for later in the week.But because of the Christine's issues that she dumps on C.I. at the last minute, we were all put out. I say "dumps on C.I." because her gripes were about stuff going on at all the sites but she only contacts C.I. to scream at C.I. and that's how the e-mail read to me.
So all her nonsense put us way behind schedule. And C.I. wasn't able to make the planned call.
We're now agreed to scrap the edition, we all agreed, and Jim posted a note to the readers but felt something, anything had to go up and had to go up right away because it was almost eight o'clock Jim's time and they usually have most of the content, or try to, up by seven a.m. Jim's time. The TV commentary was brought up and C.I. said, "I'm flat out uncomfortable with posting that until I make the call to ____ ______. I can do that, the earliest, in three hours." So the thing to do was to wait. And Ava supported that as well. But there was so much frustration over Christine's nonsense that Jim and Rebecca were basically saying, "You agreed to this delay so it's going up." That was posted over Ava and C.I.'s objection.
When the edition is finally done and posted, we're all wiped out. I left in the middle to attend church but skipped Sunday school. Betty skipped church all together because she felt that things were getting a little out of control in terms of the anger at Christine spilling over onto C.I.I'll add again that Rebecca and Jim have apologized.
I'll also say again that we were all put under a lot of pressure due to scrapping the edition.But three hours after the edition's done and posted, C.I. wakes up to the phone ringing and it's the friend. Duncan is no longer the rapist. Veronica wasn't raped. They just tossed that plot out the window.
Ava and C.I. corrected their commentary and really rewrote it, not just offering a simple correction, but rewriting it to work in the fact that marketing Veronica as a rape victim and then letting her be someone who cried rape falsely is even more offensive.
In the new version, Ava and C.I. take the fall for the mistake without ever noting that they were screaming their heads off against that going up before C.I. called the friend. They just own their mistake. And Ava's comments may not be as clear to some, she and C.I. both offer an individual comment midway in the commentary, because Ava & C.I. never say, "Don't blame us. What posted was a draft that we didn't even have time to polish let alone check out." But when Ava's talking about how it wasn't funny to her, she's talking about how she and C.I. had screamed and hollered that the thing shouldn't go up but were overridden. And not just by Jim and Rebecca. I supported Jim & Rebecca on that. Others did too. Jess and Betty were actively taking C.I. and Rebecca's side. And everyone I'm naming gave me permission to discuss this except for C.I. who left it up to Ava to make the call for both of them. (C.I. was polite but vague and I'm guessing intentionally vague in an attempt to high road it. Elaine said she'd be happy to help me in terms of "Yes, that got said" and "No, that didn't get said" if I wanted to run things by her but that she wasn't comfortable being quoted or speaking on background. Everyone other than C.I. and Elaine particpated in this, whether quoted or not, if they were present for The Third Estate Sunday Review edition.)
Dona and Jim's attitude is that the positive side is one C.I. commented to them (C.I. claims not to remember individual conversations which is, my opinion, an attempt to take the high road on the whole issue): it showed that The Third Estate Sunday Review wasn't afraid to correct a mistake and to do so immediately.
As Dona and Jim point out, Pop Politics can't say the same thing.
But after C.I. got off the phone with the friend, the next call was to Ava and, on the speaker phone, to Ava, Jim and Dona, it was explained what was up.
Dona says that it's a lesson. The writers were saying they weren't comfortable. That should have been the clue to wait. But the rape was promoted for a year and a guest star on the show had told C.I. (and backed it up on the phone with Ava) that Veronica was with Duncan. (And Ava and C.I. knew Duncan was the rapist before last season ended because of friends on the show.) Based on the fact that Veronica was raped, because a full season was built on that, and on the fact that Ava and C.I. had been told months ago that Duncan was the rapist, that the guest star told them both Veronica and Duncan were now a couple, Dona says one last fact check went out the window.
"It's one that should have been made," Dona says. "But it wasn't. And it was an issue that the mainstream media deals with all the time, time constraints and the need to go with a story as quickly as possible. I think it was a lesson and I'm glad to say that on our end, the correction began as soon as it did. Not the next day or days later."
That's because as soon as C.I. explained it, Ava & C.I. got to work on the corrected commentary.
They didn't write the whole thing and then post it. That note at the top of the piece was written and it was published with a note that the correction was in progress. As they rewrote their way through, they continued to publish every few paragraphs always noting that a correction was in progress and noting how far along they were in the revised commentary.
Ava says they made that decision because they didn't want anyone to stumble onto it after they knew there was a mistake and [for readers] not [to] know that there was a mistake.
"As soon as we knew, the correction began," Ava explains. "We could have just done a note at the bottom and nothing else. Some people would never read to the end so we felt we needed the note at the top. We also felt strongly that this was worse, that she wasn't raped, than what we'd originally critiqued so we felt the need to make that point. But anyone reading along, and according to Jess' report on the e-mails, could see the process as it happened. Jim stayed out of it and I wasn't aware that he and Dona were her in room following the progress until after C.I. and I finished. I was exhausted and went to the kitchen to make some hot chocolate and head to bed. Jim and Dona came in. Both apologized, again, for insisting the piece go up before we made the call. They also both stressed that they thought the model C.I. and I used was the one that should be used if there's ever a need for a correction again. There was none of the junk that the New York Times is so fond of where a week or two later, they note in the corrections box a mistake. And online, they'll say something like''correction appended.' We made a mistake and we corrected it and we didn't let the piece stand with a correction but rewrote it. We rewrote it publicly, bit by bit, and anyone curious or wanting to follow it could do so by refreshing their page every few minutes."
Wally told me that he still couldn't believe that the show had "trashed" their own plot like that. He said he would probably still argue for something to be posted but he would be more likely to listen to reservations. He said it was like if The Simpsons suddenly decided to do an episode claiming Mr. Burns had never been shot.
"Everyone saw Mr. Burns shot, so how could you know that the writers would just decide that the facts they presented no longer mattered?" Wally asks. "But, for me, next time, if there is a next time, someone who's participated or, in this case with Ava and C.I., written the whole thing objects, I will listen. I don't know if it would have mattered this time if I had listened because the 'facts' were that Veronica had been raped. Anyone who saw the show at all the first year knew that. My cousin watches and so when Ava and C.I. knew who the rapist was, I asked if it was okay to tell her before the cliffhanger ending. They said it was fine with them so I did. Then you had ___ ____ telling them that Duncan and Veronica were a couple. So the facts should have been the facts. As soon as I heard about the correction, I called my cousin and she said, 'Oh Wally, I stopped watching when it all got too soap opera-ish.' But I could've thought to call her when Ava and C.I. were saying that the weren't comfortable with it being published. I didn't and that's my regret in the whole thing along with not listening when they were saying 'no.'"
Everyone I spoke to is seeing the positive, or trying to, about the whole thing. Which is that the commentary is stronger, the correction was handled in a timely fashion and done openly, and a lesson can be learned from it all.
But it's also true that if Christine hadn't come whining at the last minute, we never would have been put in that position to begin with. We wouldn't have had to decide whether or not to post an article that the two writers weren't comfortable with. C.I. wouldn't have been dealing with Christine's crap and been unable to make the call to confirm with the guy on the show what the story was. And we wouldn't have had to scrap an entire edition.
We put ourselves out to take Christine up on her "peace" offer. That's why when her e-mails attacking Kat went out, people were offended. That's why when she made the decision, in the midst of her "peace" to delink from The Common Ills without ever noting that in any of her many e-mails she sent out, we'd had enough. She'd trashed Kat to Ryan. She'd excused Bernie altering Kat's words (including change a verb form, not just dropping off the "can" in front of the quote) and wasn't too concerned about a correction.
No one asked C.I. or Ava to do a correction. They did their correction because the truth matters to them. A different set of priorities went on at Christine's site where a distortion of Kat's words remained. It may still remain. Christine wrote in one of her many e-mails that she'd cleaned up the comments to that post. I read that as she grasped how badly she'd embarrassed herself and wanted to hide it.
She came whining minutes before midnight Saturday, three I believe, offering "peace" and everyone suffered for it. We made a real effort and you won't find any talk of this at any of the community sites until her "peace" was demonstrated to be false.This happened even though she continued to trash Kat's writing in her e-mails. This happened even though she tore into Ava in response to a Ava's e-mail that was not controversial and didn't warrent an attack. (I've read Ava's e-mail to her. Both the one that set Christine off and the one replying to that. Even when replying, Ava didn't bring up the attack [on Ava] and stayed with a flat tone.)
Three Cool Old Guys have followed this issue and they think it stems from someone wanting to write "nonsense" and get a pass for it by playing "the feminist card." They think it's like someone wanting to be recognized as a powerful leader for civil rights but deciding not to comment on race issues. When called on it, instead of attempting to make a difference, the person just wants everyone to act like it's okay to call yourself a feminist but not address feminist issues. They say too many people are let off the hook because they pull that nonsense and that it harms us all.
I agree with that and the point that if we were all demanding action from the media, we might see results. Instead the 'vangical voters (to use C.I.'s term) demand and they get served. They got Ford to waffle with their demands.I also see it as shameful that a grown up of any gender thinks that some stupid TV show is more important than the war.
I'm offended as well that someone calling herself a feminist is willing to promote a magazine that's promoted and offered attacks, including violent ones, "jokes" or not, against Arundhati Roy. That was such a shock to us, what Wally found in the column by Dave Zirin, because we'd been reading a book of essays by Roy. C.I. and Rebecca knew about the attacks on Roy but the rest of us didn't. For Christine to see the rag as worthy of promotion and feel that we're quibbling over something small may be telling about where she stands.As an African-American, I'm offended that she promotes the rag since the so-called liberal rag has been happy to pimp and further offending stereotypes against African-Americans for many years. Instead of seeing it as a quibble, a thinking person should be looking into the magazine to determine the validity of the arguments.
Christine's happy to have her links and to try to get attention. It doesn't matter that to do that, she has to promote a magazine that, for the left, is one that's been racist, sexist and war mongering.
Having been made aware that there are problems for some with promoting that magazine, she decides the delink to do is not to the magazine that pushed the contras as "freedom fighters" and covered up the crimes in Central America, the delink to do is to The Common Ills?
This is done during her "peace" while everyone's attempting to respond to her offer in a peaceful manner.
At this point, it's not ignorance that allows her to push The New Republic, it's stupidity. I use that term because we were reading a book by Robert Parry for today's book discussion.
Parry's talked about The New Republic at his site but this book makes the points even more clear.
When you can't speak out, and she can't find her voice on the war, people will have to look to other things to figure out where you stand. One of the things they'll look at is what you endorse.
There is nothing left or feminist in endorsing The New Republic.
For those who have been seeking their answer about where she stands, we probably now have it.
"Three Cool Old Guys and about megabully"
So here's the thing, I started this on Saturday and finished it a few minutes ago. The time may flip because of that. I'm taking Jim's advice about the links. I think there are enough here. If I wasn't rushing for time, I would provide more.
Thank you to Three Cool Old Guys and all their friends who were so encouraging Thursday night when we tried out our caroling program. We really want to do a great job and we appreciated all the input on what six songs we should perform in church Christmas Day. I also thank them for their public praise (and C.I. for mentioning them) Friday.
They get a kick out of it when they get a mention here or at The Common Ills. Or at the gina & krista round-robin. Now Gina and Krista are great and I'll give them their due and then some. But they really deserve more due than that. I have Three Cool Old Guys and Gina & Krista's permission to announce this. If you read your Friday round-robin, you know they each wrote about the first time it hit them that color was an issue. Not the first time their parents had told them but the first time when they saw something that told the truth about a society still pretending.
I really loved their feature. And Gina & Krista persuaded them to make it a monthly feature for the round-robin. So once a month, you'll get perspectives from Three Cool Old Guys on how much we've changed as a society or how much we haven't and on where we are headed. Those men have lived long lives and are a wealth of history and information so I'm really thrilled about this.
And I've been on their backs for them to do that on a website of their own because I think it's important. How much have I been on their backs? They've taken to telling me to "get up out my grill." That makes me laugh because it's funny to hear them say that and also because, since they got online, they are able to stay in touch with their families and specifically their grandkids.
That means so much to them and I'm really glad that's happened.
But even with me, their friend, urging them to do a site, they didn't want to. I told them if it was a technical thing, I would help them out and I know C.I. would be available for any phone call. But they didn't want to. So I offered they could write it in an e-mail and I'd set up the site and copy and paste their e-mails into posts their.
They didn't want that.
In the time since they've become Common Ills members and started getting the round-robin, they've seen what Gina and Krista are able to do in that and they've agreed with C.I.'s remarks that it's a more private way to have a conversation. They did an interview with Gina and Krista for the round-robin and never told me that they'd asked Gina and Krista if they might be interested in any writing?
Of course G&K were. So this was the first of their monthly contributions this week. They wanted to see how they felt about it after it was in the round-robin and they're pretty pleased with themselves as they should be. So with their permission and Gina & Krista's permission, let me be the first to note that this is now a monthly feature of the round-robin.
When we were talking this morning, they explained why they were more comfortable with this format. They feel the round-robin is supportive and geared towards a supportive audience. They really aren't in the mood for "flamers" who would post racist remarks or for the nonsense that people like C.I. and Ava have to put up with (all the threats for silly stuff like not presenting Wentworth Miller as the second coming of acting).
They agreed that their was a need to share their experiences as Black men who lived before the civil rights movement and lived after. But they weren't comfortable talking about specifics where someone could attack them or someone in their family. You know one of them spoke of seeing their strong father have to "play the fool" when a White employer started hollering at him in front of his kids. They didn't want someone insulting their father's memory or some right-wing website chuckling about it.
While they were talking to Gina and Krista, they never let on to me. They said it's their Christmas gift to me since I've been urging them to share their experiences publicly and I think it's the greatest gift I'll get this year.
But they did sound out Betty, C.I. and Ruth for feedback. All three were supportive and encouraging. They were thrilled by the idea. But I think it was the comfort Gina and Krista instilled that helped decide it for them as well as the fact that Gina's an African-American and Krista is White and that they try to address race and racial interaction seriously in the round-robin. They felt this was to place to share their experiences and memories.
I spoke with both Gina and Krista but Gina, like Seth, is living a nightmare these days because she's in retail and this is a busy time for them. She kept trying to think of a quote to go up here and finally begged off saying that she and Krista had spoken at length about this so use a quote from Krista and everyone should know that Krista's speaking for the both of them.
Krista says that they are very honored that Three Cool Old Guys have chosen to share with the round-robin readers. She said she and Gina both see tremendous value in hearing from people who lived through the times and not just someone born after weighing in.
Three Cool Old Guys told me to put in that Ava & C.I.'s commentary last week was the deciding "push" because "we are losing ground." They appreciated that Ava and C.I. didn't shy from noting an obvious but often unremarked fact, African-Americans are leads less and less. Ava & C.I. were focusing on women in their feminist critique and that certainly includes women of color but they were really glad that Ava & C.I. also worked in the fact that when the groups who are being stereotyped and shut out work together, they can put the pressure on.
They also told me this morning that I better note that review because they think it covered a great deal and felt it was "speaking truth when some are just wanting to keep it light." The title of the commentary is "TV: We're losing ground and now is not the time for silence." That was pretty powerful, I agree. And I spoke to Jess and Ty about it Friday to check on the e-mail reaction. The feedback's been incredible on that. Ty joked that they should have just made the edition the commentary and "War Got Your Tongue" because those two pieces spoke powerfully to readers.I'm going to talk a bit about that edition because I wrote Thursday about the problems that some have caused the community. We had a really strong edition ready to go and the pieces were set but needing some polish. The only thing we hadn't done was the book discussion. As we were on what we thought was our final break, C.I. checks the public e-mail account and there's Christine whining and saying she wants "peace."C.I. conveyed the e-mail to us, which I won't quote from though I groaned at it as did several others, and felt the need to respond to it.
Christine seems to be offended that anyone would call her out on anything. There's the treatment of Kat which I noted on Thursday, but there's also the fact that she can't grasp why anyone would object to her site pushing The New Republic? If she can't grasp that, she needs to find out information about what she chooses to promote. Her other big beef is that she was called out on her silence about the war.
C.I.'s feelings, expressed to us, were that she was hurting and if she was hurting as much as she said we might want to consider the edition. The edition wasn't focused on her but it did talk about people like her, and she's sadly not alone in her silence.
C.I. took the time to respond to what might have been a genuine e-mail. C.I. took the time to, as was done in the roundtable, attempt to see their side. A lot of us were mad, not at C.I. because C.I. will try to be fair.
But we didn't think the e-mail was a genuine offer of peace or that it was anything but someone whining for being called on what they should be called on.
But in the spirit of the season, we agreed to scrap the edition. That and C.I.'s taking the time to reply to her, cost us a huge amount of time because we suddenly had to come up with an entirely new edition.
Ava and C.I. had written their TV commentary. They wanted to polish it and C.I. needed to call a friend at a TV show to confirm the facts that were passed on by a guest star on the show. The show was Veronica Mars and all last year Veronica was saying she was raped. This year it turns out she's with Duncan who was the man who raped her. (Read on, as Ava and C.I. would say.)Jim and Rebecca were very angry about scrapping the edition and very vocal about their anger.
Although no one blamed C.I. for the mess Christine was creating or for doing the "in fairness" bit, there were a few remarks that both Jim and Rebecca apologized for later in the week.But because of the Christine's issues that she dumps on C.I. at the last minute, we were all put out. I say "dumps on C.I." because her gripes were about stuff going on at all the sites but she only contacts C.I. to scream at C.I. and that's how the e-mail read to me.
So all her nonsense put us way behind schedule. And C.I. wasn't able to make the planned call.
We're now agreed to scrap the edition, we all agreed, and Jim posted a note to the readers but felt something, anything had to go up and had to go up right away because it was almost eight o'clock Jim's time and they usually have most of the content, or try to, up by seven a.m. Jim's time. The TV commentary was brought up and C.I. said, "I'm flat out uncomfortable with posting that until I make the call to ____ ______. I can do that, the earliest, in three hours." So the thing to do was to wait. And Ava supported that as well. But there was so much frustration over Christine's nonsense that Jim and Rebecca were basically saying, "You agreed to this delay so it's going up." That was posted over Ava and C.I.'s objection.
When the edition is finally done and posted, we're all wiped out. I left in the middle to attend church but skipped Sunday school. Betty skipped church all together because she felt that things were getting a little out of control in terms of the anger at Christine spilling over onto C.I.I'll add again that Rebecca and Jim have apologized.
I'll also say again that we were all put under a lot of pressure due to scrapping the edition.But three hours after the edition's done and posted, C.I. wakes up to the phone ringing and it's the friend. Duncan is no longer the rapist. Veronica wasn't raped. They just tossed that plot out the window.
Ava and C.I. corrected their commentary and really rewrote it, not just offering a simple correction, but rewriting it to work in the fact that marketing Veronica as a rape victim and then letting her be someone who cried rape falsely is even more offensive.
In the new version, Ava and C.I. take the fall for the mistake without ever noting that they were screaming their heads off against that going up before C.I. called the friend. They just own their mistake. And Ava's comments may not be as clear to some, she and C.I. both offer an individual comment midway in the commentary, because Ava & C.I. never say, "Don't blame us. What posted was a draft that we didn't even have time to polish let alone check out." But when Ava's talking about how it wasn't funny to her, she's talking about how she and C.I. had screamed and hollered that the thing shouldn't go up but were overridden. And not just by Jim and Rebecca. I supported Jim & Rebecca on that. Others did too. Jess and Betty were actively taking C.I. and Rebecca's side. And everyone I'm naming gave me permission to discuss this except for C.I. who left it up to Ava to make the call for both of them. (C.I. was polite but vague and I'm guessing intentionally vague in an attempt to high road it. Elaine said she'd be happy to help me in terms of "Yes, that got said" and "No, that didn't get said" if I wanted to run things by her but that she wasn't comfortable being quoted or speaking on background. Everyone other than C.I. and Elaine particpated in this, whether quoted or not, if they were present for The Third Estate Sunday Review edition.)
Dona and Jim's attitude is that the positive side is one C.I. commented to them (C.I. claims not to remember individual conversations which is, my opinion, an attempt to take the high road on the whole issue): it showed that The Third Estate Sunday Review wasn't afraid to correct a mistake and to do so immediately.
As Dona and Jim point out, Pop Politics can't say the same thing.
But after C.I. got off the phone with the friend, the next call was to Ava and, on the speaker phone, to Ava, Jim and Dona, it was explained what was up.
Dona says that it's a lesson. The writers were saying they weren't comfortable. That should have been the clue to wait. But the rape was promoted for a year and a guest star on the show had told C.I. (and backed it up on the phone with Ava) that Veronica was with Duncan. (And Ava and C.I. knew Duncan was the rapist before last season ended because of friends on the show.) Based on the fact that Veronica was raped, because a full season was built on that, and on the fact that Ava and C.I. had been told months ago that Duncan was the rapist, that the guest star told them both Veronica and Duncan were now a couple, Dona says one last fact check went out the window.
"It's one that should have been made," Dona says. "But it wasn't. And it was an issue that the mainstream media deals with all the time, time constraints and the need to go with a story as quickly as possible. I think it was a lesson and I'm glad to say that on our end, the correction began as soon as it did. Not the next day or days later."
That's because as soon as C.I. explained it, Ava & C.I. got to work on the corrected commentary.
They didn't write the whole thing and then post it. That note at the top of the piece was written and it was published with a note that the correction was in progress. As they rewrote their way through, they continued to publish every few paragraphs always noting that a correction was in progress and noting how far along they were in the revised commentary.
Ava says they made that decision because they didn't want anyone to stumble onto it after they knew there was a mistake and [for readers] not [to] know that there was a mistake.
"As soon as we knew, the correction began," Ava explains. "We could have just done a note at the bottom and nothing else. Some people would never read to the end so we felt we needed the note at the top. We also felt strongly that this was worse, that she wasn't raped, than what we'd originally critiqued so we felt the need to make that point. But anyone reading along, and according to Jess' report on the e-mails, could see the process as it happened. Jim stayed out of it and I wasn't aware that he and Dona were her in room following the progress until after C.I. and I finished. I was exhausted and went to the kitchen to make some hot chocolate and head to bed. Jim and Dona came in. Both apologized, again, for insisting the piece go up before we made the call. They also both stressed that they thought the model C.I. and I used was the one that should be used if there's ever a need for a correction again. There was none of the junk that the New York Times is so fond of where a week or two later, they note in the corrections box a mistake. And online, they'll say something like''correction appended.' We made a mistake and we corrected it and we didn't let the piece stand with a correction but rewrote it. We rewrote it publicly, bit by bit, and anyone curious or wanting to follow it could do so by refreshing their page every few minutes."
Wally told me that he still couldn't believe that the show had "trashed" their own plot like that. He said he would probably still argue for something to be posted but he would be more likely to listen to reservations. He said it was like if The Simpsons suddenly decided to do an episode claiming Mr. Burns had never been shot.
"Everyone saw Mr. Burns shot, so how could you know that the writers would just decide that the facts they presented no longer mattered?" Wally asks. "But, for me, next time, if there is a next time, someone who's participated or, in this case with Ava and C.I., written the whole thing objects, I will listen. I don't know if it would have mattered this time if I had listened because the 'facts' were that Veronica had been raped. Anyone who saw the show at all the first year knew that. My cousin watches and so when Ava and C.I. knew who the rapist was, I asked if it was okay to tell her before the cliffhanger ending. They said it was fine with them so I did. Then you had ___ ____ telling them that Duncan and Veronica were a couple. So the facts should have been the facts. As soon as I heard about the correction, I called my cousin and she said, 'Oh Wally, I stopped watching when it all got too soap opera-ish.' But I could've thought to call her when Ava and C.I. were saying that the weren't comfortable with it being published. I didn't and that's my regret in the whole thing along with not listening when they were saying 'no.'"
Everyone I spoke to is seeing the positive, or trying to, about the whole thing. Which is that the commentary is stronger, the correction was handled in a timely fashion and done openly, and a lesson can be learned from it all.
But it's also true that if Christine hadn't come whining at the last minute, we never would have been put in that position to begin with. We wouldn't have had to decide whether or not to post an article that the two writers weren't comfortable with. C.I. wouldn't have been dealing with Christine's crap and been unable to make the call to confirm with the guy on the show what the story was. And we wouldn't have had to scrap an entire edition.
We put ourselves out to take Christine up on her "peace" offer. That's why when her e-mails attacking Kat went out, people were offended. That's why when she made the decision, in the midst of her "peace" to delink from The Common Ills without ever noting that in any of her many e-mails she sent out, we'd had enough. She'd trashed Kat to Ryan. She'd excused Bernie altering Kat's words (including change a verb form, not just dropping off the "can" in front of the quote) and wasn't too concerned about a correction.
No one asked C.I. or Ava to do a correction. They did their correction because the truth matters to them. A different set of priorities went on at Christine's site where a distortion of Kat's words remained. It may still remain. Christine wrote in one of her many e-mails that she'd cleaned up the comments to that post. I read that as she grasped how badly she'd embarrassed herself and wanted to hide it.
She came whining minutes before midnight Saturday, three I believe, offering "peace" and everyone suffered for it. We made a real effort and you won't find any talk of this at any of the community sites until her "peace" was demonstrated to be false.This happened even though she continued to trash Kat's writing in her e-mails. This happened even though she tore into Ava in response to a Ava's e-mail that was not controversial and didn't warrent an attack. (I've read Ava's e-mail to her. Both the one that set Christine off and the one replying to that. Even when replying, Ava didn't bring up the attack [on Ava] and stayed with a flat tone.)
Three Cool Old Guys have followed this issue and they think it stems from someone wanting to write "nonsense" and get a pass for it by playing "the feminist card." They think it's like someone wanting to be recognized as a powerful leader for civil rights but deciding not to comment on race issues. When called on it, instead of attempting to make a difference, the person just wants everyone to act like it's okay to call yourself a feminist but not address feminist issues. They say too many people are let off the hook because they pull that nonsense and that it harms us all.
I agree with that and the point that if we were all demanding action from the media, we might see results. Instead the 'vangical voters (to use C.I.'s term) demand and they get served. They got Ford to waffle with their demands.I also see it as shameful that a grown up of any gender thinks that some stupid TV show is more important than the war.
I'm offended as well that someone calling herself a feminist is willing to promote a magazine that's promoted and offered attacks, including violent ones, "jokes" or not, against Arundhati Roy. That was such a shock to us, what Wally found in the column by Dave Zirin, because we'd been reading a book of essays by Roy. C.I. and Rebecca knew about the attacks on Roy but the rest of us didn't. For Christine to see the rag as worthy of promotion and feel that we're quibbling over something small may be telling about where she stands.As an African-American, I'm offended that she promotes the rag since the so-called liberal rag has been happy to pimp and further offending stereotypes against African-Americans for many years. Instead of seeing it as a quibble, a thinking person should be looking into the magazine to determine the validity of the arguments.
Christine's happy to have her links and to try to get attention. It doesn't matter that to do that, she has to promote a magazine that, for the left, is one that's been racist, sexist and war mongering.
Having been made aware that there are problems for some with promoting that magazine, she decides the delink to do is not to the magazine that pushed the contras as "freedom fighters" and covered up the crimes in Central America, the delink to do is to The Common Ills?
This is done during her "peace" while everyone's attempting to respond to her offer in a peaceful manner.
At this point, it's not ignorance that allows her to push The New Republic, it's stupidity. I use that term because we were reading a book by Robert Parry for today's book discussion.
Parry's talked about The New Republic at his site but this book makes the points even more clear.
When you can't speak out, and she can't find her voice on the war, people will have to look to other things to figure out where you stand. One of the things they'll look at is what you endorse.
There is nothing left or feminist in endorsing The New Republic.
For those who have been seeking their answer about where she stands, we probably now have it.
Sunday, December 18, 2005
A note to our readers
Sunday, barely.
The note was delayed because we need to note if we're publishing Sunday. We weren't all aware that Christmas was Sunday. A lot of people are up in the air due to plans. We have confirmation from Elaine, Mike, C.I., Cedric, Jess and Jim at this point. If others are able to participate, that's wonderful. If not that's fine as well. Ruth said she'll be happy to participate in a discussion.
We will have an editorial. We're not sure what else. Ava and C.I. are "very unhappy" with their TV commentary (we're betting you'll enjoy it) because that wasn't what they worked on. They were doing a review and were half way done with it prior to us all getting together. At five in the morning, while we still had to do the editorial someone (me, Jim) mentioned that we really wanted them to do a commentary on TV in terms of entertainment this week and on TV news next week.
They had no idea that was coming and we (which means me, Jim) will try to give proper notice when we have a request. We think it's funny. They don't care for it. They wrote it in five minutes, then one hour later, did five minutes of polish. It took Dallas longer to track down the links in that then it took them to write it. We like it and think you will as well.
Next week may or may not have a look at TV news. Ava's holiday plans are very firm and it's really too late for her to back out on them but she and C.I. are going to try to get something done ahead of time in "the hours and hours of time . . . we don't have!"
But there will be something up on Sunday so check for that.
This edition, we list personal favorite Christmas songs at the request of one of our readers. We also have an essay on a disturbing "trend" -- arresting people attempting to visit their Congressional reps. The editorial focuses on Bully Boy's flashback to Watergate. ("He's tripping," as Betty noted while we were writing it.)
We also have a very lengthy book discussion.
Some notes on that. Whenever an e-mail comes in, as one did recently, noting that someone didn't speak much or only spoke at the beginning, Dona feels awful because she's the one trying to keep everyone on track. So this time, we designated the reading of an excerpt, for instance and tried very hard to follow who wasn't speaking that much.
C.I. feels there's way too much C.I. We disagree. The comments all go to important points. With one exception. Where C.I.'s repeatedly explaining why Robert Parry's book sat on the book shelves unread for years. That's due to the fact that C.I.'s not doing a blog but representing a community and wanted to be very clear that Parry's book was not left unread due to any problem with the book or Parry (who's a favorite of many in the community) but because Rebecca hadn't gotten around to reading a book C.I. had gifted her with and they were in a stand off.
A lot of times when clarifications are repeated, that is the reason. The rest of us don't worry about it. But the rest of us aren't expected to speak for ourselves and a community.
With that exception (which is obviously needed by and for the community) noted, the rest of the statements were necessary. C.I. had plan to sit out the discussion of the last book as did Ava.
Betty chose an excerpt and she wasn't the only one choosing similar ones but she was comfortable discussing it after the break we took. One comment C.I. wanted in that didn't make it was that Betty is a reader and responds as someone well read and interested, greatly interested in reading. This book is trying to go beyond that and reach a wide audience. The book is Mary Mapes' book. Mary Mapes is attempting to explain what happened.
On the break we took, due to the fact that the discussion had already gone longer than we intended, the issue of quote came up and led to a discussion. It wasn't a heated one. (That would be last Sunday.) C.I. and Ava both had strong comments based upon people they knew at CBS. Dona agreed with the arguments C.I. and Ava were making.
We felt they needed to go into the discussion. Ava said she was uncomfortable with discussing things told to her in confidence by friends and wouldn't budge on this (though she did end up contributing at least one point once the discussion was back on). C.I. was of the same attitude but agreed to speak if we could keep it strictly in generalities. If you read the discussion and feel like we're pulling teeth with our questions, we are.
It would have been very easy for us to swipe Ava and C.I.'s comments and speak of them in the discussion ourselves but it wouldn't have been honest. We're not sure how that plays out, to be honest, because the break didn't end up being a break. We were supposed to take 15 but before that happened, the issue of the excerpt came up and we spent an hour discussing the book, during the break, with no one taking notes.
But we do know the points made. Rebecca was more than happy to identify the two people she recognized in the book, two people making supporting comments to Mapes but left unnamed. C.I. was clear that if that happened, C.I. couldn't participate.
During the hour "break," the issue C.I. kept coming back to was whether silence to protect friends anonymity was fair and what was the news value. So we focused on the critique. It worked for us but we have a huge backstory that's not in the discussion as it appears. Hopefully, in general terms, it still works.
Where is our promised note? The one about last edition. Check Cedric's site because when we hit a wall with a huge entry that Dona felt needed severe editing, Cedric ended up tackling the issue. It will appear at his site and we will spotlight it next week.
The highlights are here, where we spotlight other entries. We took an hour debating what to include and what not to. Since none appeared last week, we felt it was important to include them this week. An additional hour was spent discussing who could and couldn't work on next Sunday's edition.
Some of us will be working on it. Those who can't, can't. We respect that. And no one ever needs to feel guilty about that. Mike's going to be late posting this week but plans to work on something every day. Elaine plans to try ("to try") to do the same. Rebecca says she'll post at least four times. Wally's got extended family coming in starting Monday and is unsure how often he'll post. Betty notes that she's having huge problems with her latest but will have it ("I swear") up this week. C.I. will post something each day but will also need to work on the year-in-the review. You'll see stuff at The Common Ills from Martha & Shirley (their book list which was ready this week but is being held for Christmas day), Ruth and Isaiah. Isaiah was held today because C.I. wants Isaiah to have a week off. Kat is working on three things for The Common Ills and hopes to have them completed before the new year so she notes that she may only post once this week. With the church program he's involved in, Cedric thinks he will post only once this week.
That's the community announcement.
All features posted were the work of:
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;
Mike of Mikey Likes It!;
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz;
and Wally of The Daily Jot.
Except the TV feature which was done by Ava and C.I. ("under duress, " Dona notes).
We thank everyone who lets us highlight them in our spotlights and we thank Dallas for hunting down links. Dallas agreed to do that for next week and we're attempting to get him to participate. (For those who've forgotten, the only time Dallas has participated is in two news review and the first time was because C.I. put him on the spot since the topic was the victims of Hurricane Wilma and one shelter was in Dallas' hometown.)
See you next Sunday.
-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava
The note was delayed because we need to note if we're publishing Sunday. We weren't all aware that Christmas was Sunday. A lot of people are up in the air due to plans. We have confirmation from Elaine, Mike, C.I., Cedric, Jess and Jim at this point. If others are able to participate, that's wonderful. If not that's fine as well. Ruth said she'll be happy to participate in a discussion.
We will have an editorial. We're not sure what else. Ava and C.I. are "very unhappy" with their TV commentary (we're betting you'll enjoy it) because that wasn't what they worked on. They were doing a review and were half way done with it prior to us all getting together. At five in the morning, while we still had to do the editorial someone (me, Jim) mentioned that we really wanted them to do a commentary on TV in terms of entertainment this week and on TV news next week.
They had no idea that was coming and we (which means me, Jim) will try to give proper notice when we have a request. We think it's funny. They don't care for it. They wrote it in five minutes, then one hour later, did five minutes of polish. It took Dallas longer to track down the links in that then it took them to write it. We like it and think you will as well.
Next week may or may not have a look at TV news. Ava's holiday plans are very firm and it's really too late for her to back out on them but she and C.I. are going to try to get something done ahead of time in "the hours and hours of time . . . we don't have!"
But there will be something up on Sunday so check for that.
This edition, we list personal favorite Christmas songs at the request of one of our readers. We also have an essay on a disturbing "trend" -- arresting people attempting to visit their Congressional reps. The editorial focuses on Bully Boy's flashback to Watergate. ("He's tripping," as Betty noted while we were writing it.)
We also have a very lengthy book discussion.
Some notes on that. Whenever an e-mail comes in, as one did recently, noting that someone didn't speak much or only spoke at the beginning, Dona feels awful because she's the one trying to keep everyone on track. So this time, we designated the reading of an excerpt, for instance and tried very hard to follow who wasn't speaking that much.
C.I. feels there's way too much C.I. We disagree. The comments all go to important points. With one exception. Where C.I.'s repeatedly explaining why Robert Parry's book sat on the book shelves unread for years. That's due to the fact that C.I.'s not doing a blog but representing a community and wanted to be very clear that Parry's book was not left unread due to any problem with the book or Parry (who's a favorite of many in the community) but because Rebecca hadn't gotten around to reading a book C.I. had gifted her with and they were in a stand off.
A lot of times when clarifications are repeated, that is the reason. The rest of us don't worry about it. But the rest of us aren't expected to speak for ourselves and a community.
With that exception (which is obviously needed by and for the community) noted, the rest of the statements were necessary. C.I. had plan to sit out the discussion of the last book as did Ava.
Betty chose an excerpt and she wasn't the only one choosing similar ones but she was comfortable discussing it after the break we took. One comment C.I. wanted in that didn't make it was that Betty is a reader and responds as someone well read and interested, greatly interested in reading. This book is trying to go beyond that and reach a wide audience. The book is Mary Mapes' book. Mary Mapes is attempting to explain what happened.
On the break we took, due to the fact that the discussion had already gone longer than we intended, the issue of quote came up and led to a discussion. It wasn't a heated one. (That would be last Sunday.) C.I. and Ava both had strong comments based upon people they knew at CBS. Dona agreed with the arguments C.I. and Ava were making.
We felt they needed to go into the discussion. Ava said she was uncomfortable with discussing things told to her in confidence by friends and wouldn't budge on this (though she did end up contributing at least one point once the discussion was back on). C.I. was of the same attitude but agreed to speak if we could keep it strictly in generalities. If you read the discussion and feel like we're pulling teeth with our questions, we are.
It would have been very easy for us to swipe Ava and C.I.'s comments and speak of them in the discussion ourselves but it wouldn't have been honest. We're not sure how that plays out, to be honest, because the break didn't end up being a break. We were supposed to take 15 but before that happened, the issue of the excerpt came up and we spent an hour discussing the book, during the break, with no one taking notes.
But we do know the points made. Rebecca was more than happy to identify the two people she recognized in the book, two people making supporting comments to Mapes but left unnamed. C.I. was clear that if that happened, C.I. couldn't participate.
During the hour "break," the issue C.I. kept coming back to was whether silence to protect friends anonymity was fair and what was the news value. So we focused on the critique. It worked for us but we have a huge backstory that's not in the discussion as it appears. Hopefully, in general terms, it still works.
Where is our promised note? The one about last edition. Check Cedric's site because when we hit a wall with a huge entry that Dona felt needed severe editing, Cedric ended up tackling the issue. It will appear at his site and we will spotlight it next week.
The highlights are here, where we spotlight other entries. We took an hour debating what to include and what not to. Since none appeared last week, we felt it was important to include them this week. An additional hour was spent discussing who could and couldn't work on next Sunday's edition.
Some of us will be working on it. Those who can't, can't. We respect that. And no one ever needs to feel guilty about that. Mike's going to be late posting this week but plans to work on something every day. Elaine plans to try ("to try") to do the same. Rebecca says she'll post at least four times. Wally's got extended family coming in starting Monday and is unsure how often he'll post. Betty notes that she's having huge problems with her latest but will have it ("I swear") up this week. C.I. will post something each day but will also need to work on the year-in-the review. You'll see stuff at The Common Ills from Martha & Shirley (their book list which was ready this week but is being held for Christmas day), Ruth and Isaiah. Isaiah was held today because C.I. wants Isaiah to have a week off. Kat is working on three things for The Common Ills and hopes to have them completed before the new year so she notes that she may only post once this week. With the church program he's involved in, Cedric thinks he will post only once this week.
That's the community announcement.
All features posted were the work of:
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;
Mike of Mikey Likes It!;
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz;
and Wally of The Daily Jot.
Except the TV feature which was done by Ava and C.I. ("under duress, " Dona notes).
We thank everyone who lets us highlight them in our spotlights and we thank Dallas for hunting down links. Dallas agreed to do that for next week and we're attempting to get him to participate. (For those who've forgotten, the only time Dallas has participated is in two news review and the first time was because C.I. put him on the spot since the topic was the victims of Hurricane Wilma and one shelter was in Dallas' hometown.)
See you next Sunday.
-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava
Editorial: The Bully Boy divider
"We are all the outlaws in the eyes of America."
That's the opening line to Jefferson Airplane's "We Can Be Together." That's also what the Bully Boy appears to see when he looks out on the nation.
"In Address, Bush Says He Ordered Domestic Spying" ("Says Program Will Go On") announces the headline on the front page of this morning's New York Times. The AP trumpets "Bush Defends Secret Spying in the U.S."
If you're missing the point, from Democracy Now!:
Report: Bush-Enacted NSA Program Monitors Phone Conversations, E-Mails
The New York Times is reporting the National Security Agency has been eavesdropping on U.S. citizens and foreign nationals without court-approved warrants. Under a Bush administration directive enacted in 2002, the agency has monitored the international phone calls and e-mails of hundreds, and possibly thousands of people inside the country. The National Security Agency’s mission is to spy on communications abroad. Although officials said the program had helped thwart at least two potential attacks, most people monitored by the N.S.A. have never been charged with a crime.
The Times says it delayed publishing details of the program after a request from the Bush administration at least one year ago. At the request of the White House, the Times also says it has omitted information administration officials said could be useful to terrorists. The disclosure comes two days after NBC News revealed the Pentagon has kept detailed records on the events and meetings of anti-war groups across the country.
and:
Pentagon Monitoring Anti-War Events Across the Country
Meanwhile, NBC News is reporting the Pentagon has been extensively monitoring the events and gatherings of peaceful anti-war groups across the country. A military database obtained by the network lists small activist meetings and events among 1,500 "suspicious incidents" over a 10-month period. The events included a gathering at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Florida, to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. In total, the database listed over four dozen anti-war meetings or protests.
Get it? We are all the outlaws in the eyes of the Bully Boy. (In the eyes of some senators as well.)
Last week saw the Patriot Act (temporarily, at least) put on hold. As BuzzFlash noted on the Bully Boy's strong push to renew it:
No, the real immediate threat is the Bush administration, which would take away our most basic liberties -- while ignoring the real terrorist risks -- in order to expand their secret powers. There is no logic to most of the Patriot Act except when viewed through the prism of extending this regime's imperial powers.
You and your rights are expendable to a Bully Boy administration. That's why the Pentagon (and others) can spy on peace activists without any hesitation or remorse.
This should make you think of the Nixon administration.
This should alarm you.
On the Pentagon's spying, Matthew Rothschild notes:
The Pengaton's partial file on the spying is available [. . . here]
It lists 43 events in a six-month period alone, dating from November 11, 2004, to May 7, 2005. Pentagon political spying took place in the following states and the District of Columbia: Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
One took place in Madison, Wisconsin, on April 26, 2005, according to the Madison Capital Times.
It was sponsored by the Student Labor Action Coalition and the Stop the War, the Capital Times reported. "Participants in the rally numbered only about 20," the paper said, and it was designed to protest recruitment in Madison. "A planned Air Force recruiting drive was abandoned as a result."
The Pentagon's database "listed the type of threat posed by the event as 'anti-DOD vandalism' and marked the source as 'not credible.' The case, however, was left on a status of 'open/unresolved,' " the Capital Times reported.
In his McCarthyism Watch, Rothschild has chonicled repeated outrages. We'd suggest it be called the Enemies List Watch because that does appear to be what's now emerging.
You are an outlaw, an enemy, if you read the wrong book, gather at a protest (any protest) against an administration policy or objective, if you merely try to live as a citizen in a democracy.
And Bully Boy will rush out to warble his tired, old song of, "If you don't support me, the terrorist will win!"
Quite the contrary, as BuzzFlash points out, "It is, let us remember again and again, the Bush Administration who puts us at greatest risk for terrorism. "
Last week, the mainstream media seemed to wake up (partially) from their long years of lethargy. The reports that emerged were alarming. Bully Boy's response to revelations of his outrageous behavior is to blame the media and to blame those who didn't rush to do his bidding on the Patriot Act. When he said you either with us or against us, he wasn't kidding, he wasn't joshing. But "us" wasn't "U.S." "Us" was his administration.
Silly ass pundits have been demanding a healing of the "divide" in this nation since the day after the 2004 election. Everytime they demanded a healing, they slapped the left with a ruler. We have to come together! We have to pull together! For the good of the country, Al Gore needs to concede!
It hasn't been for the good of the country. It's been for the good of the Bully Boy. He's the one who's continued to divide the nation with his actions and words.
The reports on spying from last week make it quite clear that he divides "us" and "them" along partisan lines. These actions were not just an attack on those who disagree with him, they were an attack on the right to dissent, they were an attack on everything the nation is supposed to stand for.
In Bully Boy's America there is no concept of equal rights. Rights of expression and asembly belong only to those who would support Bully Boy. That should scare the hell out of you.
[This editorial was written by 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; Mike of Mikey Likes It!; Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz; and Wally of The Daily Jot.]
That's the opening line to Jefferson Airplane's "We Can Be Together." That's also what the Bully Boy appears to see when he looks out on the nation.
"In Address, Bush Says He Ordered Domestic Spying" ("Says Program Will Go On") announces the headline on the front page of this morning's New York Times. The AP trumpets "Bush Defends Secret Spying in the U.S."
If you're missing the point, from Democracy Now!:
Report: Bush-Enacted NSA Program Monitors Phone Conversations, E-Mails
The New York Times is reporting the National Security Agency has been eavesdropping on U.S. citizens and foreign nationals without court-approved warrants. Under a Bush administration directive enacted in 2002, the agency has monitored the international phone calls and e-mails of hundreds, and possibly thousands of people inside the country. The National Security Agency’s mission is to spy on communications abroad. Although officials said the program had helped thwart at least two potential attacks, most people monitored by the N.S.A. have never been charged with a crime.
The Times says it delayed publishing details of the program after a request from the Bush administration at least one year ago. At the request of the White House, the Times also says it has omitted information administration officials said could be useful to terrorists. The disclosure comes two days after NBC News revealed the Pentagon has kept detailed records on the events and meetings of anti-war groups across the country.
and:
Pentagon Monitoring Anti-War Events Across the Country
Meanwhile, NBC News is reporting the Pentagon has been extensively monitoring the events and gatherings of peaceful anti-war groups across the country. A military database obtained by the network lists small activist meetings and events among 1,500 "suspicious incidents" over a 10-month period. The events included a gathering at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Florida, to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. In total, the database listed over four dozen anti-war meetings or protests.
Get it? We are all the outlaws in the eyes of the Bully Boy. (In the eyes of some senators as well.)
Last week saw the Patriot Act (temporarily, at least) put on hold. As BuzzFlash noted on the Bully Boy's strong push to renew it:
No, the real immediate threat is the Bush administration, which would take away our most basic liberties -- while ignoring the real terrorist risks -- in order to expand their secret powers. There is no logic to most of the Patriot Act except when viewed through the prism of extending this regime's imperial powers.
You and your rights are expendable to a Bully Boy administration. That's why the Pentagon (and others) can spy on peace activists without any hesitation or remorse.
This should make you think of the Nixon administration.
This should alarm you.
On the Pentagon's spying, Matthew Rothschild notes:
The Pengaton's partial file on the spying is available [. . . here]
It lists 43 events in a six-month period alone, dating from November 11, 2004, to May 7, 2005. Pentagon political spying took place in the following states and the District of Columbia: Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
One took place in Madison, Wisconsin, on April 26, 2005, according to the Madison Capital Times.
It was sponsored by the Student Labor Action Coalition and the Stop the War, the Capital Times reported. "Participants in the rally numbered only about 20," the paper said, and it was designed to protest recruitment in Madison. "A planned Air Force recruiting drive was abandoned as a result."
The Pentagon's database "listed the type of threat posed by the event as 'anti-DOD vandalism' and marked the source as 'not credible.' The case, however, was left on a status of 'open/unresolved,' " the Capital Times reported.
In his McCarthyism Watch, Rothschild has chonicled repeated outrages. We'd suggest it be called the Enemies List Watch because that does appear to be what's now emerging.
You are an outlaw, an enemy, if you read the wrong book, gather at a protest (any protest) against an administration policy or objective, if you merely try to live as a citizen in a democracy.
And Bully Boy will rush out to warble his tired, old song of, "If you don't support me, the terrorist will win!"
Quite the contrary, as BuzzFlash points out, "It is, let us remember again and again, the Bush Administration who puts us at greatest risk for terrorism. "
Last week, the mainstream media seemed to wake up (partially) from their long years of lethargy. The reports that emerged were alarming. Bully Boy's response to revelations of his outrageous behavior is to blame the media and to blame those who didn't rush to do his bidding on the Patriot Act. When he said you either with us or against us, he wasn't kidding, he wasn't joshing. But "us" wasn't "U.S." "Us" was his administration.
Silly ass pundits have been demanding a healing of the "divide" in this nation since the day after the 2004 election. Everytime they demanded a healing, they slapped the left with a ruler. We have to come together! We have to pull together! For the good of the country, Al Gore needs to concede!
It hasn't been for the good of the country. It's been for the good of the Bully Boy. He's the one who's continued to divide the nation with his actions and words.
The reports on spying from last week make it quite clear that he divides "us" and "them" along partisan lines. These actions were not just an attack on those who disagree with him, they were an attack on the right to dissent, they were an attack on everything the nation is supposed to stand for.
In Bully Boy's America there is no concept of equal rights. Rights of expression and asembly belong only to those who would support Bully Boy. That should scare the hell out of you.
[This editorial was written by 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; Mike of Mikey Likes It!; Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz; and Wally of The Daily Jot.]
Hot Trend for 2005: Arresting consituents who want to express an opinion
Bully Boy ejecting people from gatherings? It's so 2004!
The Denver Three may get the day in their day in court in 2006 but the "hot" new trend for 2006 wasn't the Bully Boy ejecting you from speaking engagements, it was Republicans who caught this esprit de corps of the Bully Boy and applied it to their own interactions with the public.
We first learned of the "hot" fad when Kay Bailey Hutchison started cracking down on the public.
As North Texas Indymedia reported on October 25, 2005:
"The plan was to speak to the senator, our elected official, the woman that represents us. They ought to give us an opportunity to make our case." said Reverend Peter Johnson after being turned away from Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's office by a cadre of police Tuesday afternoon in Dallas.
The group, led by Civil Rights leaders Reverend L. Charles Stovall and Reverend Peter Johnson, wanted to discuss with Senator Hutchison her opinion on the two-thousandth dead U.S soldier since the war in Iraq began. They were denied access on the grounds that the building in which the senators office is located is private property closed to the public.
Three reverends! How scary that must have been! What's a Republican to do? Call the cops!
(Fundies, next time it could be you!)
"Closed to the public." That's the phrase to pay attention to.
That's you, that's us.
But take note, we aren't welcome.
Well, it wasn't KBH pushing it, some of the doubters may say, she didn't call the shots!
Her office was acting on the orders of someone.
Mary Steffenhagen wrote of her experience with the senator's office for North Texas Indymedia.
The experience of being arrested was surreal. I couldn't believe an everyday VOTER was not only being questioned outside the building with a heavy police presence, but not being allowed entry at all.
Steffenhagen's problem was that she wanted something more than a "form letter" from the office. She wanted to raise an issue about Karl Rove. When she attempted to visit the senator's office, a protest (against the war) was going on outside:
I never got a chance to meet the people protesting because I was handcuffed, taken to jail, strip searched, held for 12 hours and finally released on $500 bail at 2am. Statements from the Senator's office defending this action proclaimed that there was a history of illegal activities against the Senator and that only those with appointments were being allowed entry during a protest.
Not only is this absolutely ridiculous, but it makes no sense. First, how is a constituent to KNOW that they must have an appointment to even walk in the building on days when there is a protest if they do not know there is a going to be a protest? Second, I was never offered the opportunity to make an appointment. I was told to leave or be arrested. Considering my tax dollars pay for her office, this was totally unacceptable. Third, this is still a free country; albeit barely. A law such as Criminal Trespass cannot be used against someone for a crime they *might* commit or the alleged crimes of those before her.
I am disgusted with the way I was assumed to be a criminal at Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's office. Instead of apologizing for the horrible mistake, the Hutchison PR factory kept making up excuses to justify an innocent constituent going to jail. This situation could have been remedied immediately with a call from the Senator's office, but that call never came. Instead, I had to pay a lawyer to represent me. Although it never should have gotten that far, the prosecutor dismissed the case, "in the interest of justice" on December 6, 2005.
Don't dismiss it as "only in Texas." The fad's crossed over to the north.
In Bangor, Maine, on December 15th, 19 people were arrested. Their crime? Apparently wanting to register their objections to the war with either Senator Olympia Snowe or her staff:
Nearly 50 rally participants who were felt that Senator Snowe's letter did not address their concerns went to Senator Snowe's office hoping to talk by phone with Senator Snowe in Washington, DC, or to discuss Senator Snowe's position on the war in Iraq with her staff. At approximately 3:30 pm, the building manager at One Cumberland Place requested that the rally participants leave the building. Upon being told by an officer from the Bangor Police Department that they would be arrested for "criminal trespass" if they did not leave, all but 19 people left the building. At 3:45 pm officers from the Bangor Police Department and deputies from the Penobscot County Sheriff's Department arrested 19 people for "criminal trespass" and transported them to the Penobscot County where bail was set and 18 people were released.
As C.I. noted:
She's an elected official. If she's leasing space in a building that doesn't allow the public the access they need, she needs to break the lease and find new offices.
In Bully Boy's America, the hot new fad is for senators to decide who can be heard and who can't. Bully Boy sets the tone and they mistake themselves for movie stars who can't be bothered by their pesky public.
Something is seriously wrong here. Had they been attempting an act of civil disobediance such as occupying the offices of either senator, we'd applaud them for it. But they weren't trying to do that. They were merely wanting to convey their opinions and be heard.
But apparently the only opinion that matters the Republican Party these days is the one that parrots their own. No surprise, again the Bully Boy sets the tone.
What is suprising is that people attempting to express themselves to their elected representative find themselves ordered to leave and arrested.
Help us out here, because we're confused. Why do senators have offices in various locations in their home states?
We assumed it, wrongly?, that it was to stay in touch with their constituents.
Apparently, that's not the case; therfore, home offices must be some sort of fan club headquarters where you're welcome provided your only "concern" is telling the senator what a wonderful job you think she's doing. With regards to Kay Bailey Hutchison, even that can get you arrested because they're so very formal that walk-ins are not welcome. Not to speak with Queen Kay, because she's not there, but to speak with one of her staff. Riff-raff is simply not to be tolerated in the Court of Kay.
We see Kay Bailey Hutchison on TV and in print (she's a favorite of the New York Times reporters) and always manage to smile, usually laugh, because she's either popping her eyes so wide she looks like she's just had face work or she's squinting and grimacing (must think she sees a constituent approaching) and always she's wearing a tacky outfit that someone thought would show off her "softer" side. So while we found her behavior appalling, we weren't all that surprised that she would choose to emulate her blessed Bully Boy.
When Olympia Snowe, the so-called moderate, feels she and her staff too must be spared the hoi polloi (formerly known as "the voters"), this isn't an isolated happen-stance. It's a trend.
It's a sick trend. Sicking the cops on people who just want to express their opinions to the staff, is pretty damn sick and it demonstrates the lengths to which the Republican Party will go to avoid any opinion that wasn't shaped, molded and fed by their echo chamber.
The 19 arrested in Bangor, Maine go before the judge on January 20th. Watch to see if, as was the case for Mary Steffenhagen, the charges are dismissed. If the ACLU isn't already following this case, hopefully they will be by then.
The Denver Three may get the day in their day in court in 2006 but the "hot" new trend for 2006 wasn't the Bully Boy ejecting you from speaking engagements, it was Republicans who caught this esprit de corps of the Bully Boy and applied it to their own interactions with the public.
We first learned of the "hot" fad when Kay Bailey Hutchison started cracking down on the public.
As North Texas Indymedia reported on October 25, 2005:
"The plan was to speak to the senator, our elected official, the woman that represents us. They ought to give us an opportunity to make our case." said Reverend Peter Johnson after being turned away from Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's office by a cadre of police Tuesday afternoon in Dallas.
The group, led by Civil Rights leaders Reverend L. Charles Stovall and Reverend Peter Johnson, wanted to discuss with Senator Hutchison her opinion on the two-thousandth dead U.S soldier since the war in Iraq began. They were denied access on the grounds that the building in which the senators office is located is private property closed to the public.
Three reverends! How scary that must have been! What's a Republican to do? Call the cops!
(Fundies, next time it could be you!)
"Closed to the public." That's the phrase to pay attention to.
That's you, that's us.
But take note, we aren't welcome.
Well, it wasn't KBH pushing it, some of the doubters may say, she didn't call the shots!
Her office was acting on the orders of someone.
Mary Steffenhagen wrote of her experience with the senator's office for North Texas Indymedia.
The experience of being arrested was surreal. I couldn't believe an everyday VOTER was not only being questioned outside the building with a heavy police presence, but not being allowed entry at all.
Steffenhagen's problem was that she wanted something more than a "form letter" from the office. She wanted to raise an issue about Karl Rove. When she attempted to visit the senator's office, a protest (against the war) was going on outside:
I never got a chance to meet the people protesting because I was handcuffed, taken to jail, strip searched, held for 12 hours and finally released on $500 bail at 2am. Statements from the Senator's office defending this action proclaimed that there was a history of illegal activities against the Senator and that only those with appointments were being allowed entry during a protest.
Not only is this absolutely ridiculous, but it makes no sense. First, how is a constituent to KNOW that they must have an appointment to even walk in the building on days when there is a protest if they do not know there is a going to be a protest? Second, I was never offered the opportunity to make an appointment. I was told to leave or be arrested. Considering my tax dollars pay for her office, this was totally unacceptable. Third, this is still a free country; albeit barely. A law such as Criminal Trespass cannot be used against someone for a crime they *might* commit or the alleged crimes of those before her.
I am disgusted with the way I was assumed to be a criminal at Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's office. Instead of apologizing for the horrible mistake, the Hutchison PR factory kept making up excuses to justify an innocent constituent going to jail. This situation could have been remedied immediately with a call from the Senator's office, but that call never came. Instead, I had to pay a lawyer to represent me. Although it never should have gotten that far, the prosecutor dismissed the case, "in the interest of justice" on December 6, 2005.
Don't dismiss it as "only in Texas." The fad's crossed over to the north.
In Bangor, Maine, on December 15th, 19 people were arrested. Their crime? Apparently wanting to register their objections to the war with either Senator Olympia Snowe or her staff:
Nearly 50 rally participants who were felt that Senator Snowe's letter did not address their concerns went to Senator Snowe's office hoping to talk by phone with Senator Snowe in Washington, DC, or to discuss Senator Snowe's position on the war in Iraq with her staff. At approximately 3:30 pm, the building manager at One Cumberland Place requested that the rally participants leave the building. Upon being told by an officer from the Bangor Police Department that they would be arrested for "criminal trespass" if they did not leave, all but 19 people left the building. At 3:45 pm officers from the Bangor Police Department and deputies from the Penobscot County Sheriff's Department arrested 19 people for "criminal trespass" and transported them to the Penobscot County where bail was set and 18 people were released.
As C.I. noted:
She's an elected official. If she's leasing space in a building that doesn't allow the public the access they need, she needs to break the lease and find new offices.
In Bully Boy's America, the hot new fad is for senators to decide who can be heard and who can't. Bully Boy sets the tone and they mistake themselves for movie stars who can't be bothered by their pesky public.
Something is seriously wrong here. Had they been attempting an act of civil disobediance such as occupying the offices of either senator, we'd applaud them for it. But they weren't trying to do that. They were merely wanting to convey their opinions and be heard.
But apparently the only opinion that matters the Republican Party these days is the one that parrots their own. No surprise, again the Bully Boy sets the tone.
What is suprising is that people attempting to express themselves to their elected representative find themselves ordered to leave and arrested.
Help us out here, because we're confused. Why do senators have offices in various locations in their home states?
We assumed it, wrongly?, that it was to stay in touch with their constituents.
Apparently, that's not the case; therfore, home offices must be some sort of fan club headquarters where you're welcome provided your only "concern" is telling the senator what a wonderful job you think she's doing. With regards to Kay Bailey Hutchison, even that can get you arrested because they're so very formal that walk-ins are not welcome. Not to speak with Queen Kay, because she's not there, but to speak with one of her staff. Riff-raff is simply not to be tolerated in the Court of Kay.
We see Kay Bailey Hutchison on TV and in print (she's a favorite of the New York Times reporters) and always manage to smile, usually laugh, because she's either popping her eyes so wide she looks like she's just had face work or she's squinting and grimacing (must think she sees a constituent approaching) and always she's wearing a tacky outfit that someone thought would show off her "softer" side. So while we found her behavior appalling, we weren't all that surprised that she would choose to emulate her blessed Bully Boy.
When Olympia Snowe, the so-called moderate, feels she and her staff too must be spared the hoi polloi (formerly known as "the voters"), this isn't an isolated happen-stance. It's a trend.
It's a sick trend. Sicking the cops on people who just want to express their opinions to the staff, is pretty damn sick and it demonstrates the lengths to which the Republican Party will go to avoid any opinion that wasn't shaped, molded and fed by their echo chamber.
The 19 arrested in Bangor, Maine go before the judge on January 20th. Watch to see if, as was the case for Mary Steffenhagen, the charges are dismissed. If the ACLU isn't already following this case, hopefully they will be by then.
TV: The year 2005
TV's in one of its awkward stages though no one seems to notice.
With all the "death of the sitcom" stories, it doesn't appear to have sunk in that no new genre has come along to dominate in sometime.
The franchises? Law & Order's been on how long? CSI how long now?
For all the talk of the so-called death of the sitcom, there's not been much life in television period. It goes beyond the corpses that tend to emerge before the opening credits on the franchise shows.
The body wash operettas aren't making any real waves. Few new shows crack the top ten.
Attempts to water-cooler-ize certain shows have fallen flat.
It's been a year of flux. Not even a sub-genre within a genre has broken out. What, no one can top skinny wives and fat husbands?
Here are a few trends as we see them. Note, we're not chasing them down, we're merely noting them.
1) Adults playing high schoolers and winning far too much praise for their dead pan style that, for many, masks an inability to step inside a character.
2) Young or old, a tendency to cast males who look like they were extras on the set of Disturbing Behavior.
What's with the foreheads? This may be the year of the sloped forehead.
3) Boobs.
Breasts are a perennial, evergreens, if you will. And they were in your face in 2005. As writing grows ever more simplistic, breasts have had to provide the subtext. The division is similar to the shorthand in the old Proctor & Gamble commericals where blondes and brunettes faired differently when attempting the same task. Leslie Erin Grossman knows the score which is why she often urges Jennie Garth to let her breasts speak on What I Like About You. Not only can Garth's breasts not be silenced, it's as though we've traded The Vagina Monologues for The Breast Monologues. As everyone rushes in to chant "how low can they (necklines) go," the TV industry in NYC doesn't stand a fighting chance. No one's going to relocate if it means Jennifer Love Hewitt would catch a severe chest cold.
4) We know best.
You see that in Prison Break's I've Got A Secret from the audience attitude. You see it in the characters disdain for the public's right to know in Threshold. You see it in the rape, woops, it wasn't of Veronica Mars. Did Donald Rumsfeld get a WGA card? There are a lot of "unknowables."
5) We don't really like to read.
With Friends off the air, few shows feature adult characters who actually pick up a book. Many feature characters who actively put down reading. It's true, each administration does have its own impact on television!
6) We don't like to watch TV.
King of Queens has a fierce dedication to showing their characters watching TV. More than the nonsense of passing by a TV set as news is breaking or gathering around to watch sports, King of Queens features characters who live in front of their televisions. And have the ever expanding waistlines to prove it. On the majority of other programs, the characters avoid the TV -- something that viewers might want to consider emulating.
7) Aged boys who are ooh-ed and aaw-ed over despite looking like they were part of the Calvin Klein ads that paid hommage to the film Kids.
8) Single men who spend a lot of time thinking and talking about sex but never seem to actually do the deed.
Shows like Joey, Jake In Progress and Freddie seem to exist to market viagra to younger men.
Some trends are less obvious but exist. Take the current idea of network specials or "specials."
With PBS reairing My Name Is Barbra this month, viewers may have been shocked. Here was the woman most derided for vanity and ego (and of course it would be a woman slammed for that) in a one hour special. There were no guest stars. Streisand was the focus of every minute.
So why did it seem to exhibit far less ego and vainity than Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson's Tour of "Duty"? Maybe because Streisand wasn't marketing her personal life? (Oops, looks like they're splitting up.) Maybe because her special revealed talent and didn't exist as an extended commercial for an upcoming film? (Didn't do all that well, did it?)
Or take Kenny Chesney. With several aspirin and nothing else to watch on TV. Like Elton John, Chesney and the people behind the special and at the network seemed to think tossing some cameras into a standard concert made for a "special." Between clips of Chezney With A Z! performing, you also got long winded whines about how hard it was to be an entertainer. Though Chesney may have tried real hard to sparkle, this not-so-special special blended concert footage with it's-a-hard-knocks-life-in-the-fast-lane footage which wouldn't have brought the house down at The Palace. Wasn't it only a few years ago that you had to have made it and crashed (sometimes also been reborn) to qualify for the Behind The Music treatment?
But Streisand's the one with the out of control ego?
Specials once had to be "special." Now they just have to offer concert footage. "In your living room!" Since, good or bad, part of the concert experience is mixing with crowd, these performers, entertainers or not, come off flat on screen.
The only "special" we saw in 2005 that was worthy of the being termed that was Faith Hill's.
We wouldn't argue that it was on the same level of My Name Is Barbara. We would suggest that somone involved went to the trouble to conceive a concept that actually made it different than all the filmed concerts offered.
2005 was also the year that saw Somebody Loves Raymond close up shop. We thought we'd get a break from the cast. We were wrong. Doris Roberts and Peter Boyle aren't irritating in their commerical. Patricia Heaton is. Albertson has hired Joan Rivers and just hasn't realized it yet.
The biggest trend has occurred off screen, really bad reviews. Working out your own personal grudge against Melanie Griffith may make you feel good and it might even be funny (in one case it was) but you're tossing credibility out the window when you attempt to drive the points home by propping up Don Johnson and his now cancelled show.
Far worse is the desperate desire to weigh in the perceived water cooler show with few facts and lots of spin.
We've noted before, TV reflects the mood of the country. Judging by what was offered in 2005, we're in a holding pattern with lots of doses of crap and very few bright spots. Lot of chatter being wasted praising the mediocre, not a lot of attention being given the rare worthy shows.
With all the "death of the sitcom" stories, it doesn't appear to have sunk in that no new genre has come along to dominate in sometime.
The franchises? Law & Order's been on how long? CSI how long now?
For all the talk of the so-called death of the sitcom, there's not been much life in television period. It goes beyond the corpses that tend to emerge before the opening credits on the franchise shows.
The body wash operettas aren't making any real waves. Few new shows crack the top ten.
Attempts to water-cooler-ize certain shows have fallen flat.
It's been a year of flux. Not even a sub-genre within a genre has broken out. What, no one can top skinny wives and fat husbands?
Here are a few trends as we see them. Note, we're not chasing them down, we're merely noting them.
1) Adults playing high schoolers and winning far too much praise for their dead pan style that, for many, masks an inability to step inside a character.
2) Young or old, a tendency to cast males who look like they were extras on the set of Disturbing Behavior.
What's with the foreheads? This may be the year of the sloped forehead.
3) Boobs.
Breasts are a perennial, evergreens, if you will. And they were in your face in 2005. As writing grows ever more simplistic, breasts have had to provide the subtext. The division is similar to the shorthand in the old Proctor & Gamble commericals where blondes and brunettes faired differently when attempting the same task. Leslie Erin Grossman knows the score which is why she often urges Jennie Garth to let her breasts speak on What I Like About You. Not only can Garth's breasts not be silenced, it's as though we've traded The Vagina Monologues for The Breast Monologues. As everyone rushes in to chant "how low can they (necklines) go," the TV industry in NYC doesn't stand a fighting chance. No one's going to relocate if it means Jennifer Love Hewitt would catch a severe chest cold.
4) We know best.
You see that in Prison Break's I've Got A Secret from the audience attitude. You see it in the characters disdain for the public's right to know in Threshold. You see it in the rape, woops, it wasn't of Veronica Mars. Did Donald Rumsfeld get a WGA card? There are a lot of "unknowables."
5) We don't really like to read.
With Friends off the air, few shows feature adult characters who actually pick up a book. Many feature characters who actively put down reading. It's true, each administration does have its own impact on television!
6) We don't like to watch TV.
King of Queens has a fierce dedication to showing their characters watching TV. More than the nonsense of passing by a TV set as news is breaking or gathering around to watch sports, King of Queens features characters who live in front of their televisions. And have the ever expanding waistlines to prove it. On the majority of other programs, the characters avoid the TV -- something that viewers might want to consider emulating.
7) Aged boys who are ooh-ed and aaw-ed over despite looking like they were part of the Calvin Klein ads that paid hommage to the film Kids.
8) Single men who spend a lot of time thinking and talking about sex but never seem to actually do the deed.
Shows like Joey, Jake In Progress and Freddie seem to exist to market viagra to younger men.
Some trends are less obvious but exist. Take the current idea of network specials or "specials."
With PBS reairing My Name Is Barbra this month, viewers may have been shocked. Here was the woman most derided for vanity and ego (and of course it would be a woman slammed for that) in a one hour special. There were no guest stars. Streisand was the focus of every minute.
So why did it seem to exhibit far less ego and vainity than Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson's Tour of "Duty"? Maybe because Streisand wasn't marketing her personal life? (Oops, looks like they're splitting up.) Maybe because her special revealed talent and didn't exist as an extended commercial for an upcoming film? (Didn't do all that well, did it?)
Or take Kenny Chesney. With several aspirin and nothing else to watch on TV. Like Elton John, Chesney and the people behind the special and at the network seemed to think tossing some cameras into a standard concert made for a "special." Between clips of Chezney With A Z! performing, you also got long winded whines about how hard it was to be an entertainer. Though Chesney may have tried real hard to sparkle, this not-so-special special blended concert footage with it's-a-hard-knocks-life-in-the-fast-lane footage which wouldn't have brought the house down at The Palace. Wasn't it only a few years ago that you had to have made it and crashed (sometimes also been reborn) to qualify for the Behind The Music treatment?
But Streisand's the one with the out of control ego?
Specials once had to be "special." Now they just have to offer concert footage. "In your living room!" Since, good or bad, part of the concert experience is mixing with crowd, these performers, entertainers or not, come off flat on screen.
The only "special" we saw in 2005 that was worthy of the being termed that was Faith Hill's.
We wouldn't argue that it was on the same level of My Name Is Barbara. We would suggest that somone involved went to the trouble to conceive a concept that actually made it different than all the filmed concerts offered.
2005 was also the year that saw Somebody Loves Raymond close up shop. We thought we'd get a break from the cast. We were wrong. Doris Roberts and Peter Boyle aren't irritating in their commerical. Patricia Heaton is. Albertson has hired Joan Rivers and just hasn't realized it yet.
The biggest trend has occurred off screen, really bad reviews. Working out your own personal grudge against Melanie Griffith may make you feel good and it might even be funny (in one case it was) but you're tossing credibility out the window when you attempt to drive the points home by propping up Don Johnson and his now cancelled show.
Far worse is the desperate desire to weigh in the perceived water cooler show with few facts and lots of spin.
We've noted before, TV reflects the mood of the country. Judging by what was offered in 2005, we're in a holding pattern with lots of doses of crap and very few bright spots. Lot of chatter being wasted praising the mediocre, not a lot of attention being given the rare worthy shows.
Music: Christmas songs
Our reader who can't be home for the holidays enjoyed our last feature replying to his question on Christmas films (and our inclusion of his sister in the responses). He asked if we could note favorite Christmas songs?
Mike: "Away In A Manger" by Joan Baez, off her Noel CD. My parents play that CD like crazy. They got it for Christmas two Christmas ago to replace their worn out vinyl version.
Cedric: Aaron Neville's "Bells Of St. Mary." I know it from the radio and have no idea what album it would be on.
Kat: I'll go with Joni Mitchell's "River" which isn't technically a Christmas song but it opens with, "It's coming on Christmas/ They're cutting down trees . . ." It originally appeared on Blue.
Elaine: Stevie Nicks' "Silent Night" off A Very Special Christmas. "Well it was a" and "You know it was a" and other vamps plus Stevie's voice make it my must hear every Christmas.
Rebecca: "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" off Barbra Streisand's Christmas Album.
Ty: "Ava Maria" by Diana Ross on A Very Special Season. I love that whole album. The production is really light and there's no attempt to smother her voice. It's a really great CD and one that my family has listened to forever.
Dona: I'll go with a song from Noel as well and imagine that Ava will too. We've become big Joan Baez fans and in our joint CD collection this is the only Christmas album we have. I'll go with "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" because that's always a song I enjoyed singing at Christmas.
Jim: Don't know an album it's on but Marvin Gaye's "I Want To Come Home For Christmas." It's always been a favorite of mine.
Jess: "Happy X-Mas (War Is Over)" by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. I've always loved the song. "So this is Christmas and what have you done . . ." I think it asks us to think beyond ourselves. And it's a song worth listening to.
Wally: My mom loves Carly Simon so I'll go with "Twelve Gates To The City" from Christmas Is Almost Here. It's got a really strong beat to it.
Ava: I think I'll go with Carly as well. We've got the soundtrack to This Is My Life and she has a song on that entitled "The Night Before Christmas." I'll also note that although Dona and I were building a joint collection that we intend to split up evenly when we graduate, it's to be split in half. Hint to Jim who's been eyeing some of the CDs.
C.I.: We're talking about what we listen to at Christmas time and, since it's already been noted before by Elaine, Christmas to me is always the Doors. For the last ten years, it would be The Best Of The Doors, double disc. Prior to that it was The Best Of The Doors single disc collection.
Betty: "Silver Bells" by the Supremes off their Merry Christmas CD.
And, yes, we asked our reader's sister for her pick as well.
Cathy: "Adeste fideles" by Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras primarily but any recording will do.
Mike: "Away In A Manger" by Joan Baez, off her Noel CD. My parents play that CD like crazy. They got it for Christmas two Christmas ago to replace their worn out vinyl version.
Cedric: Aaron Neville's "Bells Of St. Mary." I know it from the radio and have no idea what album it would be on.
Kat: I'll go with Joni Mitchell's "River" which isn't technically a Christmas song but it opens with, "It's coming on Christmas/ They're cutting down trees . . ." It originally appeared on Blue.
Elaine: Stevie Nicks' "Silent Night" off A Very Special Christmas. "Well it was a" and "You know it was a" and other vamps plus Stevie's voice make it my must hear every Christmas.
Rebecca: "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" off Barbra Streisand's Christmas Album.
Ty: "Ava Maria" by Diana Ross on A Very Special Season. I love that whole album. The production is really light and there's no attempt to smother her voice. It's a really great CD and one that my family has listened to forever.
Dona: I'll go with a song from Noel as well and imagine that Ava will too. We've become big Joan Baez fans and in our joint CD collection this is the only Christmas album we have. I'll go with "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" because that's always a song I enjoyed singing at Christmas.
Jim: Don't know an album it's on but Marvin Gaye's "I Want To Come Home For Christmas." It's always been a favorite of mine.
Jess: "Happy X-Mas (War Is Over)" by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. I've always loved the song. "So this is Christmas and what have you done . . ." I think it asks us to think beyond ourselves. And it's a song worth listening to.
Wally: My mom loves Carly Simon so I'll go with "Twelve Gates To The City" from Christmas Is Almost Here. It's got a really strong beat to it.
Ava: I think I'll go with Carly as well. We've got the soundtrack to This Is My Life and she has a song on that entitled "The Night Before Christmas." I'll also note that although Dona and I were building a joint collection that we intend to split up evenly when we graduate, it's to be split in half. Hint to Jim who's been eyeing some of the CDs.
C.I.: We're talking about what we listen to at Christmas time and, since it's already been noted before by Elaine, Christmas to me is always the Doors. For the last ten years, it would be The Best Of The Doors, double disc. Prior to that it was The Best Of The Doors single disc collection.
Betty: "Silver Bells" by the Supremes off their Merry Christmas CD.
And, yes, we asked our reader's sister for her pick as well.
Cathy: "Adeste fideles" by Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras primarily but any recording will do.
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