Come On Ralph, It’s Time To Go

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Is this Northam yearbook picture thing still dragging out? Surely Northam must see by now that his situation is hopeless?

I was chatting with a friend in Virginia this morning and mentioned that I normally live by the 20/20 rule:¹ I can forgive most things you did before the age of 20 or more than 20 years ago. There are exceptions, of course, but that’s my rule of thumb.

However, there’s a caveat: You have to fess up completely and not have subsequent black marks on your record.² This was Brett Kavanaugh’s problem. Even though I believed nearly all the allegations of harassment against him, I was willing to forgive his teenage behavior because teenagers are idiots. What’s more, Kavanaugh seems to have led an unproblematic life since he left college. His problem, however, is that he panicked when this stuff first came up and he denied all of it. I’m quite sure that was a lie, and that makes it an immediate problem, not one three decades in the past.

Northam has the same problem, but possibly even worse. I mean, first he confesses and apologizes for the blackface photo; then takes it all back and says it’s not him in the picture; and finally offers up a weird story about a different occasion when he put on some shoe polish for a Michael Jackson show. But he still refuses to say how this picture ended up on his yearbook page or why his friends apparently called him “Coonman.” This is ridiculous. Every minute that goes by without a coherent explanation makes it more and more obvious that he’s desperately trying to avoid the truth and instead cobble together some kind of story that will hold up to scrutiny but not make him look like a horrible racist.

For that alone he has to go. I know this isn’t a popular view right now, but if Northam had a decent explanation that he’d offered immediately, along with the appropriate apologies, I could probably forgive him.³ But he didn’t and he doesn’t.

¹Don’t get too pedantic about this. Obviously something you did at age 19 matters if you’re currently age 21. This is just a rough guideline, nothing more.

²There’s a reason for this: we should encourage people to own up to their pasts honestly. The only way this will happen is if there’s an understanding that doing so is likely to lead to forgiveness. Again, there are exceptions for some behavior, but an honest acknowledgment of your past should generally earn you something. If, on the other hand, we adopt a zero tolerance rule of demanding the death penalty for everything, no matter how long ago and no matter how much you’ve changed since then, the only incentive anyone has is to lie, lie, and lie some more. That’s completely pointless.

³Since some people are always eager to take this the wrong way, let me add this: I’m not insisting that everyone could or should forgive him. Just that I probably would.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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