i had a post planned but i'm going to postpone it to instead focus on the common ills.
a number of you caught the interview that beth did with c.i. and before i go further, i don't know if it's x or z but 1 of those two, both reporters for the new york times, is going to have a reply up at the site. i got that confirmed from c.i. it'll go up as soon as c.i. gets home. c.i. wouldn't say which 1.
i'm hoping it's z. if you missed beth's interview (and it's in rough draft form currently), x wrote to dispute the type of sources that were utilized in x's story. x has a difference of opinion. you know that the times isn't big on activists so great if x wants to go on record but i really hope it's z who sounds like a real nut job.
z thought that since gossip was passed to c.i. about love in the green zone (rumors that dexter filkins and john f. burns were having affairs - not with each other) that z would get a pass from criticism. i'd love to read that.
but i'm guessing z would want to say 'hey keller, fire me!' to decided to go public so i'm guessing it will be x. that's still cool.
it's better than cool. c.i.'s doing criticism if some 1 doesn't like it, fine. but if you want to dispute it, why not do it publicly?
c.i. will do 1 of those 'in fairnesses' and say that there are guidelines and that certain remarks might get them in trouble at the times due to those guidelines the paper has.
that's c.i.'s way of looking at it. my way is put up or shut up. you've had your say in print, i get my say here. you want to say something else on the matter say it on the record.
the other big thing in my e-mails was 'beth?'
for those who don't remember, beth had a problem with claiming things were said at the common ills and it was all part of an effort to trip c.i. up and figure out clues about c.i. beth only tried that with me once and i called her on it. she was pissed at me. she was pissed at c.i.
beth e-mailed me at the end of april and we are fine. when i read her interview, i e-mailed her and asked if she wanted to call me and we'd deal with some topics she was tabling for now.
i thought i knew what beth was tabling and when she called i was right.
as most people who come by here know, c.i. and the common ills were trashed by a potty mouth named dopey. he did it not once, not twice, but three times.
he's really tried to ride those posts to fame but no 1 really reads dopey because he makes so little sense on any topic.
c.i. commented on dopey 1 time only. dopey trashed c.i. and while c.i. was working on an entry, c.i. learned of it from dallas. c.i. thought dopey has misunderstood and tried to contact dopey by e-mail repeatedly. when dopey finally responds he offers no response. just 'oh it's late i'll reply tomorrow.' as readers here know i posted that night that i told c.i. post about dopey and do it now, dopey's a chicken shit asshole who will burn you tomorrow.
sure enough dopey did. dopey went on to mock c.i.'s illness, to mock everything about c.i.
if you're new, dopey e-mailed c.i. twice in 1 evening - the only time dopey ever e-mailed until c.i. learned of the trashing and e-mailed dopey to ask what the problem was. dopey did not ask to be quoted. c.i. didn't quote dopey. (i've seen the e-mails and yes, i discussed them at length with gina and krista so they could inform in their round-robin. that's the 1 time c.i. was every seriously mad about me but the common ills and c.i. were being trashed. the community was given the back story on that but i thought they needed to know exactly the type of person dopey was in e-mails - not the big brave screamer at his dopey site.)
dopey then blogs that c.i. is a liar and that he was not quoted at c.i.'s site and blah blah blah.
nut case.
at some point, dopey decides to try to bring me into it and starts spreading rumors that i'm going to his dopey site because some 1 posted in lower case and i, apparently, hold the copyright on lower case.
dopey's just an idiot.
but c.i. dealt with that and was too nice in my opinion (kat's too).
so then dopey feels the need to trash c.i. again and to make these insulting remarks about women and gay men. he's apparently a sexist and a homophobe.
which is probably why his attempt to ride c.i. to fame failed so miserably.
c.i. was nice about it. c.i. tried to take the high road. when dopey's latest slam on c.i. and the community got back to c.i., c.i. was pissed. it was a week after the fact (no 1 reads dopey) and c.i. said, 'you know what, becky, fuck the bastard. i don't care now that you went into those e-mails with gina and krista.'
but dopey's name or site will never be mentioned at the common ills. c.i. outlined that to gina and krista in 1 of their q&a sessions.
dopey will never be mentioned at that site. dopey's a stupid little shit and i don't blame c.i. 1 bit.
that's why i call the idiot 'dopey' because i won't give him further publicity. he's a little p.r. whore trying to make a name for himself and playing 1 way in e-mails and another way at his dopey site.
he tried to push me around in e-mails, big brave dopey. i put a stop to that.
so that's the background for any 1 late to the soap opera of dopey.
here's what happened with beth.
she was preparing her kiss of to the community. and then the trashing of the common ills went up. then the lie that c.i. was a liar for not posting dopey (who didn't ask to be quoted). by the time dopey was mocking c.i.'s cancer - what a big brave man that dopey is, huh? - beth had already decided the community was too important to her.
she wrote c.i. an e-mail and said she was staying with the community. that's all she said except to ask if she needed to apologize to stay with the community. 'i'd said quite a bit already including "asshole" - which was about the nicest word i'd used. i get this e-mail back that c.i. is not the community and that i should feel to free to ignore c.i.'s remarks and just focus on what i want covered and what other members are highlighting. there was a p.s. that said 'by the way, i probably am an asshole and much worse, no apology needed.' i read that 3 times before i wrote back that i was looking at it as fun and a parlor game and i was sorry about that. and then i get back "no apology, just take from the community what you can use and give back with things that you see." i wanted to talk about that because i did treat the community as fun and games to find out about c.i. and it's a community not a parlor game. but c.i. asked me to table it because the interview would be read by outsiders.'
i understand that and support it. so does beth.
while i am a community member of the common ills, sex and politics and screeds and attitude is my site and if any 1 wants to start a war with me, go for it.
mocking some 1 who's just had surgery, someone with cancer is not cool. bring on your little war dopey because i'll happily bury you.
c.i. is very protective of the community and i would be the last to fault that.
but on 1 thinks dopey is 'cool' or 'edgy,' they just think he's sick. they just think he crossed a line that shouldn't have been crossed.
hopefully by having her say here, beth got it off her chest. a number of people who e-mailed about the interview said 'i thought beth had left the community.' she's been mentioned a couple of times in the last month when she's sent some link in. but she knows c.i.'s feelings about having had enough of dopey and she respects those feelings.
i respect them too. i wouldn't e-mail something to be posted on the common ills about the idiot.
but at my site we can talk about it because i still find it all so disgusting and vile. dopey lied, bad enough.
6/07/2005
on ed and the need for us to tell our truths and beliefs
first off, for yesterday's post, i want to thank elaine, c.i. and kat. they listened to parts of it (c.i. heard it all in parts prior to it being posted).
ed really pissed me off. i asked kat if i let my voice suffer as a result because that's a concern she has in her writing. she said 'it's you' and that she liked the fact that i didn't try to engage him on policy issues that he never raised.
i also want to say thank you to the 19 female bloggers who wrote to say basically 'keep giving them hell.'
i don't think the general blog visitor or blogger realizes what a problem this is.
for me, i won't back down. but i've noted before that female bloggers have stopped discussing politics at her site because of this type of 'help.'
then they get slammed as gilmor girls bloggers or cat bloggers.
but when they try to do politics, a man comes along to scream and rage.
i'm sick of it.
i'm sick of men trying to tell women what to do.
it's the fucking 21st centuries but some men seem to think the clock stopped at the turn of the 19th century.
to those men i say 'kiss my ass.'
you hear me?
kiss my ass.
1 of the 19 had never written before.
she tried to accomodate the man who kept e-mailing. tried to meet him half way in her posts.
her posts. not his. if he doesn't like it, let him do his own damn blog.
but even trying to meet the prick 1/2 way wasn't enough - it never is.
he continued to hector her and bully her and it just gets to be too much.
do men on the left do this? i hope not.
i can say that males on the right who've e-mailed have generally disagreed with me and offered their opinions. they haven't told me 'you will write this way' or 'you will write about this!'
men on the left don't harrass me with unasked for help. now maybe they do that with right wing female bloggers, i don't know. i would guess not.
but these damn middle of the road centers seem to think they boss women around.
they're so used to follow the 'rules' and coloring inside the line that it apparently infuriates them when any woman doesn't do the same. probably infuriates them when a man doesn't do the same. but a left blogger who'd written on ed, e-mailed me to say that ed never even wrote him.
wonder why that is?
maybe because some guys get off on bullying women?
i won't take this shit.
i won't do it because i don't believe in taking it.
but i also won't do it because i know, as 2 female bloggers pointed out, when i stand up it makes it easier for others to.
i'm not as smart as any of my personal heroes, i don't pretend to be.
but they blazed paths for me and and lot of others.
if the only strip i add to clearing the path is refusing to bow and wimper, then that's what i have to offer.
maybe in 10 years, other women won't have to deal with this bullshit.
that's what it is, it's bullshit.
it's a man at a party interrupting you in the middle of a joke because if 'the little lady' tells the joke, people won't get it.
it's the man who covers his crotch at the thought that a woman might speak her mind.
i won't take the shit.
i've read some of the e-mail at the third estate sunday review. usually the funny 1s because those are pulled for their 'dear third estate sunday review' pieces. but jim has also passed on the shit that ava and c.i. get. for tv reviews!
for tv reviews, people feel they can threaten them in the most graphic details.
kat gets that shit too.
do any men?
at third estate sunday review, jim, jess and ty have never been called to the carpet for any opinion they've expressed. but ask dona and she'll tell you about the 'helpful' men who write in to suggest that she should have said what she said in the roundtable or about a book 'this way' or 'that way.'
get it through your middle of the road fucking heads, no 1's your vivian. you're not edward.
this isn't pretty woman, this isn't even my fair lady.
your efforts to rescue us from ourselves is neither requested nor welcomed.
put it back in your pants, boys, we don't want to see it, we don't want to smell it.
maybe this is how you engage with men in locker rooms (or maybe how, in high school as towel boy or equipment manager, you saw other men engage) but that's your way.
quit pushing it off on us.
we're sick of it.
you want to bully and boss.
probably you want to do that in your personal life as well but times have changed if your mind set hasn't. so you don't get to do that in your personal life.
all you get to do is sit around watching the movies by the male joan crawford, michael douglas.
you sit there watching falling down or fatal attraction or any other film where, like michael, you're the great victim.
get over yourselves.
i got 46 e-mails from young women in high school who spoke of things like being interrupted in the middle of class by some boy who felt the need to stop them, say 'i think what she means is' and go on to hijack the conversation.
i did something in college when that happened to me and i'd like to share it with you.
don't say a word. fall silent for a moment.
stare at the idiot, then at the teacher. then look around the room.
then very loudly say, 'excuse me, is my answering the question interrupting you?'
watch the little punk ass bully go red in the face and fall silent.
to wendy, i want to state what i've said before, not all men are like this.
we have progressed. but there's still work to be done.
wendy, you asked me what you could do so i'll tell you to hold those little tyrants accountable.
let every 1 in the class see you do that. you'll find that some of the guys will tell the tyrant to shut up. you'll find that some of the gals will do the same. (some gals are the worst, they grow up to be right wingers and often make a living slamming women who work for a living - which, they in fact do while they slam those women. think of ann coulter.)
wendy, i won't kid you, it's not always fun. it can make you really mad.
but you're serious about wanting to do something to straighten out your own high school class and i think that's what you can do.
if it doesn't sound right to you, blow it off and ask around for other ideas. but if it feels right, go for it.
and to adult women, i want to point out that our mothers blazed a trail for us. they were the 1st group to have careers and not hobbies. they got slammed over and over. 'they want it all!' 'they've turned the children over to daycare centers!' 'they've lost their femininity!'
they had to deal with a lot of shit.
as hard as it can seem sometime, it is easier for us. we have role models we can look to within our own circles - our mothers, or aunts, or a neighbor. our mothers flew blind. they rejected the straight jacket of the stereotype at a time when the alternative was to create their own identities from scratch.
we need to build on what they created.
so if you're squeamish about the word 'feminist' (as 1 reader wrote last week), get over it. it's so much easier to use the term today then it was for our mothers.
in d.c. now it's not just the bully boy that wants to strip us of our rights, it's also a lot of 'center' democrats who think they can distance themselves from our rights and look 'manly.'
we need to be vocal. we need to say, 'speak to me or lose my vote.'
when 2008 rolls around, they better have a democrat on the ticket who can talk about abortion.
not in terms of 'it's awful but ...' we need a woman or a man who will say 'privacy right' over and over.
for my male readers, i say use the term feminist.
it's not just for women. it's about equality. you hear some female in your class being trashed for being a feminist, say 'hey i'm a feminist too.'
let's work to support each other here.
male or female, you want to save reproductive rights? start using the term feminist to self-describe.
it'll let a lot of people know that contrary to the way the media plays things in their current infatuation with all things right-wing-religious that we're still here. we may not be on tv or quoted in print, but we're here.
look around you and i think you'll see a lot of wishy-washy people (sheep) who will sell out anything if they feel it's the new phase. those people need to realize feminists are all around them.
this is your world. you can speak out and make things better or you can go along and let the loud mouths from the center and the right drown us out.
so think about that and i'll also note a story from democracy now that you need to watch, listen or read. it's called 'EXCLUSIVE: Another U.S. War Resister Flees to Canada To Avoid Fighting in Iraq Via The New 'Underground Railroad.''
it's an important story and you need to know about it. but in terms of what we've been talking about for the last few paragraphs, i'll note this and you can relate it to our topic:
AMY GOODMAN: Let me end with Ryan Johnson. What significance do the people who have come before you who have gone to Canada, like Jeremy Hinzman, like Brandon Huey and the people who have resisted in the United States, like Camilo Mejia, like Pablo Paredes, Aidan Delgado, what impact do they have on you?
RYAN JOHNSON: Well, because of them, I found out about the movement. I found -- we found Jeremy Hinzman's site before I went AWOL. And one of our first thoughts was to go to Canada, and we found the G.I. Rights hotline, and we were looking at that. Then we found stuff on Camilo Mejia, Aidan Delgado, and, you know, it kind of inspired me that people were doing this. It let me know that there were other people like me that weren’t wanting to go to the war and that there’s people just trying to get it out there to, you know, soldiers and civilians alike, letting them know that they're not the only ones that don't believe in it.
do you get it? ryan johnson was able to do what he did because of those who came before. that's why it's important to get our voices in the media. thank god for democracy now which has a huge audience. but don't think that because it made democracy now it will make the networks.
it won't. we need to be our own media. we need to make sure that people in our circles know what we believe in and what we stand for.
not every 1 will agree with you. some won't agree with you at the start and some will never agree. but there are some people who will disagree at the start just because you're giving them information they haven't heard before. once they get over their shock and have a bit to think about it, i think you'll be surprised by how many will come back and say, 'okay, now i get it.'
ed really pissed me off. i asked kat if i let my voice suffer as a result because that's a concern she has in her writing. she said 'it's you' and that she liked the fact that i didn't try to engage him on policy issues that he never raised.
i also want to say thank you to the 19 female bloggers who wrote to say basically 'keep giving them hell.'
i don't think the general blog visitor or blogger realizes what a problem this is.
for me, i won't back down. but i've noted before that female bloggers have stopped discussing politics at her site because of this type of 'help.'
then they get slammed as gilmor girls bloggers or cat bloggers.
but when they try to do politics, a man comes along to scream and rage.
i'm sick of it.
i'm sick of men trying to tell women what to do.
it's the fucking 21st centuries but some men seem to think the clock stopped at the turn of the 19th century.
to those men i say 'kiss my ass.'
you hear me?
kiss my ass.
1 of the 19 had never written before.
she tried to accomodate the man who kept e-mailing. tried to meet him half way in her posts.
her posts. not his. if he doesn't like it, let him do his own damn blog.
but even trying to meet the prick 1/2 way wasn't enough - it never is.
he continued to hector her and bully her and it just gets to be too much.
do men on the left do this? i hope not.
i can say that males on the right who've e-mailed have generally disagreed with me and offered their opinions. they haven't told me 'you will write this way' or 'you will write about this!'
men on the left don't harrass me with unasked for help. now maybe they do that with right wing female bloggers, i don't know. i would guess not.
but these damn middle of the road centers seem to think they boss women around.
they're so used to follow the 'rules' and coloring inside the line that it apparently infuriates them when any woman doesn't do the same. probably infuriates them when a man doesn't do the same. but a left blogger who'd written on ed, e-mailed me to say that ed never even wrote him.
wonder why that is?
maybe because some guys get off on bullying women?
i won't take this shit.
i won't do it because i don't believe in taking it.
but i also won't do it because i know, as 2 female bloggers pointed out, when i stand up it makes it easier for others to.
i'm not as smart as any of my personal heroes, i don't pretend to be.
but they blazed paths for me and and lot of others.
if the only strip i add to clearing the path is refusing to bow and wimper, then that's what i have to offer.
maybe in 10 years, other women won't have to deal with this bullshit.
that's what it is, it's bullshit.
it's a man at a party interrupting you in the middle of a joke because if 'the little lady' tells the joke, people won't get it.
it's the man who covers his crotch at the thought that a woman might speak her mind.
i won't take the shit.
i've read some of the e-mail at the third estate sunday review. usually the funny 1s because those are pulled for their 'dear third estate sunday review' pieces. but jim has also passed on the shit that ava and c.i. get. for tv reviews!
for tv reviews, people feel they can threaten them in the most graphic details.
kat gets that shit too.
do any men?
at third estate sunday review, jim, jess and ty have never been called to the carpet for any opinion they've expressed. but ask dona and she'll tell you about the 'helpful' men who write in to suggest that she should have said what she said in the roundtable or about a book 'this way' or 'that way.'
get it through your middle of the road fucking heads, no 1's your vivian. you're not edward.
this isn't pretty woman, this isn't even my fair lady.
your efforts to rescue us from ourselves is neither requested nor welcomed.
put it back in your pants, boys, we don't want to see it, we don't want to smell it.
maybe this is how you engage with men in locker rooms (or maybe how, in high school as towel boy or equipment manager, you saw other men engage) but that's your way.
quit pushing it off on us.
we're sick of it.
you want to bully and boss.
probably you want to do that in your personal life as well but times have changed if your mind set hasn't. so you don't get to do that in your personal life.
all you get to do is sit around watching the movies by the male joan crawford, michael douglas.
you sit there watching falling down or fatal attraction or any other film where, like michael, you're the great victim.
get over yourselves.
i got 46 e-mails from young women in high school who spoke of things like being interrupted in the middle of class by some boy who felt the need to stop them, say 'i think what she means is' and go on to hijack the conversation.
i did something in college when that happened to me and i'd like to share it with you.
don't say a word. fall silent for a moment.
stare at the idiot, then at the teacher. then look around the room.
then very loudly say, 'excuse me, is my answering the question interrupting you?'
watch the little punk ass bully go red in the face and fall silent.
to wendy, i want to state what i've said before, not all men are like this.
we have progressed. but there's still work to be done.
wendy, you asked me what you could do so i'll tell you to hold those little tyrants accountable.
let every 1 in the class see you do that. you'll find that some of the guys will tell the tyrant to shut up. you'll find that some of the gals will do the same. (some gals are the worst, they grow up to be right wingers and often make a living slamming women who work for a living - which, they in fact do while they slam those women. think of ann coulter.)
wendy, i won't kid you, it's not always fun. it can make you really mad.
but you're serious about wanting to do something to straighten out your own high school class and i think that's what you can do.
if it doesn't sound right to you, blow it off and ask around for other ideas. but if it feels right, go for it.
and to adult women, i want to point out that our mothers blazed a trail for us. they were the 1st group to have careers and not hobbies. they got slammed over and over. 'they want it all!' 'they've turned the children over to daycare centers!' 'they've lost their femininity!'
they had to deal with a lot of shit.
as hard as it can seem sometime, it is easier for us. we have role models we can look to within our own circles - our mothers, or aunts, or a neighbor. our mothers flew blind. they rejected the straight jacket of the stereotype at a time when the alternative was to create their own identities from scratch.
we need to build on what they created.
so if you're squeamish about the word 'feminist' (as 1 reader wrote last week), get over it. it's so much easier to use the term today then it was for our mothers.
in d.c. now it's not just the bully boy that wants to strip us of our rights, it's also a lot of 'center' democrats who think they can distance themselves from our rights and look 'manly.'
we need to be vocal. we need to say, 'speak to me or lose my vote.'
when 2008 rolls around, they better have a democrat on the ticket who can talk about abortion.
not in terms of 'it's awful but ...' we need a woman or a man who will say 'privacy right' over and over.
for my male readers, i say use the term feminist.
it's not just for women. it's about equality. you hear some female in your class being trashed for being a feminist, say 'hey i'm a feminist too.'
let's work to support each other here.
male or female, you want to save reproductive rights? start using the term feminist to self-describe.
it'll let a lot of people know that contrary to the way the media plays things in their current infatuation with all things right-wing-religious that we're still here. we may not be on tv or quoted in print, but we're here.
look around you and i think you'll see a lot of wishy-washy people (sheep) who will sell out anything if they feel it's the new phase. those people need to realize feminists are all around them.
this is your world. you can speak out and make things better or you can go along and let the loud mouths from the center and the right drown us out.
so think about that and i'll also note a story from democracy now that you need to watch, listen or read. it's called 'EXCLUSIVE: Another U.S. War Resister Flees to Canada To Avoid Fighting in Iraq Via The New 'Underground Railroad.''
it's an important story and you need to know about it. but in terms of what we've been talking about for the last few paragraphs, i'll note this and you can relate it to our topic:
AMY GOODMAN: Let me end with Ryan Johnson. What significance do the people who have come before you who have gone to Canada, like Jeremy Hinzman, like Brandon Huey and the people who have resisted in the United States, like Camilo Mejia, like Pablo Paredes, Aidan Delgado, what impact do they have on you?
RYAN JOHNSON: Well, because of them, I found out about the movement. I found -- we found Jeremy Hinzman's site before I went AWOL. And one of our first thoughts was to go to Canada, and we found the G.I. Rights hotline, and we were looking at that. Then we found stuff on Camilo Mejia, Aidan Delgado, and, you know, it kind of inspired me that people were doing this. It let me know that there were other people like me that weren’t wanting to go to the war and that there’s people just trying to get it out there to, you know, soldiers and civilians alike, letting them know that they're not the only ones that don't believe in it.
do you get it? ryan johnson was able to do what he did because of those who came before. that's why it's important to get our voices in the media. thank god for democracy now which has a huge audience. but don't think that because it made democracy now it will make the networks.
it won't. we need to be our own media. we need to make sure that people in our circles know what we believe in and what we stand for.
not every 1 will agree with you. some won't agree with you at the start and some will never agree. but there are some people who will disagree at the start just because you're giving them information they haven't heard before. once they get over their shock and have a bit to think about it, i think you'll be surprised by how many will come back and say, 'okay, now i get it.'
6/06/2005
ed lorenzen feels the need to supposedly write me but really just complain about me to c.i. of the common ills
so i get a call from c.i. 'rebecca, have you checked your e-mail?'
not yet today. what's up?
seems a ed lorenzen felt the need to kind of, sort of write me.
i say 'kind of, sort of' because with most people pushing 'centerist' thinking, ed can't quite figure out what it is that he wants to do.
i'm reading over it while c.i.'s on the phone and i say, 'isn't this supposed to be to me?'
i mean right there at the start, big ed's saying could you forward this to rebecca?
but it's not written to me. it's written to c.i.
i'm in 3rd person in the e-mail supposedly sent to me. such are the zany ways of the 'centerists.'
before i get to the e-mail, i want to go over a few things.
1st my e-mail is up on my profile and has been for some time now. c.i. always forwards things meant for me that are sent to the common ills. that's because c.i. helped me set up this site and felt guilty that the e-mail didn't display at the start. but it does now.
so let me deal with that first.
ed, when you e-mail me, write to me. forwarded or not, take your problem up with me, not with c.i.
i'll deal with it or not as i see fit.
you probably don't realize this, ed, but at the common ills, c.i. gets a lot of e-mail. we spoke a little after mid-day and i said, 'c.i., what's the count on the unread e-mails?' 651.
in the course of a day a thousand or more e-mails will come in at the common ills from members or visitors.
now besides the fact that c.i. does have a life, there's also the fact that members of the common ills, of which i am 1, are in the midst of an election.
for that reason, members' e-mails need to take priority right now. while shirley is answering questions about instant run off voting, every question along the lines of 'what does this plank mean?' or 'when is the absolute latest i can send my vote in and have it count?' are going to c.i.'s mail box.
ed, that's on top of the e-mails that members compose where they share something - personal or for the community.
let me repeat, c.i. does have a life.
c.i. also has work and last week alone that mean two flights out of town. twice leaving on a jet plane, twice coming back.
with that and health that is, thank god, improving, c.i. still manages to post several entries a day.
so as a friend of c.i.'s - and i've been a friend since before this blog or the common ills - i'm saying don't plead your case to c.i.
as a community member of the common ills, i'm frankly wondering why you wrote me in the 1st place.
like the common ills, i am of the left, not of the 'center.'
you're bothered by an entry that's old, really old. now look, i love all my fans and readers. even the slow 1s. even the really slow 1s. but ed's upset about an entry from april 3rd and my calender on the wall says it's june 6th. somebody want to explain that to me?
ed, and this is most important, you're clogging up the community pipeline.
i asked c.i. 'did you write him back?'
no.
good for c.i. i hope the plan to stick to writing only those who need a reply stays because otherwise there won't be any posts at the common ills anymore with the rate the e-mail keeps increasing.
but ed, you didn't write me. you wrote c.i. you vented and griped. now if you were a common ills member, i'd say nothing. lots of people e-mail c.i. to vent about something going on in the world. but really now, who are you to write c.i. and gripe about me?
did you think you'd get a papal blessing?
or a presidential pardon?
or maybe you just thought c.i. would clamp down on me.
c.i. saved a reply to you to draft. i said, 'send it my way.' so while we're on the phone i'm reading it and c.i. writes 'rebecca can write whatever she wants.'
amen.
here's the reason c.i. called, ed's mother has had some health issues. i won't go into them here because c.i. asked me not to. but ed, if it hurt you that bad that i asked obvious questions (does your mommy cut your hair, do you still sit on the phone book?), i'll say 'i'm sorry.' i hope your mother gets well.
now tell me ed, is your next issue going to be that you had an aversion to fashionable hair cuts? will you next tell me how mean i am (or tell c.i. and ask that it be forwarded to me) because when you were a little boy, while everyone else was playing cops & robbers, you were in the sandbox playing 'let's privatize social secuirty' and therefore my comments on social security touched on an issue with you?
i didn't insult your mother. i did insult your hair cut. now maybe you want to go through life looking like an overgrown d.j. tanner from roseanne. hey, emo phillips has, maybe you could pursue stand up?
i thought your e-mail was pretty sad, ed. it couldn't have been more sad if you'd written 'does rebecca not know that i grew up in an orphanage and never knew my mother!'
to quote a line from sleep with me, i don't know you from the beginning, edsie, i only know you from the middle. that would be when you decided privatize, privatize! tag sale on social security!
you're sometimes bothered by my 'personal attacks' and at other times less so. (but note to his fellow fence sitters at centrist.org, he never takes a moment to defend any of you.)
but what's coming through loud and clear from your e-mail is this: 'i would have been fine if she'd just debated policies with me! i enjoy that! that's what she should do! that's how it is done.'
good for you that you enjoy it. we all need a hobby.
but maybe you missed that it would be hard to debate your half-baked policy recommendations from your presidential commission report since you refuse to allow quotes for it. (as i noted in my april 3rd post.) oh sure, you post it online. but, as i said on april 3rd, you play the riaa coming down on napster saying 'do not quote!' now if i can get your permission, i can quote from it.
you say you read my entry from april 3rd. so if you were taking all the trouble to write me (or write c.i. to bitch about me), you could have taken a moment to say 'tell rebecca i give permission to quote from that report and then we can have a real debate.' you didn't do that, did you ed?
but, and pay attention to this part, i don't have to do what you want me to.
somewhere along the way you decided that every 1 must behave as you do.
you are mistaken. again.
to pull a c.i., 'in fairness.' in fairness to ed, i will note that his photo i commented on was taken at a very stressful time in his life. i'm sorry that it was a stressful time. but ed, let's go over some of what i wrote about you (directly or indirectly):
which brings us to eddie lorenzen who might want to be called 'big ed' but would have to first give up that peter pan, bowl cut hair do. does mommy still cut your hair in the kitchen, eddie? are you a big enough boy now that you don't need to sit on a phone book while mommy cuts your hair? horizontal striped tie, blue shirt with vertical white stripes and what appears to a dark shade of pea green jacket (maybe it just needs dry cleaning?) you're look is all you ... because no one else would have it.
folks, these are the fashion disasters who want to steer our party to the right. they'd be kicked out of applebeas but somehow they think they can be power players in d.c. it's sad. looking at them. real sad.
do you get the point? none of you dresses well. none of you's a fashion plate or has a good haircut. i looked at your photos, which your organization elected to post online, and noted how out of it you all dressed. guess what, ed, women can talk about fashion and haircuts. feminists can. it may not fit your stereotype of feminism (which i'm sure is negative) but we can do that. and some of us do.
ed, i didn't start a blog to be a wonk (or a wonkette).
i started this site to speak my mind.
that's what i do hear.
i don't claim to be 'miss manners.'
ed, what kind of site did you think you were going to when you saw sex and politics and screeds and attitude?
i mean, come on now.
as i've noted, and kat has as well, the common ills is very in on college campuses. they get a variety of readers (some of whom become members). me, i'm popular on the high school campuses. i get a vareity of readers (i have no members). but more and more, that's where my audience comes from.
where does your audience come from? people steered to you from the new york times that presents your group as a democratic 1? (we covered that april 3rd - they are non-partisan.)
maybe you walk on egg shells but i don't.
'screeds,' ed, it's in the title. so is 'attitude.'
here i talk about sex. i do my sexual analysis of men. i talk about politics. i talk about fashion. i talk about hot guys. (no, ed, you didn't come up because you were hot.) and mainly, i talk about who you should trust and who you shouldn't.
blue-dog dem that you are, i would never tell my audience to trust you.
you want your policy debate.
guess what, ed? i don't.
i don't want to waste time going over your 'destroy social security' plans. your ilk has been pushing the unfounded notions that social security is on the verge of disaster for over a decade now. it's a nice myth, ed, but it's not reality. you can check out the daily howler for reality about social security.
i'm guessing you supported the invasion, am i right ed? i didn't.
you're probably still stumbling around on your hands and knees like scooby doo's velma trying to find her glasses. only you're trying to find that center road. keep looking, ed.
i'm guessing you're trying to find that 'common ground' on abortion as well.
now maybe all the ladies in your life (don't write me to tell me that your wife, girlfriend or anyone else is sick) (and don't write c.i.) nod and say 'good for you, big bad ed.' i don't.
i'm your worst nightmare, eddie, i'm the woman you can't control.
i'm the woman you can't shut up.
i'm the woman who doesn't waste her time assuring you that it does happen to every man. that it's not really a problem.
i'm the bad girl you fantasied about but knew was way out of your league in high school.
sure you'd get your rocks off cruising my tits at the pool during summer break, but you knew you couldn't speak to me. maybe that's why you spoke to c.i. about me?
ed, i've done entries here on michael phelps' sexy butt crack.
you think you and I have common ground? not unless you're gay. (if you're gay, please write back. i love talking the male body with gay men or straight women. hell, i love talking sex with any of my readers regardless of the parties involved.)
ed, i am your nightmare.
i will not vote for whatever 'centerist' you push in the primary. i won't donate to them either.
ed, in the words of a carly simon song, 'i'm no virgin' - does that shock you?
i wasn't a virgin when i married. i continue to have sex now that i'm divorced. and i use birth control and don't fret that i'm going to hell.
again, i'm your nightmare.
i'm the woman who won't eat your shame.
i'm the woman who won't back down.
i'm the woman who belives her place isn't in the back room or 2 steps behind a man.
i'm the woman who's front and center and in your face calling you on your shit.
i don't play nicely in the sandbox with those who want to destroy social security or dismantle a woman's right to privacy.
i don't tolerate the right's attacks on america and i won't tolerate the actions of people who want to aid them.
again, i'm sorry about your mother. i hope she's better.
but you lack sincerity with regards to a real debate since you refuse to allow people to quote from your posted online report (without permission!) and you write, supposedly to me, to say that you long for a debate.
you weren't.
but that's cool because i'm not interested in debating you.
i'm only interested in alerting my readers to the fact that your organization isn't for those of us on the left.
i'll offer you a tip as well, if you're having a bad day when it's time to take pictures (apparently every 1 in your group was), you say 'no, just run an old photo.'
as for the way i speak or don't speak, guess what, if i'm the first woman who's ever made fun of your chili-bowl haircut (at your age! no less), then you haven't heard many women's conversations. trust me, your haircut's been discussed by women in your life, whether you've heard them or not.
this is my space. i come on here, i talk about what ever interests me at the moment. and i speak the same way i do when i'm talking to my girl friends. that's why i will talk about sex here. i'm not embarrassed to. women do talk about sex, ed. not just on hbo, but in real life.
and we will talk about hair cuts as well. and clothes.
you can call that gossiping or dishing but it's as valid as a steroetypical male talking sports statistics or how a game went.
and i've talked about sports here, ask sherry. we talk about our mighty cornhusker and the joy of seeing him and the cornhusk move around in those red shorts.
that's what i do here.
we'll talk about issues as well and i said everything i needed to say on social security some time ago. but you weren't mentioned in that entry so it didn't interest you - and they say women are vain!
all you were interested in was letting me know that you had a bad patch and there wasn't time to get a good haircut.
ed, take it from me, you've posted that photo online, it was a mistake. take a new photo. or put up an old 1. you're not helping your 'centerist' cause with those bad photos.
i am sorry you had a bad patch. i do hope it's improved.
but don't write c.i. about what you think i should have written.
i'll write what i damn well please.
to my readers who've had to suffer through this long post, you know this is a topic i've gone over before. some guy discovers the site and feels the need to write in with tips of what i need to talk about or how i should talk about it.
a lot of men have a really inflated sense of self. (ladies, straight ladies, a lot of that is our fault. we've done way too much stroking and i don't just mean egos.) that's why they think they can come along and say 'you can talk about this but do it my way.'
that's not how it works, little ed.
not here.
maybe in your world every woman bows and scrapes. (if that is the case, hopefully - like celie in the color purple - they're planning their own revolt against mister.)
maybe maxi shoulder pads in your group chuckles at every 1 of your 'jokes.' she has a queen bee look to her so i wouldn't be surprised. (please, talk to her about those shoulder pads -- the 80s did not have a come back!)
you can talk however you want. i'll note it here if i want to. but i don't fire off e-mails telling you how you should talk or what you should talk about.
but then i'm not a man who thinks he can push women around.
this is my space. if you don't like it, don't read it.
i started to post ed's e-mail in full because i'm sick of men feeling the need to share how i need to speak or what i need to say. because it went through c.i.'s inbox 1st, i won't. this time.
but ed, you don't like my site, you don't like the way i talk. what are you doing reading me anyway? is it vanity or are you one of those timid types who come here for the sex talk but can't cop to it?
quit thinking it's okay to tell women how to write. it's not. i'm not maureen dowd, i don't need a daddy mentor. i'll say what i want the way i want.
this is only your 2nd mention at this site.
i felt the need to warn my readers that despite what the times said, your middle of the road org. wasn't a democratic 1. it's full of republican and democratic refugees from the cultural wars. the people who are always the 1st to sell out women's rights in my opinion.
i don't support that.
i firmly support a woman's right to choose. i firmly support a woman's right to never have to explain that choice. not to a judge and certainly not to some middle of the roader.
ed, i hope you don't end up road kill. playing in the middle of the road puts you at that risk.
but i hope, even more, that you learn you don't control women. or, at least, you don't control this 1.
again, i'm your worst nightmare. i won't be brow beaten. i won't be shamed. i won't be silent.
next time you want to recommend writing tips, wait to be asked.
i know i'll hear from female bloggers on this. i do every time i write on this topic. ed, a lot of us are sick of this crap. of men coming along trying to tell us what to say and how to say it.
go play with your bull mooses (meeses?) and any 1 else who wants to betray what this country stands for. but i'm not ready to act out margaret atwood's a handmaid's tale, even though you appear ready to direct the production.
chip away at social security, women's reproductive rights and whatever you want to somewhere else but don't expect me to play along.
stick to your wonky circles, on the outside peering in - i'm sure - and i'll stick to speaking my truth here, the way i choose to.
i'll decide what's 'unwise' for me to write about and what isn't.
i didn't ask for your advice.
i'm especially pissed that you involved c.i. in this because that strikes me as cowardly. you can claim you couldn't find the e-mail address. but there's no excuse for an e-mail supposedly to me that says 'ms. winters' did this or 'ms. winters' did that.
you go into your personal problems. c.i.'s recovering for surgery. so maybe it's 'unwise' for you to dump all this crap on c.i.? to present your problems with me to c.i.? maybe instead you could have written to me in this way:
i couldn't find ms. winter's address, so please forward this to her. ms. winters, i am offended by your statements _____ and _____ and ____. i think it is unwise for you to write in that manner. policy debates are what i enjoy so i think in the future you should stick to discussing those.
you didn't write me. you wrote c.i. you ran to c.i. and tried to hide behind c.i.
if you thought you were going to have some 1 on your side, you were wrong.
the fact is that c.i. and i go way back. even when we disagree, and we do disagree from time to time, we do not turn on each other.
maybe you didn't realize how far back c.i. and i go? well then perhaps it was 'unwise' of you to write that e-mail? perhaps you shouldn't whine about me to my friends?
you asked that it be forwarded. it was. because you mentioned your mother (and because c.i.'s mother passed away a few years back), c.i. phoned me to make sure i read the e-mail.
i asked c.i. 'do you think i need to apologize?' c.i. said 'you need to speak in your voice about what you believe.' guess that didn't work out quite the way you wanted, did it?
i have disagreed with c.i. here (and in roundtables at the third estate sunday review) and it's never been a problem between us. it's never resulted in directions of what i need to do or how i can be more effective. see, some people just want people to speak in their own voices. others, such as yourself, want to play gatekeeper and tell me what i can write and how i can write it.
i wonder how many men your centerist organization writes to with advice on how to discuss something? i can't imagine it's very many. but you see 'rebecca winters' and apparently think, 'oh i can offer advice because i'm a man.'
all you'll get from me is that i hope your mother is better. on the issue of what i should say and what i shouldn't, your organization is online. why don't you make up a list for women of what they should and shouldn't say? that ought to get you a lot of traffic from other men who think women just don't know what to say or how to say it until a big, strong man comes along to tell her how it's done.
you don't like what i wrote.
readers, ed didn't like what i wrote. there i've informed them of that. not that i have to.
ed thinks i need to stick policy discussions.
i don't.
and let's point out something else, ed wrote me, i didn't write him.
obviously, my writing got to ed. which means on at least some level it was effective.
but see, that's why, dear readers, centrist.org exists. to try and silence the voices that people respond to on the left so that they, the center, and the right can dominate the discussion.
i won't be dominated.
no 1 will give me orders on what i write or how i write it.
i'd post something in my heading like 'this is conversations from the ladies' room' except that would exclude some of my really great readers like wally who aren't threatened by a woman speaking her mind in her way.
so i guess i'll have to continue to put up with the boys who want to play the big man by telling some woman what to write about and how.
i'm of the left, ed. you're in the sandlot with republicans. when they play rough, don't come crying to me. i won't kiss your wounds or pretend you were working to protect my rights. centerists are the 1st to sell out women.
you sell our our right to choose, you sell out our right to be heard. you reduce our issues to 'special interests.' check the electorate, ed, we are the majority. we aren't a special interest.
and, not that you asked, i do quite well. i have readers. i have people who respond to what i write. you aren't 1. well then you've learned something, you shouldn't read what i write.
although i wasn't able to discuss your presidential report (because 1 needs permission to quote from it), i did provide a link to it. i'd argue that was much more fair than anything the centrists do. but i never promised to play fair.
my only promise here is to speak in a strong voice and defend a woman's right to choose and a woman's right to be heard. i'm a feminist ed, not some adult woman calling herself a 'girl' and giggling each time a man manages to string three or more words together.
my heroes are people like gloria steinem, jane fonda, alice walker, maxine hong kingston, sandra cisneros, janeane garofalo, robin morgan and the margarets (cho and atwood). i doubt you or your oganziation could make a supportive statement about any of those women without a 'qualifier' or 2. that's what comes from being in the middle and obsessing over what some 1 might think about you.
each of those women had to learn what all women should learn, that we have to be true to ourselves. i'm being true to myself. (which isn't to suggest that my writing is on the level of any of the ladies above.) i owe them that because of all i have learned thanks to their examples.
i owe you nothing.
if you'd made your e-mail about how i hurt your feelings, i'd be more receptive. but when you felt the need to weigh in on how i should write and what about, you blew your right to a fair hearing. especially since you were unable to speak to me directly but instead elected to direct your comments to c.i. and ask that your comments to c.i. be forwarded to me.
it's so strange that 'civil' in your world includes attempting to dictate how things will be done.
that's not 'civil' that's controlling.
again, ed, i am your nightmare.
accept it.
not yet today. what's up?
seems a ed lorenzen felt the need to kind of, sort of write me.
i say 'kind of, sort of' because with most people pushing 'centerist' thinking, ed can't quite figure out what it is that he wants to do.
i'm reading over it while c.i.'s on the phone and i say, 'isn't this supposed to be to me?'
i mean right there at the start, big ed's saying could you forward this to rebecca?
but it's not written to me. it's written to c.i.
i'm in 3rd person in the e-mail supposedly sent to me. such are the zany ways of the 'centerists.'
before i get to the e-mail, i want to go over a few things.
1st my e-mail is up on my profile and has been for some time now. c.i. always forwards things meant for me that are sent to the common ills. that's because c.i. helped me set up this site and felt guilty that the e-mail didn't display at the start. but it does now.
so let me deal with that first.
ed, when you e-mail me, write to me. forwarded or not, take your problem up with me, not with c.i.
i'll deal with it or not as i see fit.
you probably don't realize this, ed, but at the common ills, c.i. gets a lot of e-mail. we spoke a little after mid-day and i said, 'c.i., what's the count on the unread e-mails?' 651.
in the course of a day a thousand or more e-mails will come in at the common ills from members or visitors.
now besides the fact that c.i. does have a life, there's also the fact that members of the common ills, of which i am 1, are in the midst of an election.
for that reason, members' e-mails need to take priority right now. while shirley is answering questions about instant run off voting, every question along the lines of 'what does this plank mean?' or 'when is the absolute latest i can send my vote in and have it count?' are going to c.i.'s mail box.
ed, that's on top of the e-mails that members compose where they share something - personal or for the community.
let me repeat, c.i. does have a life.
c.i. also has work and last week alone that mean two flights out of town. twice leaving on a jet plane, twice coming back.
with that and health that is, thank god, improving, c.i. still manages to post several entries a day.
so as a friend of c.i.'s - and i've been a friend since before this blog or the common ills - i'm saying don't plead your case to c.i.
as a community member of the common ills, i'm frankly wondering why you wrote me in the 1st place.
like the common ills, i am of the left, not of the 'center.'
you're bothered by an entry that's old, really old. now look, i love all my fans and readers. even the slow 1s. even the really slow 1s. but ed's upset about an entry from april 3rd and my calender on the wall says it's june 6th. somebody want to explain that to me?
ed, and this is most important, you're clogging up the community pipeline.
i asked c.i. 'did you write him back?'
no.
good for c.i. i hope the plan to stick to writing only those who need a reply stays because otherwise there won't be any posts at the common ills anymore with the rate the e-mail keeps increasing.
but ed, you didn't write me. you wrote c.i. you vented and griped. now if you were a common ills member, i'd say nothing. lots of people e-mail c.i. to vent about something going on in the world. but really now, who are you to write c.i. and gripe about me?
did you think you'd get a papal blessing?
or a presidential pardon?
or maybe you just thought c.i. would clamp down on me.
c.i. saved a reply to you to draft. i said, 'send it my way.' so while we're on the phone i'm reading it and c.i. writes 'rebecca can write whatever she wants.'
amen.
here's the reason c.i. called, ed's mother has had some health issues. i won't go into them here because c.i. asked me not to. but ed, if it hurt you that bad that i asked obvious questions (does your mommy cut your hair, do you still sit on the phone book?), i'll say 'i'm sorry.' i hope your mother gets well.
now tell me ed, is your next issue going to be that you had an aversion to fashionable hair cuts? will you next tell me how mean i am (or tell c.i. and ask that it be forwarded to me) because when you were a little boy, while everyone else was playing cops & robbers, you were in the sandbox playing 'let's privatize social secuirty' and therefore my comments on social security touched on an issue with you?
i didn't insult your mother. i did insult your hair cut. now maybe you want to go through life looking like an overgrown d.j. tanner from roseanne. hey, emo phillips has, maybe you could pursue stand up?
i thought your e-mail was pretty sad, ed. it couldn't have been more sad if you'd written 'does rebecca not know that i grew up in an orphanage and never knew my mother!'
to quote a line from sleep with me, i don't know you from the beginning, edsie, i only know you from the middle. that would be when you decided privatize, privatize! tag sale on social security!
you're sometimes bothered by my 'personal attacks' and at other times less so. (but note to his fellow fence sitters at centrist.org, he never takes a moment to defend any of you.)
but what's coming through loud and clear from your e-mail is this: 'i would have been fine if she'd just debated policies with me! i enjoy that! that's what she should do! that's how it is done.'
good for you that you enjoy it. we all need a hobby.
but maybe you missed that it would be hard to debate your half-baked policy recommendations from your presidential commission report since you refuse to allow quotes for it. (as i noted in my april 3rd post.) oh sure, you post it online. but, as i said on april 3rd, you play the riaa coming down on napster saying 'do not quote!' now if i can get your permission, i can quote from it.
you say you read my entry from april 3rd. so if you were taking all the trouble to write me (or write c.i. to bitch about me), you could have taken a moment to say 'tell rebecca i give permission to quote from that report and then we can have a real debate.' you didn't do that, did you ed?
but, and pay attention to this part, i don't have to do what you want me to.
somewhere along the way you decided that every 1 must behave as you do.
you are mistaken. again.
to pull a c.i., 'in fairness.' in fairness to ed, i will note that his photo i commented on was taken at a very stressful time in his life. i'm sorry that it was a stressful time. but ed, let's go over some of what i wrote about you (directly or indirectly):
which brings us to eddie lorenzen who might want to be called 'big ed' but would have to first give up that peter pan, bowl cut hair do. does mommy still cut your hair in the kitchen, eddie? are you a big enough boy now that you don't need to sit on a phone book while mommy cuts your hair? horizontal striped tie, blue shirt with vertical white stripes and what appears to a dark shade of pea green jacket (maybe it just needs dry cleaning?) you're look is all you ... because no one else would have it.
folks, these are the fashion disasters who want to steer our party to the right. they'd be kicked out of applebeas but somehow they think they can be power players in d.c. it's sad. looking at them. real sad.
do you get the point? none of you dresses well. none of you's a fashion plate or has a good haircut. i looked at your photos, which your organization elected to post online, and noted how out of it you all dressed. guess what, ed, women can talk about fashion and haircuts. feminists can. it may not fit your stereotype of feminism (which i'm sure is negative) but we can do that. and some of us do.
ed, i didn't start a blog to be a wonk (or a wonkette).
i started this site to speak my mind.
that's what i do hear.
i don't claim to be 'miss manners.'
ed, what kind of site did you think you were going to when you saw sex and politics and screeds and attitude?
i mean, come on now.
as i've noted, and kat has as well, the common ills is very in on college campuses. they get a variety of readers (some of whom become members). me, i'm popular on the high school campuses. i get a vareity of readers (i have no members). but more and more, that's where my audience comes from.
where does your audience come from? people steered to you from the new york times that presents your group as a democratic 1? (we covered that april 3rd - they are non-partisan.)
maybe you walk on egg shells but i don't.
'screeds,' ed, it's in the title. so is 'attitude.'
here i talk about sex. i do my sexual analysis of men. i talk about politics. i talk about fashion. i talk about hot guys. (no, ed, you didn't come up because you were hot.) and mainly, i talk about who you should trust and who you shouldn't.
blue-dog dem that you are, i would never tell my audience to trust you.
you want your policy debate.
guess what, ed? i don't.
i don't want to waste time going over your 'destroy social security' plans. your ilk has been pushing the unfounded notions that social security is on the verge of disaster for over a decade now. it's a nice myth, ed, but it's not reality. you can check out the daily howler for reality about social security.
i'm guessing you supported the invasion, am i right ed? i didn't.
you're probably still stumbling around on your hands and knees like scooby doo's velma trying to find her glasses. only you're trying to find that center road. keep looking, ed.
i'm guessing you're trying to find that 'common ground' on abortion as well.
now maybe all the ladies in your life (don't write me to tell me that your wife, girlfriend or anyone else is sick) (and don't write c.i.) nod and say 'good for you, big bad ed.' i don't.
i'm your worst nightmare, eddie, i'm the woman you can't control.
i'm the woman you can't shut up.
i'm the woman who doesn't waste her time assuring you that it does happen to every man. that it's not really a problem.
i'm the bad girl you fantasied about but knew was way out of your league in high school.
sure you'd get your rocks off cruising my tits at the pool during summer break, but you knew you couldn't speak to me. maybe that's why you spoke to c.i. about me?
ed, i've done entries here on michael phelps' sexy butt crack.
you think you and I have common ground? not unless you're gay. (if you're gay, please write back. i love talking the male body with gay men or straight women. hell, i love talking sex with any of my readers regardless of the parties involved.)
ed, i am your nightmare.
i will not vote for whatever 'centerist' you push in the primary. i won't donate to them either.
ed, in the words of a carly simon song, 'i'm no virgin' - does that shock you?
i wasn't a virgin when i married. i continue to have sex now that i'm divorced. and i use birth control and don't fret that i'm going to hell.
again, i'm your nightmare.
i'm the woman who won't eat your shame.
i'm the woman who won't back down.
i'm the woman who belives her place isn't in the back room or 2 steps behind a man.
i'm the woman who's front and center and in your face calling you on your shit.
i don't play nicely in the sandbox with those who want to destroy social security or dismantle a woman's right to privacy.
i don't tolerate the right's attacks on america and i won't tolerate the actions of people who want to aid them.
again, i'm sorry about your mother. i hope she's better.
but you lack sincerity with regards to a real debate since you refuse to allow people to quote from your posted online report (without permission!) and you write, supposedly to me, to say that you long for a debate.
you weren't.
but that's cool because i'm not interested in debating you.
i'm only interested in alerting my readers to the fact that your organization isn't for those of us on the left.
i'll offer you a tip as well, if you're having a bad day when it's time to take pictures (apparently every 1 in your group was), you say 'no, just run an old photo.'
as for the way i speak or don't speak, guess what, if i'm the first woman who's ever made fun of your chili-bowl haircut (at your age! no less), then you haven't heard many women's conversations. trust me, your haircut's been discussed by women in your life, whether you've heard them or not.
this is my space. i come on here, i talk about what ever interests me at the moment. and i speak the same way i do when i'm talking to my girl friends. that's why i will talk about sex here. i'm not embarrassed to. women do talk about sex, ed. not just on hbo, but in real life.
and we will talk about hair cuts as well. and clothes.
you can call that gossiping or dishing but it's as valid as a steroetypical male talking sports statistics or how a game went.
and i've talked about sports here, ask sherry. we talk about our mighty cornhusker and the joy of seeing him and the cornhusk move around in those red shorts.
that's what i do here.
we'll talk about issues as well and i said everything i needed to say on social security some time ago. but you weren't mentioned in that entry so it didn't interest you - and they say women are vain!
all you were interested in was letting me know that you had a bad patch and there wasn't time to get a good haircut.
ed, take it from me, you've posted that photo online, it was a mistake. take a new photo. or put up an old 1. you're not helping your 'centerist' cause with those bad photos.
i am sorry you had a bad patch. i do hope it's improved.
but don't write c.i. about what you think i should have written.
i'll write what i damn well please.
to my readers who've had to suffer through this long post, you know this is a topic i've gone over before. some guy discovers the site and feels the need to write in with tips of what i need to talk about or how i should talk about it.
a lot of men have a really inflated sense of self. (ladies, straight ladies, a lot of that is our fault. we've done way too much stroking and i don't just mean egos.) that's why they think they can come along and say 'you can talk about this but do it my way.'
that's not how it works, little ed.
not here.
maybe in your world every woman bows and scrapes. (if that is the case, hopefully - like celie in the color purple - they're planning their own revolt against mister.)
maybe maxi shoulder pads in your group chuckles at every 1 of your 'jokes.' she has a queen bee look to her so i wouldn't be surprised. (please, talk to her about those shoulder pads -- the 80s did not have a come back!)
you can talk however you want. i'll note it here if i want to. but i don't fire off e-mails telling you how you should talk or what you should talk about.
but then i'm not a man who thinks he can push women around.
this is my space. if you don't like it, don't read it.
i started to post ed's e-mail in full because i'm sick of men feeling the need to share how i need to speak or what i need to say. because it went through c.i.'s inbox 1st, i won't. this time.
but ed, you don't like my site, you don't like the way i talk. what are you doing reading me anyway? is it vanity or are you one of those timid types who come here for the sex talk but can't cop to it?
quit thinking it's okay to tell women how to write. it's not. i'm not maureen dowd, i don't need a daddy mentor. i'll say what i want the way i want.
this is only your 2nd mention at this site.
i felt the need to warn my readers that despite what the times said, your middle of the road org. wasn't a democratic 1. it's full of republican and democratic refugees from the cultural wars. the people who are always the 1st to sell out women's rights in my opinion.
i don't support that.
i firmly support a woman's right to choose. i firmly support a woman's right to never have to explain that choice. not to a judge and certainly not to some middle of the roader.
ed, i hope you don't end up road kill. playing in the middle of the road puts you at that risk.
but i hope, even more, that you learn you don't control women. or, at least, you don't control this 1.
again, i'm your worst nightmare. i won't be brow beaten. i won't be shamed. i won't be silent.
next time you want to recommend writing tips, wait to be asked.
i know i'll hear from female bloggers on this. i do every time i write on this topic. ed, a lot of us are sick of this crap. of men coming along trying to tell us what to say and how to say it.
go play with your bull mooses (meeses?) and any 1 else who wants to betray what this country stands for. but i'm not ready to act out margaret atwood's a handmaid's tale, even though you appear ready to direct the production.
chip away at social security, women's reproductive rights and whatever you want to somewhere else but don't expect me to play along.
stick to your wonky circles, on the outside peering in - i'm sure - and i'll stick to speaking my truth here, the way i choose to.
i'll decide what's 'unwise' for me to write about and what isn't.
i didn't ask for your advice.
i'm especially pissed that you involved c.i. in this because that strikes me as cowardly. you can claim you couldn't find the e-mail address. but there's no excuse for an e-mail supposedly to me that says 'ms. winters' did this or 'ms. winters' did that.
you go into your personal problems. c.i.'s recovering for surgery. so maybe it's 'unwise' for you to dump all this crap on c.i.? to present your problems with me to c.i.? maybe instead you could have written to me in this way:
i couldn't find ms. winter's address, so please forward this to her. ms. winters, i am offended by your statements _____ and _____ and ____. i think it is unwise for you to write in that manner. policy debates are what i enjoy so i think in the future you should stick to discussing those.
you didn't write me. you wrote c.i. you ran to c.i. and tried to hide behind c.i.
if you thought you were going to have some 1 on your side, you were wrong.
the fact is that c.i. and i go way back. even when we disagree, and we do disagree from time to time, we do not turn on each other.
maybe you didn't realize how far back c.i. and i go? well then perhaps it was 'unwise' of you to write that e-mail? perhaps you shouldn't whine about me to my friends?
you asked that it be forwarded. it was. because you mentioned your mother (and because c.i.'s mother passed away a few years back), c.i. phoned me to make sure i read the e-mail.
i asked c.i. 'do you think i need to apologize?' c.i. said 'you need to speak in your voice about what you believe.' guess that didn't work out quite the way you wanted, did it?
i have disagreed with c.i. here (and in roundtables at the third estate sunday review) and it's never been a problem between us. it's never resulted in directions of what i need to do or how i can be more effective. see, some people just want people to speak in their own voices. others, such as yourself, want to play gatekeeper and tell me what i can write and how i can write it.
i wonder how many men your centerist organization writes to with advice on how to discuss something? i can't imagine it's very many. but you see 'rebecca winters' and apparently think, 'oh i can offer advice because i'm a man.'
all you'll get from me is that i hope your mother is better. on the issue of what i should say and what i shouldn't, your organization is online. why don't you make up a list for women of what they should and shouldn't say? that ought to get you a lot of traffic from other men who think women just don't know what to say or how to say it until a big, strong man comes along to tell her how it's done.
you don't like what i wrote.
readers, ed didn't like what i wrote. there i've informed them of that. not that i have to.
ed thinks i need to stick policy discussions.
i don't.
and let's point out something else, ed wrote me, i didn't write him.
obviously, my writing got to ed. which means on at least some level it was effective.
but see, that's why, dear readers, centrist.org exists. to try and silence the voices that people respond to on the left so that they, the center, and the right can dominate the discussion.
i won't be dominated.
no 1 will give me orders on what i write or how i write it.
i'd post something in my heading like 'this is conversations from the ladies' room' except that would exclude some of my really great readers like wally who aren't threatened by a woman speaking her mind in her way.
so i guess i'll have to continue to put up with the boys who want to play the big man by telling some woman what to write about and how.
i'm of the left, ed. you're in the sandlot with republicans. when they play rough, don't come crying to me. i won't kiss your wounds or pretend you were working to protect my rights. centerists are the 1st to sell out women.
you sell our our right to choose, you sell out our right to be heard. you reduce our issues to 'special interests.' check the electorate, ed, we are the majority. we aren't a special interest.
and, not that you asked, i do quite well. i have readers. i have people who respond to what i write. you aren't 1. well then you've learned something, you shouldn't read what i write.
although i wasn't able to discuss your presidential report (because 1 needs permission to quote from it), i did provide a link to it. i'd argue that was much more fair than anything the centrists do. but i never promised to play fair.
my only promise here is to speak in a strong voice and defend a woman's right to choose and a woman's right to be heard. i'm a feminist ed, not some adult woman calling herself a 'girl' and giggling each time a man manages to string three or more words together.
my heroes are people like gloria steinem, jane fonda, alice walker, maxine hong kingston, sandra cisneros, janeane garofalo, robin morgan and the margarets (cho and atwood). i doubt you or your oganziation could make a supportive statement about any of those women without a 'qualifier' or 2. that's what comes from being in the middle and obsessing over what some 1 might think about you.
each of those women had to learn what all women should learn, that we have to be true to ourselves. i'm being true to myself. (which isn't to suggest that my writing is on the level of any of the ladies above.) i owe them that because of all i have learned thanks to their examples.
i owe you nothing.
if you'd made your e-mail about how i hurt your feelings, i'd be more receptive. but when you felt the need to weigh in on how i should write and what about, you blew your right to a fair hearing. especially since you were unable to speak to me directly but instead elected to direct your comments to c.i. and ask that your comments to c.i. be forwarded to me.
it's so strange that 'civil' in your world includes attempting to dictate how things will be done.
that's not 'civil' that's controlling.
again, ed, i am your nightmare.
accept it.
editorial: connect the dots
operation circle jerk continues.
i'm posting this editorial in full from the third estate sunday review, so get the word out. share it with people you know. pass it on. betty, kat and c.i. will be posting it at their sites and i think folding star will as well. (betty, kat, c.i. and i helped with this editorial.) you can do your part by making sure you discuss it with at least 1 person you know.
Editorial: Connect the dots
You too can be a well informed American, provided you read the British press. But maybe things are picking up? The Associated Press has a story today entitled "Bolton Said to Orchestrate Unlawful Firing" and we suggest you read it. It's by Charles J. Hanley and here's an excerpt:
John R. Bolton flew to Europe in 2002 to confront the head of a global arms-control agency and demand he resign, then orchestrated the firing of the unwilling diplomat in a move a U.N. tribunal has since judged unlawful, according to officials involved. A former Bolton deputy says the U.S. undersecretary of state felt Jose Bustani "had to go," particularly because the Brazilian was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad. That might have helped defuse the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons and undermined a U.S. rationale for war.
Bolton fired Bustani, in 2002, because Bustani wanted to put chemical weapons inspectors in Baghdad. Now that might seem strange to you if you rely upon the American mainstream press.
If your news sources are a little more well rounded, you may however remember The Sunday Times of London's Downing St. Memo which reveals, in 2002, that the United States is willing to shape and distort to push forward on the invasion of Iraq. The same invasion that Bully Boy and his minions were saying they had not yet decided to go forward with.
How does Hanley sum up the Downing St. Memo (yes, it's mentioned in the article)? Thusly:
An official British document, disclosed last month, said Prime Minister Tony Blair' agreed in April 2002 to join in an eventual U.S. attack on Iraq. Two weeks later, Bustani was ousted, with British help.
Here's something the memo says that's not in the AP account:
Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
The Sunday Times of London published that memo May 1, 2005. What did they publish last Sunday? Michael Smith's "RAF bombing raids tried to goad Saddam into war." From the opening of that article:
THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.
The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive.
The details follow the leak to The Sunday Times of minutes of a key meeting in July 2002 at which Blair and his war cabinet discussed how to make "regime change" in Iraq legal.
Is a pattern emerging? A pattern that even the mainstream press must begin to notice?
We think it is. But we wouldn't bet the house on it. We've shared our feelings/concerns on the mainstream press in an essay in this edition. The way we see it, the press has plenty to address. It's just an issue of whether they want to or not.
Hats off to BuzzFlash, once again, for finding the Associated Press article and drawing attention to a very important article.. As always the place we flocked to when finally getting ready to compose this edition's editorial.
posted by Third Estate Sunday Review @ Sunday, June 05, 2005
i'm posting this editorial in full from the third estate sunday review, so get the word out. share it with people you know. pass it on. betty, kat and c.i. will be posting it at their sites and i think folding star will as well. (betty, kat, c.i. and i helped with this editorial.) you can do your part by making sure you discuss it with at least 1 person you know.
Editorial: Connect the dots
You too can be a well informed American, provided you read the British press. But maybe things are picking up? The Associated Press has a story today entitled "Bolton Said to Orchestrate Unlawful Firing" and we suggest you read it. It's by Charles J. Hanley and here's an excerpt:
John R. Bolton flew to Europe in 2002 to confront the head of a global arms-control agency and demand he resign, then orchestrated the firing of the unwilling diplomat in a move a U.N. tribunal has since judged unlawful, according to officials involved. A former Bolton deputy says the U.S. undersecretary of state felt Jose Bustani "had to go," particularly because the Brazilian was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad. That might have helped defuse the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons and undermined a U.S. rationale for war.
Bolton fired Bustani, in 2002, because Bustani wanted to put chemical weapons inspectors in Baghdad. Now that might seem strange to you if you rely upon the American mainstream press.
If your news sources are a little more well rounded, you may however remember The Sunday Times of London's Downing St. Memo which reveals, in 2002, that the United States is willing to shape and distort to push forward on the invasion of Iraq. The same invasion that Bully Boy and his minions were saying they had not yet decided to go forward with.
How does Hanley sum up the Downing St. Memo (yes, it's mentioned in the article)? Thusly:
An official British document, disclosed last month, said Prime Minister Tony Blair' agreed in April 2002 to join in an eventual U.S. attack on Iraq. Two weeks later, Bustani was ousted, with British help.
Here's something the memo says that's not in the AP account:
Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
The Sunday Times of London published that memo May 1, 2005. What did they publish last Sunday? Michael Smith's "RAF bombing raids tried to goad Saddam into war." From the opening of that article:
THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.
The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive.
The details follow the leak to The Sunday Times of minutes of a key meeting in July 2002 at which Blair and his war cabinet discussed how to make "regime change" in Iraq legal.
Is a pattern emerging? A pattern that even the mainstream press must begin to notice?
We think it is. But we wouldn't bet the house on it. We've shared our feelings/concerns on the mainstream press in an essay in this edition. The way we see it, the press has plenty to address. It's just an issue of whether they want to or not.
Hats off to BuzzFlash, once again, for finding the Associated Press article and drawing attention to a very important article.. As always the place we flocked to when finally getting ready to compose this edition's editorial.
posted by Third Estate Sunday Review @ Sunday, June 05, 2005
6/03/2005
some days life is a carly simon song
how's every 1 doing tonight? i'm posting later because we've been up in the air regarding this weekend's third estate sunday review. jess wanted us to a theme along the lines of the humor them a few years back and while we love the idea we all needed to think about it.
that's not think about how we would write about it but think about if we want to do the theme.
we do. the last hold outs have said yes.
and now we're facing down a massive effort to pull this thing together.
so my point here is don't expect much right now because my mind is reeling from what we'll be doing there. it's very creative and i'm excited about it but it's going to be intense.
c.i. said 'if we fail, we fail but it's good to stretch and try.' i don't want to spoil the theme but i think it will work and i think people will enjoy it.
ruth's going to provide some input for us and kat is on board as well. so it will be ava, dona, jim, ty and of course jess, betty, c.i. and me.
it's going to be a fun creative excercise.
and i agree that whether it works or not, it will be worth trying. jess is so clever to think it up.
it's been an interesting day for all of us. but that's another story. i will note that jim got his wallet stolen early this morning and then later in the afternoon a similar incident happened to c.i. and that ava and i were both harrassed by crazies to our face at different times today. kat says the bad vibes are upon us and that we need to do this excercise this weekend to cleanse ourselves.
hopefully, people will read it and laugh. but if they don't, we'll still have learned something from the excercise. and hopefully, we'll be able to score some points we wouldn't be able to otherwise.
do i sound excited? i really am. my mind is racing just thinking about it.
i'll give a heads up to folding star's comments on deep throat, that isaiah has a hilarious (if you've seen irma la duce) comic at the common ills, and note that betty posted wednesday at her site in a must read chapter on the latest on betinna. i was on the phone with her and she's excited about this weekend as well but wondering whether she'll have the 'creative juices' for it. i'm sure she will. i'm more worried about ava and c.i. because it will probably be harder to carve out 2 new personalities for their tv review which has always been their voices and now they'll have to create a new voice.
if something bigs happens, the editorial will be straight. like jim and c.i. said, if the sunday times of london has a new expose, that'll be the editorial but otherwise we'll stay in character for the editorial as well.
anyway, look for it. dona said she was thinking of the carly simon song 'touched by the sun' all day. i think that sums up my own feelings pretty well.
But deep down inside I know
I've got to learn from the greats
Earn my right to be living
Let my wings of desire
Soar over the night
I need to let them say
"She must have been mad"
And I, I want to get there
I, I want to be one
One who is touched by the sun
One who is touched by the sun
I've got to learn from the greats
Earn my right to be living
With every breath that I take
Every heartbeat
And I, I want to get there
I, I want to be one
One who is touched by the sun
One who is touched by the sun
that captures my mood right now. some days life is a carly simon song.
that's not think about how we would write about it but think about if we want to do the theme.
we do. the last hold outs have said yes.
and now we're facing down a massive effort to pull this thing together.
so my point here is don't expect much right now because my mind is reeling from what we'll be doing there. it's very creative and i'm excited about it but it's going to be intense.
c.i. said 'if we fail, we fail but it's good to stretch and try.' i don't want to spoil the theme but i think it will work and i think people will enjoy it.
ruth's going to provide some input for us and kat is on board as well. so it will be ava, dona, jim, ty and of course jess, betty, c.i. and me.
it's going to be a fun creative excercise.
and i agree that whether it works or not, it will be worth trying. jess is so clever to think it up.
it's been an interesting day for all of us. but that's another story. i will note that jim got his wallet stolen early this morning and then later in the afternoon a similar incident happened to c.i. and that ava and i were both harrassed by crazies to our face at different times today. kat says the bad vibes are upon us and that we need to do this excercise this weekend to cleanse ourselves.
hopefully, people will read it and laugh. but if they don't, we'll still have learned something from the excercise. and hopefully, we'll be able to score some points we wouldn't be able to otherwise.
do i sound excited? i really am. my mind is racing just thinking about it.
i'll give a heads up to folding star's comments on deep throat, that isaiah has a hilarious (if you've seen irma la duce) comic at the common ills, and note that betty posted wednesday at her site in a must read chapter on the latest on betinna. i was on the phone with her and she's excited about this weekend as well but wondering whether she'll have the 'creative juices' for it. i'm sure she will. i'm more worried about ava and c.i. because it will probably be harder to carve out 2 new personalities for their tv review which has always been their voices and now they'll have to create a new voice.
if something bigs happens, the editorial will be straight. like jim and c.i. said, if the sunday times of london has a new expose, that'll be the editorial but otherwise we'll stay in character for the editorial as well.
anyway, look for it. dona said she was thinking of the carly simon song 'touched by the sun' all day. i think that sums up my own feelings pretty well.
But deep down inside I know
I've got to learn from the greats
Earn my right to be living
Let my wings of desire
Soar over the night
I need to let them say
"She must have been mad"
And I, I want to get there
I, I want to be one
One who is touched by the sun
One who is touched by the sun
I've got to learn from the greats
Earn my right to be living
With every breath that I take
Every heartbeat
And I, I want to get there
I, I want to be one
One who is touched by the sun
One who is touched by the sun
that captures my mood right now. some days life is a carly simon song.
6/02/2005
the one about the common ills
wally and kara both e-mailed to ask if i could mention the proposal that's going on at the common ills and nothing would make me happier. i'll just make this post about the common ills in fact. if you watch friends, you know they title episodes 'the one . . .' so i'll call this 1 'the one about the common ills.'
for those who don't know, blog links come via a members panel at the common ills. c.i. will be the first to note 'no blog expert here' and in the early days there would be someone e-mailing in 'i hate that blog you just added.'
it's a community, so what to do?
if c.i. says, 'john pool has a blog, a number of members like it, let me know if you think we should link' it's the ultimate in democracy. but what if john pool isn't liked by the members. then people know john pool almost got linked but in the end didn't. that may play on american idol but that's neither the common ills nor c.i.'s style.
so a panel was created and members serve on it. while they serve on it, they look at blogs that have gotten attention from the members and determine whether they are link worthy or not.
you don't want to end up with some 'bull moose' or other such shit - dlc masquerading as left.
the panel, being made up of members, are representative of the members themselves. and since they are reviewing suggestions for a month's time, they are able to get a better feel and to discuss what they've seen.
it's representative democracy.
and the panel is an independent 1. c.i.'s really been proud of that and members who write me have been as well.
every e-mail about eli's statements and delinking from the hideous dopey (who's kiss off is apparently the only thing any 1's ever read at load of crap) have been overjoyed by the action and so proud of eli for the way he wrote it up.
he was so nice about it but so clear. and the community was sick of load of crap because he'd a) trashed them for not helping him 'clean these panties!' b) he'd called c.i. a liar because c.i. didn't quote him (i read them, dopey never asked to be quoted and, as shirley has pointed out, the automated e-mail explains the policy on quoting so there are no excuses not even for that ____
- who knew sweet shirley knew such strong words?), c) he'd spread rumors that i'd been to his dopey site load of crap - he wishes; he's like an exhibitionist exposing himself and being mad that no woman wants to look, d) he mocked someone's illness, e) he then went on to insult women and feminine men while calling others catty.
that meow in the room, it's coming from you dopey.
so as the panel took responsibility for their decisions and actions, they decided to write a proposal consisting of various planks. this is to be voted on by membership. disclosure, i've already mailed in my vote. it's instant run off voting which i say bravo to the panel for.
there are 13 voting days left. you must be a member to vote. you request your ballot by e-mailing c.i. at common_ills@yahoo.com. c.i. will note the ballot 1 more time tomorrow because the panel had requested three days of notice.
you do 1 e-mail for your vote and you send it to keesha, eli and c.i. (which common ills community members the uk computer gurus have made an easy function for any 1 confused by that). also listed on the ballot is shirley's e-mail and you can contact her with any questions you have about instant run off voting.
i talked to shirley by phone today and asked her what the most asked question so far was?
she's got an interview in common ills community members gina and krista's gina & krista round-robin tomorrow. they did the interview wednesday and she answers that in her 1st question so i'll just steer you to the round-robin.
sometimes a visitor will stumble onto my site (gee, wonder what they're looking for) and they'll e-mail something along the lines of 'what is so damn special about the common ills?'
well if you have to ask ...
it's a resource/review and it's a community of people who share common beliefs. that's the easy answer.
but it's so much more. it offers so much interaction. a member will note that they like something and c.i. will see if they're comfortable with e-mailing another member. if they are, they share that interest and other things. which is how most of us have gotten to know each other.
gina and krista's round-robin grew out of that. c.i. paired gina and krista together as e-mail buddies when krista was feeling very low. not only did it lift krista's spirits, it also allowed krista and gine to start their own round-robin which is a weekly thing they do where they exchange ideas and debate issues. they do this in private away from the eyes of the likes of dopey. (but they sure do have funny talks about dopey, don't they?) and isaiah does an illustration for them each week that's evolved into a continuing comic opera with regular characters. in addition, they'll offer an interview with a member that lets you really get to know who makes up the community.
in addition, every other week community members the uk computer gurus send out their e-mail which is full of tips for online safety and examples of violations of privacy.
but are we done yet? no, we are not.
at the common ills, besides the day to day learning of what members are noticing, members like cedric, keesha, gina, keshawn and dallas will write entries (and don't forget the year-in-review). and of course ruth does ruth's morning edition report which is a must read. kat covers music for the common ills. and isaiah is the common ills illustrator. that's quite a community.
but are we done yet? no, we are not.
the common ills has spawned blogs and continues to do so. folding star started a winding road, i started sex and politics and screeds and attitude, ty, jess, ava, jim and dona started the third estate sunday review, betty started thomas friedman is a great man, and kat's started kat's korner.
the common ills just celebrated their 6th month anniversary. if you ask me, that's an amazing record for 6 months. all that and a dedication to social justice and the left.
for those who don't know, blog links come via a members panel at the common ills. c.i. will be the first to note 'no blog expert here' and in the early days there would be someone e-mailing in 'i hate that blog you just added.'
it's a community, so what to do?
if c.i. says, 'john pool has a blog, a number of members like it, let me know if you think we should link' it's the ultimate in democracy. but what if john pool isn't liked by the members. then people know john pool almost got linked but in the end didn't. that may play on american idol but that's neither the common ills nor c.i.'s style.
so a panel was created and members serve on it. while they serve on it, they look at blogs that have gotten attention from the members and determine whether they are link worthy or not.
you don't want to end up with some 'bull moose' or other such shit - dlc masquerading as left.
the panel, being made up of members, are representative of the members themselves. and since they are reviewing suggestions for a month's time, they are able to get a better feel and to discuss what they've seen.
it's representative democracy.
and the panel is an independent 1. c.i.'s really been proud of that and members who write me have been as well.
every e-mail about eli's statements and delinking from the hideous dopey (who's kiss off is apparently the only thing any 1's ever read at load of crap) have been overjoyed by the action and so proud of eli for the way he wrote it up.
he was so nice about it but so clear. and the community was sick of load of crap because he'd a) trashed them for not helping him 'clean these panties!' b) he'd called c.i. a liar because c.i. didn't quote him (i read them, dopey never asked to be quoted and, as shirley has pointed out, the automated e-mail explains the policy on quoting so there are no excuses not even for that ____
- who knew sweet shirley knew such strong words?), c) he'd spread rumors that i'd been to his dopey site load of crap - he wishes; he's like an exhibitionist exposing himself and being mad that no woman wants to look, d) he mocked someone's illness, e) he then went on to insult women and feminine men while calling others catty.
that meow in the room, it's coming from you dopey.
so as the panel took responsibility for their decisions and actions, they decided to write a proposal consisting of various planks. this is to be voted on by membership. disclosure, i've already mailed in my vote. it's instant run off voting which i say bravo to the panel for.
there are 13 voting days left. you must be a member to vote. you request your ballot by e-mailing c.i. at common_ills@yahoo.com. c.i. will note the ballot 1 more time tomorrow because the panel had requested three days of notice.
you do 1 e-mail for your vote and you send it to keesha, eli and c.i. (which common ills community members the uk computer gurus have made an easy function for any 1 confused by that). also listed on the ballot is shirley's e-mail and you can contact her with any questions you have about instant run off voting.
i talked to shirley by phone today and asked her what the most asked question so far was?
she's got an interview in common ills community members gina and krista's gina & krista round-robin tomorrow. they did the interview wednesday and she answers that in her 1st question so i'll just steer you to the round-robin.
sometimes a visitor will stumble onto my site (gee, wonder what they're looking for) and they'll e-mail something along the lines of 'what is so damn special about the common ills?'
well if you have to ask ...
it's a resource/review and it's a community of people who share common beliefs. that's the easy answer.
but it's so much more. it offers so much interaction. a member will note that they like something and c.i. will see if they're comfortable with e-mailing another member. if they are, they share that interest and other things. which is how most of us have gotten to know each other.
gina and krista's round-robin grew out of that. c.i. paired gina and krista together as e-mail buddies when krista was feeling very low. not only did it lift krista's spirits, it also allowed krista and gine to start their own round-robin which is a weekly thing they do where they exchange ideas and debate issues. they do this in private away from the eyes of the likes of dopey. (but they sure do have funny talks about dopey, don't they?) and isaiah does an illustration for them each week that's evolved into a continuing comic opera with regular characters. in addition, they'll offer an interview with a member that lets you really get to know who makes up the community.
in addition, every other week community members the uk computer gurus send out their e-mail which is full of tips for online safety and examples of violations of privacy.
but are we done yet? no, we are not.
at the common ills, besides the day to day learning of what members are noticing, members like cedric, keesha, gina, keshawn and dallas will write entries (and don't forget the year-in-review). and of course ruth does ruth's morning edition report which is a must read. kat covers music for the common ills. and isaiah is the common ills illustrator. that's quite a community.
but are we done yet? no, we are not.
the common ills has spawned blogs and continues to do so. folding star started a winding road, i started sex and politics and screeds and attitude, ty, jess, ava, jim and dona started the third estate sunday review, betty started thomas friedman is a great man, and kat's started kat's korner.
the common ills just celebrated their 6th month anniversary. if you ask me, that's an amazing record for 6 months. all that and a dedication to social justice and the left.
6/01/2005
kat's korner
so last night i added to the blog roll. i added katrina vanden heuvel of course. but late last night, i learned that kat of kat's korner was doing a site.
we love kat.
her music reviews make me laugh and make me think.
she's posted them at the common ills for some time now.
her blog will contain reposts of those reviews and it will also contain the occassional 'note' which is the word she uses. i think it's great and i know a lot of common ills members will just be glad to know they can go somewhere to easily read her reviews. but i'm pretty sure she'll be noting things there from time to time that will be the sort of things that only kat could do.
i'm really excited by her blog.
i really wish every member of the common ills would start a blog. as c.i. says, 'we need more voices, not less.' and kat is an important voice.
she told me that when she has time she'll add some information in her 'about me' section but that she just wanted to get it up and started. i hope you'll check out her site. it's title is 'kat's korner (of the common ills).'
she's developed quite a following and if you go there and check it out, you'll see why.
while i'm talking about community members, did i note that betty had a new entry on sunday?
she took part in what i have dubbed 'operation circle jerk' in honor of bill keller.
but she does a humorous site that's really the unfolding and self-discovery of betinna, the lead character in what i see as her online novel. her entries are like chapters and the latest is entitled
'thomas friedman's days of rage and whine.'
read it, it's funny. you'll laugh.
and while we're talking funny, let me note the hilarious review that ava and c.i. did of the nick lachey and jessica simpon tv special, it's called 'tv: jessica simpson and nick lachey reporting for two hours of self-love.'
here's the opening of their review:
Haven't the troops suffered enough? Sent into an illegal war by the Bully Boy, often victims of a back-door draft, reserves stationed full time in Iraq paid less because they are "part-time reserves" (aka "weekend warriors" -- that's been some long weekend), the wounded largely ignored when they return home, military familes losing benefits, the coffins hidden away while Bully Boy says they died for "liberty" . . . When will it end?
Not last Monday night when ABC decided to promote the upcoming release of Warner Bros.' Dukes of Hazzard by turning over two hours of prime time television to the dubious talents of Jessica Simpson and, famous for being married to her, Nick Lachey. The "event" was titled Nick & Jessica's Tour of Duty so right away you knew it was going to be horrible and lacking in any sensitivity or perspective. In case you're missing it, let's underscore it. Nick & Jessica's Tour of Duty. Two overly pampered airheads wanted to compare their miniscule contribution as a "tour of duty." Let's be really clear here, Bob Hope did multiple salutes to the military. He did countless version of The Bob Hope Vietnam Christmas Show (1965, 1966, 1971), he did Bob Hope's Overseas Christmas Tours: Around the World with the Troops -- 1941-1972. But he lacked either the vanity or the stupidy (or both) to pass his own efforts off as a "Tour of Duty."
Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey apparently lack shame, as well as talent.
it's funny. you'll laugh. what are you waiting for? i gave you three links. why aren't you clicking? lol.
we love kat.
her music reviews make me laugh and make me think.
she's posted them at the common ills for some time now.
her blog will contain reposts of those reviews and it will also contain the occassional 'note' which is the word she uses. i think it's great and i know a lot of common ills members will just be glad to know they can go somewhere to easily read her reviews. but i'm pretty sure she'll be noting things there from time to time that will be the sort of things that only kat could do.
i'm really excited by her blog.
i really wish every member of the common ills would start a blog. as c.i. says, 'we need more voices, not less.' and kat is an important voice.
she told me that when she has time she'll add some information in her 'about me' section but that she just wanted to get it up and started. i hope you'll check out her site. it's title is 'kat's korner (of the common ills).'
she's developed quite a following and if you go there and check it out, you'll see why.
while i'm talking about community members, did i note that betty had a new entry on sunday?
she took part in what i have dubbed 'operation circle jerk' in honor of bill keller.
but she does a humorous site that's really the unfolding and self-discovery of betinna, the lead character in what i see as her online novel. her entries are like chapters and the latest is entitled
'thomas friedman's days of rage and whine.'
read it, it's funny. you'll laugh.
and while we're talking funny, let me note the hilarious review that ava and c.i. did of the nick lachey and jessica simpon tv special, it's called 'tv: jessica simpson and nick lachey reporting for two hours of self-love.'
here's the opening of their review:
Haven't the troops suffered enough? Sent into an illegal war by the Bully Boy, often victims of a back-door draft, reserves stationed full time in Iraq paid less because they are "part-time reserves" (aka "weekend warriors" -- that's been some long weekend), the wounded largely ignored when they return home, military familes losing benefits, the coffins hidden away while Bully Boy says they died for "liberty" . . . When will it end?
Not last Monday night when ABC decided to promote the upcoming release of Warner Bros.' Dukes of Hazzard by turning over two hours of prime time television to the dubious talents of Jessica Simpson and, famous for being married to her, Nick Lachey. The "event" was titled Nick & Jessica's Tour of Duty so right away you knew it was going to be horrible and lacking in any sensitivity or perspective. In case you're missing it, let's underscore it. Nick & Jessica's Tour of Duty. Two overly pampered airheads wanted to compare their miniscule contribution as a "tour of duty." Let's be really clear here, Bob Hope did multiple salutes to the military. He did countless version of The Bob Hope Vietnam Christmas Show (1965, 1966, 1971), he did Bob Hope's Overseas Christmas Tours: Around the World with the Troops -- 1941-1972. But he lacked either the vanity or the stupidy (or both) to pass his own efforts off as a "Tour of Duty."
Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey apparently lack shame, as well as talent.
it's funny. you'll laugh. what are you waiting for? i gave you three links. why aren't you clicking? lol.
5/31/2005
open democracy and deep throat
okay, what is open democracy?
i'm joking.
i'm semi-familiar with it but i must have missed the mailing on 'talk about this' lol.
sunday c.i.'s citing three stories from it and saying to check it out and monday katrina vanden heuvel (whom i've finally gotten off my lazy butt and added to the blog roll) is talking it up.
people, share the memos! i'll be happy to be on the same page.
so katrina's talking about open democracy in terms of their article on the impact bloggers are having in iran. c.i. was talking open democracy in terms of nepal for two articles and in terms of a third item which i'll highlight below.
Third, we'll note Brian Cathcart's "Polio: a war not yet won:"
One day it could rank among the greatest collaborative achievements of humankind, the fruit of decades of work by millions of people across the globe, at a cost of billions of dollars - but today, with triumph almost in sight, it may be in jeopardy. The campaign to rid the world of polio is suddenly on the defensive, with the virus popping up in countries previously thought clean and the flow of money to fund immunisations running dry.
Only a few years ago there were hopes that this year, 2005, would see the final case, the very last of all the many millions of children to be crippled or killed by this virus down the centuries. But instead the number of countries where people are catching polio has doubled to twelve and just this month a fresh pocket of infection turned up in Indonesia, where no one had caught the disease for a decade. Proving that sickness, too, is globalised in the modern world, a strain of the virus from northern Nigeria travelled first to Sudan, on to Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and then across the ocean to Java - perhaps carried by migrant workers, perhaps by Muslim pilgrims going to and from Mecca; no one knows.
And just as it becomes clear that the huge effort to immunise millions of young children must be redoubled, the coalition of organisations leading the drive - the World Health Organisation (WHO), Unicef, Rotary International and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States – announce that they are $50 million short of the funding they need to carry on the effort past July.
This is an issue that Rebecca's noted and noted at her site Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude.
see i highlighted it because the spread of polio is something that concerns me and i'm a whore for a shout out.
a number of e-mails are coming in regarding w. mark felt who is said to be deep throat of the nixon era. (that would be the source for carl bernstein and woody's washington post expose series that changed journalism for about 10 minutes before journalism decided it was more interested in public relations.) vanity fair has the story. but the washington post is confirming it, or ben bradlee of the washington post.
and now carl bernstein and bob woodward have apparently joined in the confirmation.
i don't know. it seems like a parlor game.
and a nice way out considering rumors flying about who deep throat was in august of 2004.
reminds me of the man who claimed to be marilyn monroe's father and be the last call to her.
he got some headlines. but today no 1 remembers him and the reason is he wasn't the last call.
felt was probably a source.
but i'll wait a bit to see what happens before i start hollering 'deep throat! deep throat!' like kirsten dunst and michelle williams in dick (a very funny movie). i called a friend who'd the heard the rumor (to explosive to repeat) in august 2004 and asked, 'what do you think?' my friend said, 'i think things were getting a little hot and that's why bernstein and woody are breaking their word.'
and cnn this afternoon was reporting that bernstein and woodward were still maintaining that they would stick to their policy of not naming until deep throat was dead.
so it strikes me as strange that they suddenly decided to go along with ben bradlee.
i think in a bit, we'll be told 'oh by the way, ____ was also deep throat.'
maybe felt is deep throat but it's awfully strange that the day started with bernstein and woodward both being quoted as saying they'd only reveal deep throat when deep throat was dead and then they ended up coming around to say 'oh yeah, he's deep throat.'
i believe the rumor i heard in august. it was from a good source (some 1 at the washington post during the watergate period). so i won't do cart wheels over this.
again, felt may have been a source but i don't think he was the explosive source. it has to do with the information that deep throat supposedly passed on. (and no i'm not thinking it's john dean or any 1 that's usually mentioned.)
but, as c.i. would say, i could be wrong.
so make up your own minds.
i'm joking.
i'm semi-familiar with it but i must have missed the mailing on 'talk about this' lol.
sunday c.i.'s citing three stories from it and saying to check it out and monday katrina vanden heuvel (whom i've finally gotten off my lazy butt and added to the blog roll) is talking it up.
people, share the memos! i'll be happy to be on the same page.
so katrina's talking about open democracy in terms of their article on the impact bloggers are having in iran. c.i. was talking open democracy in terms of nepal for two articles and in terms of a third item which i'll highlight below.
Third, we'll note Brian Cathcart's "Polio: a war not yet won:"
One day it could rank among the greatest collaborative achievements of humankind, the fruit of decades of work by millions of people across the globe, at a cost of billions of dollars - but today, with triumph almost in sight, it may be in jeopardy. The campaign to rid the world of polio is suddenly on the defensive, with the virus popping up in countries previously thought clean and the flow of money to fund immunisations running dry.
Only a few years ago there were hopes that this year, 2005, would see the final case, the very last of all the many millions of children to be crippled or killed by this virus down the centuries. But instead the number of countries where people are catching polio has doubled to twelve and just this month a fresh pocket of infection turned up in Indonesia, where no one had caught the disease for a decade. Proving that sickness, too, is globalised in the modern world, a strain of the virus from northern Nigeria travelled first to Sudan, on to Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and then across the ocean to Java - perhaps carried by migrant workers, perhaps by Muslim pilgrims going to and from Mecca; no one knows.
And just as it becomes clear that the huge effort to immunise millions of young children must be redoubled, the coalition of organisations leading the drive - the World Health Organisation (WHO), Unicef, Rotary International and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States – announce that they are $50 million short of the funding they need to carry on the effort past July.
This is an issue that Rebecca's noted and noted at her site Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude.
see i highlighted it because the spread of polio is something that concerns me and i'm a whore for a shout out.
a number of e-mails are coming in regarding w. mark felt who is said to be deep throat of the nixon era. (that would be the source for carl bernstein and woody's washington post expose series that changed journalism for about 10 minutes before journalism decided it was more interested in public relations.) vanity fair has the story. but the washington post is confirming it, or ben bradlee of the washington post.
and now carl bernstein and bob woodward have apparently joined in the confirmation.
i don't know. it seems like a parlor game.
and a nice way out considering rumors flying about who deep throat was in august of 2004.
reminds me of the man who claimed to be marilyn monroe's father and be the last call to her.
he got some headlines. but today no 1 remembers him and the reason is he wasn't the last call.
felt was probably a source.
but i'll wait a bit to see what happens before i start hollering 'deep throat! deep throat!' like kirsten dunst and michelle williams in dick (a very funny movie). i called a friend who'd the heard the rumor (to explosive to repeat) in august 2004 and asked, 'what do you think?' my friend said, 'i think things were getting a little hot and that's why bernstein and woody are breaking their word.'
and cnn this afternoon was reporting that bernstein and woodward were still maintaining that they would stick to their policy of not naming until deep throat was dead.
so it strikes me as strange that they suddenly decided to go along with ben bradlee.
i think in a bit, we'll be told 'oh by the way, ____ was also deep throat.'
maybe felt is deep throat but it's awfully strange that the day started with bernstein and woodward both being quoted as saying they'd only reveal deep throat when deep throat was dead and then they ended up coming around to say 'oh yeah, he's deep throat.'
i believe the rumor i heard in august. it was from a good source (some 1 at the washington post during the watergate period). so i won't do cart wheels over this.
again, felt may have been a source but i don't think he was the explosive source. it has to do with the information that deep throat supposedly passed on. (and no i'm not thinking it's john dean or any 1 that's usually mentioned.)
but, as c.i. would say, i could be wrong.
so make up your own minds.
5/30/2005
editorial: sunday times says we attempted to goad iraq into war in 2002, is bush a liar or just willing to risk the safety of american citizens?
this ran at the third estate sunday review. it's an important editorial.
you may have read it already. perhaps at the third estate sunday review sunday. or at the common ills this morning. or at thomas friedman is a great man. or at a winding road. and now it's here.
why? because we think the questions that should be raised are that important. we think the press in this country needs to deal with this seriously and soon. not 20 days after, buried inside the main section the way the new york times did with the downing street memo.
bill keller, the executive editor of the new york times, likes to toss around terms like 'arm chair critics' and 'circle jerks.' consider this operation circle jerk. i'll christen it in honor of bill keller.
Editorial: Sunday Times says we attempted to goad Iraq into war in 2002, is Bush a liar or just willing to risk the safety of American citizens?
The Sunday Times has an article by Michael Smith entitled "RAF bombing raids tried to goad Saddam into war." It opens with the following:
THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.
The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive.
The details follow the leak to The Sunday Times of minutes of a key meeting in July 2002 at which Blair and his war cabinet discussed how to make "regime change" in Iraq legal.Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, told the meeting that "the US had already begun 'spikes of activity' to put pressure on the regime".
We realize that our readers are far more intelligent than the mainstream press corp but indulge us as we address the above. The Bully Boy and his cohorts went around screaming that we didn't want a "mushroom cloud," that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons. To accept those lies today, in the face of The Sunday Times of London's story, you have to accept that the Bully Boy was perfectly okay with the United States being attacked with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. If that were true, then the only response would be to call for an immediate impeachment. The leader of the country is not supposed to actively court the destruction of our nation.
But to believe the lies we were told, that truly is the most obvious conclusion.
Of course, the fact of the matter is that we were lied to. Everything we were told leading up to the invasion and everything that's followed can be characterized as lies and more lies.
Lying a nation into war is a pretty serious offense.
Now there are some who feel that the recent defense of Newsweek has awakened our press corps. We'd love for that to be the case. However, it can also be argued that the press is just closing ranks, protecting their own and still willing to swallow every lie the administration feeds them and duly spit it back out in a report.
Look, this is a serious matter. We'd even be willing to hold our tongues regarding Judith Miller and other stenographers if The New York Times or any other institution wanted to do now what they should have been doing in the lead up to the invasion, investigating the administration's claims and telling the people the truth.
Scott Shane, Douglas Jehl or Monica Davey (or anyone else) could be front paged with stories about the difference between what we were told and actual reality and we'd be willing to hold our tongues about Miller and the others. (Miller's the most infamous, she was far from the only one. And to date, no television program has issued any mea culpa that we're aware of.)
Why could a group of smart asses like The Third Estate Sunday Review do that? Because the bigger picture demands that Americans start getting some truth with their journalism. It's past time for some truth. We spent thirty minutes discussing this (Ava, Jim, Jess, Ty, Dona, Rebecca, Betty and C.I.) and we all agree that the truth coming out now (strongly and on the front page -- not tucked safely inside the paper where it can be ignored) is a great deal more important than Miller's head on a platter at this moment in time.
What we're saying is that we could take The Times running truth-telling stories without requiring them to note "by the way Judith Miller reported this differently." (Or any newspaper or TV program doing the same without making a point to name their reporters who got it wrong.) And here's a thought, who knows the lies that were told better than Miller? Get her committed to exposing reality and team her up with someone more trust worthy and let it rip. We're willing to bet that the sympathy she's been unable to garner for her current court issues, despite repeated attempts to garner sympathy, would suddenly emerge.
We're not going to spin here and say that all is forgiven and forgotten regarding Miller (to focus on The New York Times). That's not the case. It never will be. But if The New York Times wants to get back into the news business, we're perfectly willing to table our criticism of Miller for several months. Because we feel, and we can only speak for us, that the truth on the invasion/occupation is far more important than any individual reporter.
The latest from London's Sunday Times is explosive (as was the Downing St. memo). The press seems to have awakened a bit after the attacks on Newsweek. Our guess is that the way the domestic press handles the very serious issues emerging from across the Atlantic will tell us whether recent press coverage was about truth telling or protecting one of their own.
Lastly, we'll give credit to BuzzFlash for making The Sunday Times article their main headline.
As always, the editorial is the last feature (other than our "note") that we work on. As soon as we finish everything else, we rush around online (BuzzFlash is always one of the stops) to come up with potential topics for our editorial. There was no debate this week. All eight of us agreed that the only topic was The Sunday Times revelations. Congratulations and thanks to BuzzFlash for catching the story and prominently running it at their website.
posted by Third Estate Sunday Review @ Sunday, May 29, 2005
think about this editorial. pass it on. share it with friends and families. if the downling street memo is any indication, our press will take a pass on this on this. so broadcast the news yourself to people you know.
you may have read it already. perhaps at the third estate sunday review sunday. or at the common ills this morning. or at thomas friedman is a great man. or at a winding road. and now it's here.
why? because we think the questions that should be raised are that important. we think the press in this country needs to deal with this seriously and soon. not 20 days after, buried inside the main section the way the new york times did with the downing street memo.
bill keller, the executive editor of the new york times, likes to toss around terms like 'arm chair critics' and 'circle jerks.' consider this operation circle jerk. i'll christen it in honor of bill keller.
Editorial: Sunday Times says we attempted to goad Iraq into war in 2002, is Bush a liar or just willing to risk the safety of American citizens?
The Sunday Times has an article by Michael Smith entitled "RAF bombing raids tried to goad Saddam into war." It opens with the following:
THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.
The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive.
The details follow the leak to The Sunday Times of minutes of a key meeting in July 2002 at which Blair and his war cabinet discussed how to make "regime change" in Iraq legal.Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, told the meeting that "the US had already begun 'spikes of activity' to put pressure on the regime".
We realize that our readers are far more intelligent than the mainstream press corp but indulge us as we address the above. The Bully Boy and his cohorts went around screaming that we didn't want a "mushroom cloud," that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons. To accept those lies today, in the face of The Sunday Times of London's story, you have to accept that the Bully Boy was perfectly okay with the United States being attacked with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. If that were true, then the only response would be to call for an immediate impeachment. The leader of the country is not supposed to actively court the destruction of our nation.
But to believe the lies we were told, that truly is the most obvious conclusion.
Of course, the fact of the matter is that we were lied to. Everything we were told leading up to the invasion and everything that's followed can be characterized as lies and more lies.
Lying a nation into war is a pretty serious offense.
Now there are some who feel that the recent defense of Newsweek has awakened our press corps. We'd love for that to be the case. However, it can also be argued that the press is just closing ranks, protecting their own and still willing to swallow every lie the administration feeds them and duly spit it back out in a report.
Look, this is a serious matter. We'd even be willing to hold our tongues regarding Judith Miller and other stenographers if The New York Times or any other institution wanted to do now what they should have been doing in the lead up to the invasion, investigating the administration's claims and telling the people the truth.
Scott Shane, Douglas Jehl or Monica Davey (or anyone else) could be front paged with stories about the difference between what we were told and actual reality and we'd be willing to hold our tongues about Miller and the others. (Miller's the most infamous, she was far from the only one. And to date, no television program has issued any mea culpa that we're aware of.)
Why could a group of smart asses like The Third Estate Sunday Review do that? Because the bigger picture demands that Americans start getting some truth with their journalism. It's past time for some truth. We spent thirty minutes discussing this (Ava, Jim, Jess, Ty, Dona, Rebecca, Betty and C.I.) and we all agree that the truth coming out now (strongly and on the front page -- not tucked safely inside the paper where it can be ignored) is a great deal more important than Miller's head on a platter at this moment in time.
What we're saying is that we could take The Times running truth-telling stories without requiring them to note "by the way Judith Miller reported this differently." (Or any newspaper or TV program doing the same without making a point to name their reporters who got it wrong.) And here's a thought, who knows the lies that were told better than Miller? Get her committed to exposing reality and team her up with someone more trust worthy and let it rip. We're willing to bet that the sympathy she's been unable to garner for her current court issues, despite repeated attempts to garner sympathy, would suddenly emerge.
We're not going to spin here and say that all is forgiven and forgotten regarding Miller (to focus on The New York Times). That's not the case. It never will be. But if The New York Times wants to get back into the news business, we're perfectly willing to table our criticism of Miller for several months. Because we feel, and we can only speak for us, that the truth on the invasion/occupation is far more important than any individual reporter.
The latest from London's Sunday Times is explosive (as was the Downing St. memo). The press seems to have awakened a bit after the attacks on Newsweek. Our guess is that the way the domestic press handles the very serious issues emerging from across the Atlantic will tell us whether recent press coverage was about truth telling or protecting one of their own.
Lastly, we'll give credit to BuzzFlash for making The Sunday Times article their main headline.
As always, the editorial is the last feature (other than our "note") that we work on. As soon as we finish everything else, we rush around online (BuzzFlash is always one of the stops) to come up with potential topics for our editorial. There was no debate this week. All eight of us agreed that the only topic was The Sunday Times revelations. Congratulations and thanks to BuzzFlash for catching the story and prominently running it at their website.
posted by Third Estate Sunday Review @ Sunday, May 29, 2005
think about this editorial. pass it on. share it with friends and families. if the downling street memo is any indication, our press will take a pass on this on this. so broadcast the news yourself to people you know.
5/29/2005
notes on and thanks to the third estate sunday review, thomas friedman is a great man and the common ills
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.
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.
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