Fame and Glory are Mine: I am Finally on the Daily Show

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My dream has finally come true: I’ve appeared on the Daily Show! Sadly, I missed this when it flashed on the screen last night, but apparently one of my blog posts was used as an on-screen example in John Oliver’s bit about the rise of incivility in the media.

What’s double-plus-great about this is that they took it completely out of context! Not only is that post over a year old, but I’m calling my own side idiots. See, I’m a Democrat. It’s true that the post itself asked, “What in God’s name are the morons who pass for leaders of the Democratic Party thinking?” And I guess that wasn’t very civil. But it was my own peeps I was calling out. Aren’t we even allowed to use colorful language within the family anymore?

Anyway, that’s irony #1. Irony #2 is that I’m pretty sure I’ve called Republicans much, much worse on multiple occasions. So why not use one of those posts?

And irony #3? The whole bit was an interview with Froma Harrop, who’s apparently in charge of a media initiative to restore civility but nonetheless said last year that tea party leaders have engaged in economic terrorism for holding the debt limit hostage. Pretty uncivil! Well, it turns out that I know Froma. Sort of. We sat next to each other for a couple of hours last June and shared the experience of not winning a Loeb award in the same category. She seemed very nice.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

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.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

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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