(Note: Too tired and lazy to rewrite. This is from last night's Sunday Chat & Chews and it provides the rundown for The Laura Flanders Show this weekend.)
So if I had to watch? I'd skip all three. I'd use the time more wisely in the morning and catch The Laura Flanders Show on Saturday & Sunday:
This weekend on Air America Radio, 7-10 PM EST
Tom Delay's wheeling and dealing -- was it dirty, dumb or both?
We'll hear from Craig McDonnell - the Texan whose public-interest group nailed the hammer.
Also: Arrest stories from the Troops Home demonstrations
Etan Thomas of the Washington Wizards on his powerful speech against the war
Sarah Jones on her new play "A Right to Care"
And on our monthly book show, we'll come up with a Reading List for Senators... at least one may be about to have some time on his hands!
Visit the blog to hear sound clips from our coverage of the historic anti-war demonstrations in Washington, D.C. last weekend and Click here to see photos.
Don't Forget - Now you can listen to the Laura Flanders Show via podcast on iTunes!
Go to the Laura Flanders Blog
I get the topics that will be covered on the Chat & Chews but I get them with a wider range of voices and I get them with Flanders common sense perspective. She hasn't traded common sense for access. (Or traded integrity for access.) Unlike the Chat & Chew hosts, she's yet to write a book (or mulitple ones) about herself. Instead she focuses on real issues when she writes a book (with no rumors of ghost writers). She's interested in the world and knows it exists beyond the beltway. She doesn't want rehearsed responses, she wants a discussion. So I'll skip the Sunday Chat & Chews and listen to Laura Flanders. (Thanks to Martha for the information on The Laura Flanders Show.)
In the days when I did watch the Chat & Chews (I'm in recovery from the Chat & Chews -- one Sunday at a time), if I was in the other room and thought I heard something, I didn't consult the transcripts. But on Saturdays, when we're working on The Third Estate Sunday Review's latest edition and have Flanders on in the background, if I miss part of something, I will go over to Air America Place to catch an archived show again. Like everyone else, my time is limited. I can't imagine watching a Chat & Chew once all the way through, let alone twice. But I can, and do, listen to The Laura Flanders Show more than once.
If you've never listened, you're missing one of the community's favorite programs. So if you haven't listened before, consider checking it out. You'll get a range of guests, a range of opinions, you'll get callers calling in to share and agree or disagree (disagreement! never on the Chat & Chews!). You'll get a journalist as a host who has remained a journalist and not a game show host. Flanders is "the real deal" (as West wrote after hearing Sunday's show). The TV networks don't seem to believe a woman can host a Chat & Chew (or anchor an evening newscast) as anything other that a one-off broadcast. Weekend after weekend, Flanders pilots six hours (three hours Saturday, three on Sunday) of live radio, sometimes with remote broadcasting, and has yet to lose her sanity or common sense. This community listens to Flanders (check out Maria's interview conducted by The Third Estate Sunday Review), too bad TV network presidents don't. If they did, maybe Meet the Press wouldn't feature so many women-less programs, or so many conventional wisdom bits of pith, or, radical idea, maybe they might even consider widening the narrow range of voices and opinions they offer Sunday after Sunday.
Until that happens, you can listen over broadcast radio (if there's an AAR in your area), via XM Satellite Radio (channel 167) or listen online.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
