Coming Up

Vanity Fair's October 2008 cover story on Marilyn Monroe "The Things She Left Behind" by Mark Anderson. Betty also insists everyone check out the photos. (As has been noted here many times, Monroe is one of Betty's favorite actresses.) Van Fair is 95 years old and this is the 25th anniversary of the relaunch of the magazine (whose earliest writers included Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley, among others). As such, it features many retrospectives.

This Wednesday, The New Adventures of Old Christine has its season debut during prime time's first half-hour. This is a popular show with many readers -- many of whom have written to note that Ava and C.I. have been documenting CBS' attempt to disown the program for some time. Ava and C.I. note that the Wednesday move is not unlike when CBS attempted to get rid of Murphy Brown and The Nanny. You can make it harder for CBS to get rid of the show you enjoy by watching it on its new day. (It transitioned over the summer -- airing on both Wednesdays and Mondays but with the fall season now underway, it will air on Wednesdays.) Ruth and Marcia both wrote about it last week and intend to do a heads up in their Tuesday night posts. Seeing those posts last week led many of you to ask that we somehow note the change so that everyone is aware. As Ruth and Marcia pointed out, sitcoms have seen the disappearance of the female lead. The New Adventures of Old Christine not only offers a female lead, it offers what may be the funniest network sitcom. We will note the new air date again next week in another format. [Click here for Ava and C.I.'s review of the show, and here, here, here and here for some more commentary by Ava and C.I. That's not all the commentary, just all we're linking to for this short feature.]



Finally, NOW on PBS:



How have women in politics changed America and the world? NOW on PBS investigates with an hour-long special hosted by Maria Hinojosa: "Women, Power and Politics: A Rising Tide?"

See the show on television this weekend or watch online STARTING SATURDAY

[. . .]

Show Description: Given the hoopla surrounding Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton's historical political ascendance, why does the U.S. rank so low among countries for percentage of women holding national office? On Friday, September 19 at 8:30 pm (check local listings), in a one-hour special, NOW's Maria Hinojosa talks to women leaders around the world and here in the United States for an intimate look at the high-stakes risks, triumphs, and setbacks for women leaders of today and tomorrow. Among these women are President Michelle Bachelet of Chile, the first woman leader in Latin America who did not have a husband precede her as President, and former New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen, now in a tight race for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

We also travel to Rwanda, where, 14 years after a horrific massacre left nearly one million people dead, women make up nearly half of parliament; and to Manhattan, where ambitious high school girls are competing in a high-stakes debate tournament.

"Women, Power and Politics," is also about the personal journey of mother and award-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa as she strives to answer the question: "What does to mean to be a woman in power?"

Watch a preview and excerpt of this special program at this web address:

Use this directory tool to find out where the show is airing in your area:

The NOW website ... will feature web-exclusive commentary from noteworthy women including Maria Bartiromo, Sandra Cisneros, and Tina Brown; a personal essay from Maria Hinojosa; an interactive debate over Sarah Palin's candidacy; as well as opportunities for all women to post and share their stories of ambition, success, and discouragement.

(The "interactive debate" over Sarah Palin's candidacy is live now ...)



Many PBS stations have already aired the program. If your station has, it is available for streaming online. (Community members can read the full transcript in Hilda's Mix Tuesday and you can thank Ava and C.I. for transcribing it.)

Jerk off Artiste of the Week

At Corrente, Xenophon offers "How pissed are white women?" which is nothing but an ahistorical perspective on this (or any) presidential election which allows Xenophon to target and slime White women -- long a favorite practice of Xenophon.



May 20th, Xeonphon was flying the ignorance with a post entitled "Ain't that a Bitch: the return of racist misandry or the 'Angry Black Man'" which -- like a lot of X's posts, opens by insisting he's not that wild about Barack. But he has plenty of time to slam those outraged that Barack would refer to women (including a reporter) as "Sweetie". Xenophon rages: "You got your panties in a bunch because somebody called you sweetie? *@#&! Nobody said a mumbling word about Michelle Obama." "Michelle Obama" is linkable so we clicked to see what sexist thing had been said about Michelle?



The link takes you to Jenny Booth's "Barack Obama warns off Tennessee GOP from smearing his wife Michelle" (Times of London). Read the article, you'll never find any sexist attack on Michelle referred to in it nor will you find a smear. Michelle Obama made an idiotic statement about being proud of her country for the first time. That's public record. The full public record would note that she stated it more than once and that the damning video of her statements is when she's dressed in dark clothes (with hair askew), hunched over to the microphone, not when she's wearing her more elegant wardrobe.



"Sweetie" is offensive. Michelle's remarks are offensive. But she said them (more than once). To equate the two explains just how out of touch Xenophon is. And notice that in one case (Obama's use of sweetie) no one should be offended ("panties in a bunch") but in another (Michelle's own words being used in a GOP advertisement) Michelle's words being used are just blatant sexism!



No, it's someone making an idiotic statement in public and being recorded (several times) doing so. "Words matter," says Barack. And what Xenophon seems especially ignorant of is that grassroots feminists have been pissed at Michelle since November when she began insisting that Hillary wasn't qualified for the White House because she couldn't 'run her own house.' That attack has never been forgotten and goes a long ways towards explaining why the latest Michelle Obama (Laura Petrie-ville) doesn't have a great deal of support from grassroots feminists.



Fortunately, Sarah, Lambert, tnjen, Valhalla, caseyOR, herb the verb, hipparachia and TonyRz are among the ones calling the 'hypothesis' of the post out. bringiton advises, "Heads up: Don't get personal. That was mean and unacceptable."

E-mails (Dona and Jess)

The crazies, the kooks and the interesting.



Starting with the crazies and the kooks, Stacie Adams.



In response to last week's "The new age of privacy?," Adams e-mailed "Some corrections." We read it eagerly wondering what mistakes were made by us? None.



Adams spews her anger but offers no corrections.



1) She offers how she obtained Martha's e-mail address. We already knew how. Dissident Voice publisher Sunil K. Sharma had hazard a guess in an e-mail to us about how that happened. Adams wasn't supposed to write Martha and really shouldn't have had access to Martha's private information. Equally true is that Adams attempts to fudge reality implying that Martha e-mailed her. (Martha did not e-mail her. Comments left at articles are automatically e-mailed to the author of the piece.)



2) Adams admits she wrote Martha. Yeah, we knew that already. That's why we wrote the article.



3) She insists that Martha calling out Adams' use of "braying" and "shrill" to describe a woman for the sexism it is is somehow some glaring comprehension error on the part of Martha. No, Liar Adams, it's your fault. It was sexism.



4) No doubt taking time away from bashing special-needs children, Adams insists there was nothing wrong with her sneering statement accusing Governor Sarah Palin of 'passing around her special needs child.' It was offensive, Adams. You are offensive.



5) Adams makes multiple errors throughout and never offers anything in need of corrections. She's too busy offering insults (of a very juvenile sort that only had us laughing at her) and claiming she's some amazing writer.



6) She gives her permission to post her e-mail but why would we bother? She's a hateful person ranting hateful thoughts.



For the record, non-journalist Stacie Adams, when writing for "corrections," it's important to point to something factually wrong. You didn't. Indicating you might need to return to your lame days of writing 'independent' articles celebrating Comedy Central.



152 e-mails came in from parents of special-needs children. They did see the insult in Stacie Adams' bad writing. Renata gave permission to be quoted: "When I read that statement [by Adams], I was so mad I was shaking. She is obviously a hate-filled person who takes joy in ripping into those who have done nothing to her and could not do anything to her. My five-year-old has Down syndrome and she is a blessing and a treasure. If Ms. Adams is 'grossed out' by special-needs children, perhaps she needs to consider growing up."



Renata's thoughts were echoed in the other 151 e-mails and for Adams to find it shocking that we would call her out for her phobia ignores not only Ava and C.I.'s past work here on special-needs children but our own coverage of the challenged and disabled community which did not begin or end with our coverage of Gallaudet.



The second most popular feature (Stacie Adams getting called out wasn't the most popular) was "Editorial: Raw emotions (Ava and C.I.) " and it resulted in over 300 e-mails. Along with the praise for Ava and C.I.'s writing, many also wanted to thank Dee Dee for steering them to Leela's "Bullshit Feministing - Sara Palin was an Excellent GOP Choice" (Feministing). One reader who especially felt Leela was speaking for her suggested that if we really wanted to endorse the conversation Leela was willing to attempt, we should link to a site Leela blogs at: Citizen Girl. It's doubtful we'll be able to add the link during this writing edition but, by Tuesday evening, it will have been added to the our permalinks.



As always the most popular new article in last week's e-mails was Ava and C.I.'s TV commentary ("TV: The Fringes"). Lawrence spoke for many when he said he was glad they unintentionally extended the life of this site. A number of you e-mailed to say you'd enjoy it if, until the election, Ava and C.I. would continue to focus on a number of programs in each article. Their reply is, "We never know what we're doing until we go off to write the piece." And that really is true. Saturday night they were debating whether to go with Saturday cartoons, with public affairs programming, with a new entertainment show, or with some mix. They also had a friend from Saturday Night Live call asking them to take a look at this week's show. (Which they did.) When we broke off into individual groupings moments ago, Ava and C.I. still had no idea what they were going to write about.



"The UN's embarrassment in Iraq" resulted in many e-mails. Reader Luann offered that it was embarrassing that a UN rep took part in that for-show press conference (which stigmatized/demonized women and the press) but wondered if maybe she wasn't "forced to go along with it for access in Iraq?" That's a valid issue and one we were aware of when we wrote the piece. Our feeling was that her participation in that press conference (and the attacks she herself launched) went against the perception that the United Nations was an independent body. On the issue of cholera itself (the supposed topic of the press conference), as news coming out at the start of last week would reveal, she wasn't even honest about that. The UN can't really afford to sully their reputation. The press conference provided cover and misinformation and did so with the participation of a United Nations' rep.



"Sarah Sewell & Her Cult" resulted in e-mails in three categories. 1) Sewell's a War Hawk and thank goodness someone's calling her out. 2) "She's really nice!" (Sewell students). 3) Readers hoping something like that might be done each week. "Ty's Corner" will grab themes from the e-mails. In terms of what's being requested and presented here (sort of a mailbag without discussion) it may or may not be possible. What's going on right now as we work on this is that Jim's typing a roundtable, Ava and C.I. are working on their TV commentary, Ty is editing a musical piece and Mike, Betty, Rebecca, Wally, Cedric, Ruth, Marcia, Kat and Elaine are working on "Highlights." Because enough people e-mailed in for category three, we thought we'd use this time to grab it and would determine after the edition how that went. (For example, did it end up delaying the edition? Did it help it move more quickly?) Longterm reader Pamela noted we attempted this in 2005. She also advised for "the newbies" that we explain why this online magazine does not offer the option of comments? In November and for some of December 2004, The Common Ills offered the option of commenting. Keesha expressed her concern that comments led to her being attacked at other sites and that it would happen at The Common Ills. (Sort of like what Stacie Adams did to Martha.) C.I. said if it did happen, the comments would be shut down. When it did happen, the comments were closed. This site started in January 2005. We (Dona and Jess) and Jim were for the comment option. C.I. brought up the issue of what had happened to Keesha (which we knew, we were TCI community members) which led Ty to explain how it had happened to him. It seems to be an issue with persons of color especially. Wanting to be a welcoming site to all, we took a vote (including Ava who didn't care one way or the other until C.I. and Ty spoke) and decided not to do comments. As a result of that, in the early days, we did do features similar to this one or last week's on e-mails.



Since we will not respond in e-mail to anyone but regular readers (due to Gutter Trash's nonsense), we are aware that we need to find other ways to register the e-mails. That's why Ty has developed "Ty's Corner." Prior to that, for the last two years, we've offered "Mailbag" and also try to work e-mails into roundtables (and did on the roundtable we've done for this edition). The problem with "Mailbag" is that it is a transcript piece and can very easily veer off from "Mailbag" into "Roundtable."



Though this isn't a "Mailbag" piece, we will be using the "Mailbag" art. Suggestions on how to better address what's raised in e-mails can be sent to thirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com.



-- Dona and Jess

Highlights

This piece is written by Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix, Kat of Kat's Korner, Betty of Thomas Friedman is a Great Man, Mike of Mikey Likes It!, Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz, Ruth of Ruth's Report, Marcia of SICKOFITRADLZ and Wally of The Daily Jot. Unless otherwise noted, we picked all highlights.


"I Hate The War" -- The most requested highlight by readers of this site and not at all surprising since C.I.'s addressing a topic that's been a community concern for some time.

"Don't come and knock on my door" -- Bettina is visited by Kimmy and Ian Wild. A nightmare naturally ensues.

"Vegetable Soup in the Kitchen" -- Trina continues to offer practical, inexpensive recipes and to address the economy.

"Cher and more" and "Ralph Nader and Cher" -- Cher's a favorite of this site but who knew how much so? Ty said, "Kat's two posts have to be highlighted, the e-mails were non-stop." In both, she's compiling 'best of' discs of Cher. The first night, Kat says she honestly was too tired "to write a damn thing. I was flipping channels and came across a Cher video. I figured, I can do a list of Cher. So I did. I figured some would want to weigh in before I compressed it to one disc so I used that as my excuse for not doing that in the first night's post." The second night talks about Cher in more detail including her exclusion from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a topic we explore in an article here this week.

"Next stop, The Surreal Life!" & "THIS JUST IN! BARACK SINGS 'DELTA DAWN' TO LOHAN!" -- Cedric and Wally's joint-post on the dissing Barack. They write these together. They do not usually decided on the titles together. Cedric says if Wally had told him the title he was planning to use, not only would Cedric have used something similar, he would have suggested they rework their joint-post to actually include some lines from Delta Dawn ("a song that our fourth grade music teacher made us all learn. It was that and some stuff from The Wizard of Oz. Then she showed up stoned and we had a substitute for the rest of the year. It was an all African-American class, for any wondering, and the teacher was African-American. I have no idea why she felt we needed to know 'Delta Dawn' but not only did we have to learn to sing it, we also had to learn to play it on our recorders.").

"Bernard Avishai is not Moses" -- Ruth critiques a really bad article. (And no, he's not Moses, he just thinks he is.)



"They created the divide, they better own it" -- Elaine breaking it down for those (like Bernard) not understanding who created the divide.



"i have been too hard on nancy pelosi" -- Rebecca explains Nancy Pelosi's new get-out-the-vote actions.





"On Cynthia, NOW and HBs" and "Kimmy tells Black people what their 'problem' is" -- Marcia's very popular posts from last week addressing community concerns.



"Ed loses" -- Mike was rooting for Ed O'Reilly. He took the loss hard.


"the moron brian stelter" -- Rebecca takes on an NYT idiot who shows up late to the party and empty handed.



"Directors" -- Elaine weighs in on female film directors.



"Victor Davis Hanson, I thank you" -- Don't ever accuse Mike of being unable to thank the other side (Republican).



"The New Adventures of Old Christine" -- Ruth explains why she loves the sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine (season debut this Wednesday on CBS during the first hour of primetime). We note the show in another feature and intend to note it at greater length in a feature next week. By the way, it's a pretty strong edition. The only thing still to do is the editorial (and Jim's note that he'll do after we're all asleep). On the editorial, we'll be pulling from C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot," "Iraq snapshot" and "Iraq snapshot."


"I feel your pain! Gotta jet!" & "THIS JUST IN! THE ACTIONS ARE TELLING!" -- Cedric and Wally's joint-post on Barack, Man of the People, the Famous People.

Truest statement of the week

At the same time, our numbers were smaller than they need to be, than they should have been and than many of us were hoping they’d be. I want to talk bluntly and honestly about this and what we should make of this. I write for Revolution newspaper and this is something I've been writing about. I did an article recently, "The Dangerous Logic of Blocking Protests in the Name of Getting Obama Elected." This has been going on. People maybe have heard some of the groups talk about having an "inside/outside strategy." As World Can't Wait was working to help build these protests we talked to a lot of people who said, "Oh yeah, we're glad you're organizing street protests against a new war on Iran, against the war in Iraq. We'll be there too--and we'll be doing our inside strategy." That is, trying to influence the Democratic Party from within the convention and by appealing to delegates.But in reality what's been happening is that a lot of these so-called "anti-war" groups and "anti-war" leaders have been demobilizing protest. They have been working on their "inside strategy" but they have done nothing to mobilize protests out in the streets to oppose this direction that can be seen by the world.
I know Recreate '68 had to go up against this. I'm going to be really blunt because it matters. United for Peace and Justice, Leslie Cagan, she said maybe we should call off the protest today and advocated instead that we should mingle with the delegates. I'm all for going and talking to delegates…in order to get them to join us in the streets, okay? But Code Pink, Progressive Democrats of America, where were they today?

-- World Can't Wait's Sunsara Taylor, "The world could be radically different and it’s time we start talking about real change" (Revolution).

Truest statement of the Week II

This truest has been deleted by Ty 1-15-09. The man turned out to be a racist. He exposed himself as such on 1-15-09. We regret and apologize that we were not aware of that fact until now. We are deleting him.

Truest statement of the week III

I want to say something else, because this has had a real impact. We have to confront this. The Nation came out with an open letter to Barack Obama. And a lot of very courageous people who have rightfully earned the respect of the people for their stands against the war and the Bush program signed this letter and this was a mistake and it’s done harm. This letter says, among other things, that there are many, many people who gave grown alienated from politics-as-usual who have found hope again in Barack Obama, and the letter casts this as a good thing. This is not a good thing. People are right to get disaffected. The question is not how do we get people to believe and how do we use our anti-war credentials to make Barack Obama more palatable. The question is, how do we go out to people and tell them the truth about what it's really going to take to stop all the things that made them alienated in the first place.Including the fact that Obama is not going to stop this program. Sure, he's different in some flavors or varieties than McCain. I'm not contesting that. But those differences are about how to run an empire, that’s what he's auditioning to do. And it's time for people to confront this reality. We do not bridge this gap by going with the grain, appealing to the false hope that he's capturing people in. We deal with this by going against the grain, by telling people the truth that they need to hear: that Obama doesn’t represent the change you need, he represents the change that the system will allow you to believe in.

-- World Can't Wait's Sunsara Taylor ("The world could be radically different and it’s time we start talking about real change," Revolution).

A note to our readers

Hey --

The edition is finally up.

Along with Dallas, here's who worked on it:

Along with Dallas, the following worked on this edition:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
and Marcia SICKOFITRDLZ.

We thank everyone. Let's go over what we have.

Truest statement of the week -- Sunsara Taylor's remarks are from a transcript of a speech delivered. We know this one will be the big hit with readers. She references an article she wrote and we attempted to locate a link but couldn't. If anyone has the link and wants to e-mail it (thirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com) feel free.

Truest statement of the Week II -- This is Joseph Cannon and it's from a kick-ass post. You want to read what leads up to that statement.

Truest statement of the week III -- Sunsara Taylor again because when we called out that open letter to The Nation the e-mail response was "No one else will." Someone else did.

Editorial: Raw emotions (Ava and C.I.) -- Okay, here's where I (Jim) break down the edition. First, Ty told me I'd mispelled the headline on this and that reader Jamie had pointed that out. Thanks for catching that Jamie. I've corrected it. Elaine was with us this weekend and she pointed out that a large number of pieces we'd written weren't going online. Looking at them, we realized she was right and that they'd go in the print edition only because we had to get that out. So we decided to break up. Dona looked at the list we had of articles to write. She assigned Ava and C.I. one topic (this) and told Mike and the gang to go work on highlights while she, Ty, Jess and myself worked on another piece. Ava and C.I. weren't sure what was expected from them and brought this back with doubts. I got to paragraph seven (reading it out loud) and said, "This is the editorial." There was some discussion about breaking it up in to two pieces or having all of us rewrite it as an editorial but Elaine pointed out (a) it's late, (b) everyone's tired and (c) rewriting Ava and C.I. would result in the piece being weakened. We all agreed and decided to make it the editorial as is and to post immediately. Everything else could (and did) wait. We then crashed, woke up this evening and took Elaine out to eat and then onto the airport to catch her flight home.

TV: The Fringes -- This made it up before Fringe started airing on the West Coast. I point that out because Ava and C.I. were saying this morning it needed to go up then. It mentions Fringe. Already excited readers have grabbed on to the "midseason" remark. So Third will continue after the election? Ava and C.I. said they just agreed without thinking but since they did and since it's up (they agreed to a writer for Fringe's request to hold off on a full review until the mid-season) they'll committ to this site through the start of January. That's only for this site. No one (including C.I.) has made any decision regarding their own sites. Since Ava and C.I. are willing to go to January, we (Dona, Ty, Jess and myself) gladly agree to as well. Now, if readers, can get beyond that unplanned announcement, focus on this powerful piece.

The new age of privacy? -- This tackles a number of issues and, in terms of backstory, we contacted Joshua Frank and the publisher of Dissident Voice for this piece. We orginally contacted the publisher twice with no reply. At which point, C.I. said we should contact Joshua in case the publisher was out of pocket. We did and not only did Joshua bring it to the publisher's attention he wrote a very thoughtful e-mail. C.I. argued that Joshua did not have all the facts at that point and may not have wanted to have written at length if he had. For that reason, C.I. declared Joshua's e-mail off limits for quoting unless we heard from him that it was fine to quote from. The publisher also wrote a very thoughtful e-mail. There was nothing in it that said, "Quote me." We contacted DV stating we were seeking a quotation for publication. We did the same with 15 bloggers (some who were professional journalists before they ever went online, some of whom weren't). We followed up to their replies to be sure that they knew we were asking for quotes. We didn't recive a "sure quote me" or "well just quote me on ___" from anyone. If any of the above e-mails stating they wished to be quoted, we will quote them next week. We thank everyone who replied. We thank community members who agreed to be interviewed. We killed some of their quotes we wanted to include because they really required a response that we didn't have permission to quote from (though we had the response in the e-mails from the bloggers).

The UN's embarrassment in Iraq -- Ava and C.I. were still writing what became the editorial when we started this. Backstory my father called Saturday and asked if I'd seen C.I.'s "Naeema al-Gasseer: the United Nations' embarrassment in Iraq"? Yeah, I was reading that over C.I.'s shoulder as it was written. My father said that needed to be a topic here. I agreed and we put it on the list. He said everyone he works with is offended by what the UN allowed. That didn't surprise me because C.I. only wrote about it because three reporters called C.I. to complain about that press conference. So with Ava and C.I. working on the editorial, we all started work on this. It was a strong piece. However, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava, C.I. and I reworked it this evening before it went up due to the fact that my father called passing on the IRIN story and with more rants. (Deserved rants. I think every reporter would find what went down offensive.)

Meet Charley Johnson 'Journalist' -- We could have rewritten this. My father is younger than Charley Johnson. We make the point that for his stated age, Johnson is using some terms that a professional reporter wouldn't. I went over the list of 16 terms we'd found at Johnson's site with my father. He's much younger than Johnson and said he didn't even know anyone his age who would be writing "bro" and "BFF" if they were a trained journalist. If you doubt that, read Danny Schechter sometime. Schechter is not my father. He's probably a little younger than Johnson. He is a professional journalist with many credits to his name. So go check out Danny Schechter News Dissector and look for Schechter tossing around "BFF" and "bro" and assorted other lingo that's a little bit current. You won't find it. Then Google Charley and pull up his site. Go to the June and July archives (when his site started) and note the terminology he repeatedly uses. We do not believe there is a Lucille. We further argue that a journalist does not make such a claim without more than one source. We also argue that a backup source is not handed to you by someone who pays their salary. It's not journalism.

Sarah Sewell & Her Cult -- This is what Ty, Jess, Dona and I worked on when Ava and C.I. went off to work on what became the editorial. Due to Gutter Trash, we're not responding to e-mails from people we don't know. Last Monday, to address a point in the e-mails that morning, Ty wrote "CounterSpin's wrong, Ava and C.I. are correct" (and posted it with last week's edition). This falls into the same category. The Cult of Sarah will not go away. Have they ever missed a week inventing a new reason why we should take down a TV commentary by Ava and C.I.? We can't remember it. And they were back last week. That's your response, Cult.

Highlights -- Mike, Kat, Betty, Wally, Marcia, Cedric, Ruth, Rebecca and Elaine wrote this and we thank them for it. They worked on this while Ava and C.I. were doing the editorial and they came back to work on the Iraq piece with us.

So that's what we got.

See you next weekend.

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