so how is every 1's memorial day weekend going?
i hope you've had some time for friends and families.
betty said the best thing during the third estate sunday review marathon sessions yesterday.
a friend of her's had phone and asked her if she could do something saturday night and she said only if she could bring the kids and she'd have to be back at a certain hour to work on something.
betty's friend said 'i don't think you see your friends as much as you used to' and betty told us that story last night and said 'i really think of you guys as being my friends as well.
and of course we are all but here it was a holiday weekend and we were attempting to get something together. and it's fun but it's easy to forget as we were debating this or that how much fun we have and how much we really do count on these saturday sessions.
it's a lot of fun to be involved in the third estate sunday review and i know i cite them often here but i'm not sure i've told them thank you. that goes to betty and c.i. too. and kat and folding star when they're able to join us. (also thanks to common ills community members shirley and dallas.)
every 1 brings in a view point and there are stories that get started but don't get done or get done and no 1's happy with them so they don't post. but even there we end with this really strong engaged debate that i know helps me and i hope it helps every 1 else involved.
from betty i learn to laugh at even the most tense times. she's not just funny at her site thomas friedman is a great man, she's funny all the time. every 1 involved loves to laugh but betty can tell a joke like no 1. c.i. said that too and betty was modest and started trying to say 'well you are funny too' and c.i. is but like c.i. said 'i can tell a funny story but i can't tell a joke.' c.i. truly cannot tell a joke, the line will get messed up and that's actually funnier than the joke itself coud be.
but betty really could do stand up. people would pay to see her and she'd have an incredible career because she is so funny.
from jess i learn peace this ability to know that we are working on important things but that when frustration sets in, which it can, i learn that the process is a slow 1. nothing happens over night and you plug away today and do your best and pick back up tomorrow.
and to throw in some sex since sherry asks 'where is the sex lately,' i've never had sex with jess but he is very sexy. especially his voice. he started singing a woody guthrie song at some point last night and i like woody guthrie's songs but i never think of them as really sexy. jess has this really warm baritone.
from dona and jim i learn that among friends you can say anything. that's because they will fight for their point of view with each other. they both hold very strong positions and they generally agree but when they disagree they will both just hunker down on their position and they will let it fly. not personal attacks, but very serious disagreements over policies or issues. and as readers of the third estate sunday review know, dona and jim are a couple. have been for some time. they make a really good couple.
from ty i learn that it's okay to play editor. ty will say no to some issue some 1 raises. for instance, if we're doing an issue and some guy writes in saying, and a guy did, 'i want you to address the kennedy assasination' ty's the 1 who said no. we were all trying to think about what would we say about that. ty's position was 'what can we say?' we weren't there. there are books with assorted positions out there. we try to do 1 article on that in any form and we're suddenly stuck in a quagmire that we can't pull ourselves out of.
ty will say no to any thing that he doesn't feel he has any perspective on that offers something.
otherwise, he says, call yourself tim russert and just start wearing a t-shirt that says 'i am a big old gas bag and i think i know everything.'
which brings us to ava. and i really don't feel like i knew ava for the longest. i thought she was sweet - and she is - but that's really the only opinion i had of her. she was often the quietest in the discussions of what the issue should be. at 1 point, i thought she was jim's girlfriend and figured 'okay, that's why she's here.'
she and c.i. are credited with the tv reviews now, but they really have always done them and jim made that clear in a note to the readers awhile back. but in the early days, jim, dona, ty, jess or i would change a line to 'make it better' and if any 1 does that with something that some 1's written, the writer will say 'okay' if they're fine with it or 'wait the point i'm making is ...' and ava never did that in the early days.
and looking back i can see that she was feeling her way around. the time she spent on the tv reviews before she and c.i. got credited were really good for her because she is funny and she is smart and a lot of times we could be in a hurry and miss that. c.i. stuck up for her on 1 line in the elimidate review, i think that was the 1, a line that we were going to change. and c.i. argued it and argued it and then ava jumped in and argued it too.
and after that, they really were the voice of the tv review even before they were credited. they connect so well, they can finish the other's line or know where the other's heading with something. and it's really been great to see ava, this incredible young woman, find her footing and just emerge. she will argue her point on any thing now. i know a lot of it was probably about getting comfortable and i'm sure a lot of it was being around a bunch of loud mouths (especially myself, jim and dona) but it's also true that she's learned 'hey, i am talented.' i think, more than any 1 else, ava had doubts and was reluctant to weigh in during the earliest days because she felt like jim or dona or ty were beyond her.
i also think the e-mails on the tv reviews helped because readers love what she and c.i. do. they get their share of nasty e-mail and i mean some really threatening, in specific details, e-mails. but they also get a ton of praise. and i think that's been a huge validation to ava.
we should probably praise one another more while we're in a marathon session. but it's usually such a rush that 'good' or 'great' may be the most that comes out of our mouths. jim, dona and me are explosive and very strong personalities. ty can stand up to any of us and dig in when he has to. jess will exhibit the patience of job. and i think ava probably needed a little more than she was getting from us. she'd do her part and she would answer every e-mail that came in but she was kind of wary of the circle, i guess. and now she's become this strong voice and she's a real leader so it's been incredible to watch that transformation.
so that leaves c.i. and i don't know what to say there. c.i. obviously saw the need to pull ava away for the tv reviews which is why that became their turf. they go off and do their feminist crititques of television that are hilarious and right on the money. and obviously i wouldn't be blogging if it weren't for c.i. i didn't even like to share with the community before i started blogging. i'd write c.i. but never want to be quoted. and i'd get back these e-mails about how i did have something to offer and i really should consider not just sharing it with the community but starting my own blog. so maybe the reason ava's transformation touches me so much is because in a smaller way i saw it happen to me.
if i'm having a problem with an entry or with research, i'll e-mail or phone c.i. and it's never 'hey i'm busy my plate is pretty full!' there's always time to address whatever my question is. and we have disagree strongly about entries over at the common ills or here. the 1st time i put up something that i knew c.i. would disagree with i thought 'i'm going to hear about it.' but i never did. if i bring something up we'll talk about it. but otherwise it's only something that's thought of these days when some 1 e-mails one of us and says 'you two don't get along, do you?'
we do. we've known each other for a very long time. and when c.i. would answer 1 of those over at the common ills and i'd read it, i'd wonder if there was something wrong even though it didn't say that. then ava and c.i. wrote their thing on candy perfume boy over at the common ills and all these e-mails came in here asking if i was upset about that?
i wasn't. why should i be? that was their opinion. i see it differently than ava and c.i. but i really didn't have a problem with what they wrote and in fact enjoyed reading it. when that happened i realized that there was no problem on c.i.'s end because i knew there was no problem on my end. but sometimes until the shoe's reversed, you're not sure.
bryce e-mailed last monday about the last roundtable at the third estate sunday review and offered that he could tell we were really about to go at each other's throats over the e-mail issue.
we weren't. ava and c.i. have their opinion and most people are in the middle on it except for jim and me who feel that there's no need to go through every e-mail and respond to each and every 1.
we see no reason for that.
no 1's paying to read the third estate sunday review or sex and politics and screeds and attitude or the common ills or thomas friedman is a great man or a winding road. and none of us pretend that we're giving you the mainstream approach which is 'balanced.' we're people on the left writing about what we see is important. jim talks about the long e-mail he read when it was his day to read them at the third estate estate sunday review. some 1 had written in that 'fairness dictates' that we present bully boy's position on the war. forget that bully boy's position has changed repeatedly - and his justifcations - why would we?
1st off, your mainstream opinion sources can give you that as can your right wing 1s. and you can certainly hear every word bully boy utters, with no questioning of them, on the news.
but we're writing about the left from the left.
i do think that c.i. spends too much time on the e-mails. that's my opinion. i don't spend enough time on the e-mails and that's reality. but i brought up an issue and we've all talked about and ava and c.i. see my point even when they don't agree fully. but c.i. will tell you that since i brought it up the issue has been given more thought.
but no, we were never going to go at each other's throats. i mean i love orange juice and c.i. loathes it. we're not going to go at each other's throats over that. it's just differences in opinions and taste. but, a word to the wise, never offer c.i. a screwdriver. offer a margarita or a bloody mary or a martini or whatever you have straight but c.i. won't drink any beverage made with orange juice and it has nothing to do with an allergy, c.i. just doesn't care for orange juice.
i know c.i. through our mutual friend elaine. and while i'm offering drinking advice to you, i'll also add never get in a drinking contest with c.i. i can remember a party in the early or mid 90s where there was a drinking contest for shots of tequila and i made it to 30. and i can hold my liquor but i had to drop out then. elaine dropped out at 12 or 13. c.i. was still in the contest and my have won. but it's a bit of blur to me now for obvious reasons.
but you'll have a hard time winning because c.i. doesn't get hangovers. it may be due to the fact a huge amount of water is consumed throughout the day. c.i. was the 1st person i ever knew who made it a point to drink a minimum of 64 ounces of water a day. these days you can get bottled water in vending machines but back then i thought it was a bit strange and never drank water unless there was nothing in the fridge. i've also never seen c.i. drunk no matter how much was consumed so word to the wise, avoid a drinking contest unless you like losing.
'becky, why are you talking about drinking?' because i'm offering you a little insight, a tid bit you wouldn't get elsewhere.
c.i. really doesn't do the personal at the common ills. that's not a great deal different from in person. partly that's because c.i. is a private person and very guarded. and partly that's because if i was sharing a story and we were talking when it was c.i.'s turn it would be about something in the news or something the news wasn't covering or some issue.
i'll share also that c.i. would love to have jess's cool nature. i bring this up because krista had asked a question and c.i. did an entry responding to it. but c.i. did the entry on wednesday night and rewrote and rewrote it until it finally posted on friday.
it was about the new york times' coverage of ireland. c.i. sent me the wednesday draft and i read it and thought it was perfect. but it was an issue about social justice and c.i. felt it was too angry. what went up on friday was more detached and from a 'wide angle' as c.i. said when we talked about it. (the earlier was a 'tracking shot' according to c.i.)
my attitude is just let it out, blow your stack if you want. (i could learn a lot from jess.)
the friday entry was actually more in keeping with c.i. the approach in life is to think about something and examine it, then weigh in. i remember when the soviet union fell, we were all a party, me, elaine and c.i., and there were people giving instant analysis about what this meant for history. they were basically repeating whatever cnn was saying - the tv was on and we were all watching as we moved around the room. c.i. was saying there were historical issues involved and avoiding it otherwise or trying to when this pushy guy comes over and starts up this discussion and c.i. finally says that all the chatter neglects the history of a people and basic issues of who is going to benefit, etc. it was this brief thing that lasted like 3 minutes top.
and what we've seen in russia these days makes me think a lot about those remarks. there was this glee in the room from some because the soviet union had been portrayed as our greatest enemy for ever and ever. so there were some at the party who were basically dancing and singing and treating the collapse as though it was a happy ending with a happily ever after and no more questions or issues. a lot of people were reaching for easy answers and it was a little more complex than that. but it was treated as though it were a football game and most people didn't want to ask difficult questions like 'what does this mean for the people there.' instead, they just wanted to do some end zone dance.
and i think that's at the heart of c.i. and the common ills. tonight i listened to the laura flanders show and it was a repeat but i had missed almost all of it before. there were people talking about what the recruiters do in high school. and 1 thing a military recruiter did was when some 1 asked about the innocent iraqis that were dying was to respond that they were cock roaches.
that sentiment is so shocking to me but i am aware that a lot of people believe that.
it's the whole issue of 'the other.' and it goes into the need to demonize in order to propagandize and glorify war. randi rhodes, on her show, has talked about how before we go to war, the media should spend 2 weeks educating us on the people there, their country, etc. and we really do need to know those things. but instead we focus on american idiol or some other nonsense and maybe give 2 minutes a day tops for news. after we've paid attention to the runaway bride or the latest little blonde girl that's been kidnapped, we really don't seem interested in anything else. which is due in part to what passes for news in this country.
it's also due to cutbacks in international coverage. but i think we have to bear responsibility for the state of the news as well as the mainstream providers. are we going to democracy now for instance? we can do that. we can get news there. and we have the progressive (which c.i.'s summarized) and the nation and in these times and other news sources. we have pacifica programs and some really strong programs on air america like laura flanders and janeane garofalo's the majority report and randi rhodes and ring of fire and the rachel maddow show and mike malloy. and we have web sites. we can go all over the world to find news now.
that doesn't excuse the mainstream's reluctance to cover real news. but it does mean that while complaining we can do more than just complain. and a lot of us are doing that so you'd think some mainstream organizations would realize what a profit was to be made in reporting real news.
so those are my free association thoughts for the night. i'd also suggest that if you're needing some humor, you go to the common ills and check out community member isaiah's latest comic.
