October 31, 2008

The Obama Tapes***

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THE OBAMA TAPES….In an update on Michael Malone’s General Theory of Media Tankiness for Barack Obama, John Derbyshire offers a Special Theory of Media Tankiness for Barack Obama that applies only to the LA Times. Sam Zell and Hank Paulson are involved. And a unicorn.

For those of you with the good sense not to have followed this story, it’s about a piece the Times ran a few months ago describing a testimonial dinner in Chicago for Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies now at Columbia University. The Times has a videotape of Barack Obama’s speech at the event, and wingers everywhere are demanding that they release it so that Fox News can put it on a 24/7 loop over the weekend. The Times says it can’t release the tape because they promised their source they wouldn’t, but conservoland unanimously agrees that only fools and knaves believe this transparently ridiculous story. The Times is really holding it back because Khalidi shouted “Death to Israel” on the tape while Bill Ayers lit an Israeli flag on fire, and Barack Obama laughed and clapped while all this was going on.

It’s unclear, of course, why the Times even revealed the existence of this testimonial dinner in the first place if they were so in the tank for Obama, but I’m sure the wingers have an explanation for that. Conspiracy theorists always do. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: I don’t actually know anything about Khalidi myself, but it’s worth noting that he’s a perfectly respectable scholar with mildly pro-Palestinian views that the McCain campaign is trying to use in one of their usual cackhanded efforts to convince the rubes that Obama is a radical/Muslim/Jew-hating/terrorist sympathizer. Hell, even Marty Peretz is standing up for Khalidi. Jo-Ann Mort has more here.

Only four more days until this vile swill finally comes to an end.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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