Brenda e-mails to remind me that I wrote "Hillary does come up in the podcast and is criticized. She is not bashed, there is a difference. We'll address the podcast later today." this morning but I didn't get to it in the snapshot.
No, I didn't. Today we addressed Iraqi Christians who got nothing in the snapshot last week though I had tried all last week to work them in. There was a really strong article in Wednesday's New York Times about Iraqi women that we praised here but it's not been in the snapshots yet either.
PJ Harvey's in the snapshot. I do like her music and I do like her as a person (though she's surprisingly soft spoken in real life). PJ made it into the snapshot because a brief fling that turned into a very good friend of many years phone and asked if I could work her in as a favor? I don't know if he's supposed to be doing advance work for the album or what. I didn't ask, I just said it would be in today. And that wasn't a problem because (a) I do love the new album, (b) it's about the wars and (c) we do highlight music here.
I didn't want to wait until Friday because I wanted to check it off my list ("Note PJ Harvey") and the snapshot was going to be done quickly today. It was going to go up an hour before it did. It was all dicated and just needing typing.
And?
A friend at the State Dept played a practical joke on me. He told me that there was a Jack Lew and a Jack Law -- and I asked, "Both are really named Jacob?" He insisted they were and said since I was doing a correction about Stephanie Mudick's name (I called her "Susan" instead of Stephanie in yesterday's snapshot), he figured I'd want to go in and correct Monday's snapshot as well. I told him of course I would and felt mortified that (a) I'd gotten two people mixed up and (b) that friends had known but felt they had to hold off on telling me? (Why else wouldn't I get a call before Thursday?) So I dictated the part about Susan (which is in the snapshot) and then a long, long part about the two Jacks (Jacobs) and my apologies for confusing the two, that I thought they were the same personand goodness was I wrong. I had three sentences insisting that if you ever see an error (not a disagreement about an opinion) but an error, please e-mail or call me immediately and how awful I feel about mixing up Law and Lew.
And that's how the snapshot opened.
Then, about ten minutes after the snapshot was dictated, my friend called back to say he'd been joking. Ha-ha, I had to call back and get that section pulled out. Since it was no longer the main thing, it was now just one paragraph, it got moved to the bottom (the "Susan" for Stephanie part) and the rest was gutted. I decided that Cindy Sheehan, who we ended with could make a strong opening so that was rearranged and I looked for other things to cover to fill the gap and to fit the flow of the snapshot. (So I was in search of things that built on what was already there.) The Maine campus newspaper was already there and a friend passed on the Jewish Forward while I remembered the USA today piece and that made that section a little bit stronger.
But if I had known that I was being pranked (my being pranked was not the end of the world and he did get me good, I completely fell for it), I would have worked to include the Hillary remark. Instead, the plan was -- because it relates to women (both the actual quote and the way she's slammed) -- to include it tomorrow, to note the NYT article (which is surprisingly popular in Arab media, good for the reporters) and to revist a video report that was really only noted before.
So that's the answer to Brenda's question and also a bit of background on today's snapshot. And make a point to check out PJ Harvey's Let England Shake when it drops Tuesday.
It's over, I'm done writing songs about love
There's a war going on
So I'm holding my gun with a strap and a glove
And I'm writing a song about war
And it goes
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Oh oh oh oh
-- "I Hate The War" (written by Greg Goldberg, on The Ballet's Mattachine!)
Last week, ICCC's number of US troops killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war was 4439. Tonight it is [PDF format warning] still 4439.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
iraq
i hate the war
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