The Weekly Sift

Yesterday, readers got a little more insight into the Sift’s inner workings than I wanted to give them. You see, I want anybody who comes to the blog on a Monday morning to at least get a promise that articles are coming; that’s what the Teaser is for. So I like to get it posted as early as I can. I’m usually a morning person, so I roll out of bed, grab a cup of coffee, walk to the computer and post.

Well, yesterday I woke up later than usual, with one of those strange I-just-woke-up beliefs that it was Monday and I was running late. Forget the coffee, I had to get to the computer and get a Teaser up right now. It was posted before I saw enough of the world to realize it was Sunday.

I could have taken it down then, but one of my policies is that once commenters notice an error, I can fix it, but I can’t pretend it didn’t happen. (The comments often contain my acknowledgement of mistakes I’ve edited out of the text.) Deleting the post would delete the comments that corrected me. So the wrong-day Teaser stays up.

Anyway, I have it on good authority that it really is Monday today. So here’s what you can expect: Unlike what I would have done yesterday, I’m going to pull my Supreme Court analysis out of the summary and make it a separate article “Two and a Half Cheers for the Supreme Court”. It should go up around 8 or 8:30.

Then I’ll post an article on racial and gender slurs that I’ve been thinking about for a while, but waiting for a news hook: The conservative furor over President Obama saying “nigger” in an interview was the hook I was waiting for, so “Slurs: Who Can Say Them, When, and Why” should go up by 10. It begins with a scene I really love from Clerks 2, and concludes with a scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian, so I think it does a good job of mixing light and heavy.

Then the weekly summary will cover other people’s reactions to the Court decisions; the amazing crumbling of support not just for the Confederate flag in front of the South Carolina state capitol, but for Confederate symbols all over the country; Obama’s eulogy for the Charleston victims; why you should think twice before forwarding that anti-Hillary tweet; and a few other things before closing with a human/elephant musical jam. Maybe 11 or 11:30 for that.

It really is Monday, isn’t it?