Evening greetings to the community. It's Ty and Jess from The Third Estate Sunday Review. We're filling in for C.I. due to an event already planned. We thought it would be a breeze when C.I. asked us to grab this Sunday a few weeks back. We was wrong!
We'll be noting the reporting from outside the U.S. mainstream shortly. We've spent about two and a half hours on the e-mails and are nowhere done with them.
A number of e-mails complain that the TV review from The Third Estate Sunday Review wasn't posted here since there were problems at our site. (We are part of The Third Estate Sunday Review along with Dona, Jim, Ava and C.I.) It's up over at the other site now. It's called "The Yawn at Home." We both laughed when we read it, many times. But Ava and C.I. don't think it's funny. We'll let you in on a little secret (that's already known), they never think they're funny. They always want to be funny and have some things worked out but while they're trying to meet the deadline at the last minute, most of their favorite humor bits get dropped out due to time and they tend to look at what goes up as a piece of ___.
Like readers who enjoy those reviews, we always disagree. There's one review, and we think they've noted which one but aren't sure, that they've hated like no other. They ripped it apart when they finished it and they've refused to read it since. We thought it was funny. It went up while Rebecca was on vacation and she was telling them last night that it's hilarious but they were all, "We don't want to talk about that."
But saving it for The Third Estate Sunday Review was their decision. Dona was pushing hard to post it here saying that the deadline had been missed at our site due to all the technical problems.
The editorial's up as well so you can read that. And the illustrations.
That's an issue in the e-mails. Where is Isaiah's drawing?
Isaiah helped this week with The Third Estate Sunday Review and the plan was to pull one of those and post it here. But we were already having technical problems and when we attempted to do Isaiah's thing, the whole thing went "blooey" (we don't know if that's how it's spelled).
There's a visitor who wrote the public address (common_ills@yahoo.com) and he's screaming that The Common Ills built up credibility all week and then blew it with this morning's entry "about music and Hollywood!!!!!"
We hate to attempt to speak for C.I. but we think the reply would be along the lines of your idea of credibility isn't my idea of credibility.
We were all being silly (except Mike who fell asleep -- we'd been up over 24 hours). But even in that silly, issues are being addressed. The Times ran a story that wouldn't pass fact check (on Bono). That goes to the way they feel about entertainment which they want to cover, which brings in ad revenues, but they think it's okay to slack off on those features. It's not. And members are happiest when we all get together and explore the Sunday paper because otherwise the focus is just on the main section. Members will tell you that the problems go way beyond the main section.
We've read 47 e-mails so far from members saying thanks for addressing the return of Alan Wolfe who reviewed David Brock's book but didn't seem to see what was on the actual pages of the book. That's a problem at The Times and it should be noted.
The angry visitor talks about how "the chance to be taken seriously by others is blown" as though that's a goal of this site or this community. There's no need for "others." The e-mails from both sites combined is 2016. The community's self-sustaining. If it had depend on the attention of other sites, it would be in trouble. Not for this morning's entry but for speaking plainly. As the party backs away from reproductive rights, gay rights, workers and assorted other issues, you don't see that talked about on the sites the visitor listed as "credible." What you see is sites that push the Democratic Party line, whatever it is today.
There's no twisting in the wind here. "Polls show what! We better back off!" doesn't happen here. There's no attempt to play good solider and support Bob Casey Jr. Or to lash out at women or gays or ignore the concerns of African-Americans.
If you're looking to find out today's talking point coming from the center structure of the Democratic Party, you're in the wrong place.
If you're looking for praise of the idiotic Bull Moose who needs to reclaim his Republican Party and stop polluting the Democratic one (one he doesn't even claim -- he's supposedly "independent" which shows you how brainless he is -- he's a "swing voter"). People who hope we live in interesting times shouldn't then try to ignore them and turn them into conventional times with cries of "Respect!" for James Dobinson. (Or endorsements for Simon Rosenberg. We'll call it an endorsement for Simon Rosenberg, Ty and Jess, because that's what it was.)
You can find that sort of crap elsewhere. And all the "shout outs" and "___ is making a good point today" which is nothing but the talking point out of the party.
The net that was supposed to be a place for independent lively discussion got a lot of party schills after Howard Dean showed how effective the net could be. Now we've got our own Cokie Roberts trying to be part of the D.C. crowd instead of speaking truth.
Hey, Bob Somerby, when you going to write about? You keep teasing us with the truth about the "liberal" pundits but we keep waiting. Tell it already.
We asked C.I. what we should write. Ideally, two entries with at least three things in each from outside the U.S. mainstream media and, if we could, a personal entry.
This is our personal entry. ("The views expressed in this entry are the views of Ty and Jess and do not necessarily express the views of the community or of C.I.")
We were told we had to bite out tongues (that was the phrase used) on one subject but otherwise we could say whatever we wanted.
We didn't want to write something like: may you live in interesting times and seek out my conventional wisdom.
Cedric told us early this morning just to keep it real. Hopefully we did that. We're getting to work on those "outside the U.S. media" posts. C.I. will be back tomorrow morning.
The public e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
