August 24, 2012

#FutureMittJokes: We Built That

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When Mitt Romney had his birther moment this morning, some defenders tried an age-old tactic to shift attention off the candidate’s remarks: react to the reaction to the remarks. In this case, the conservatives in question worked at Michelle Malkin’s website, the Twitchy, and their outrage was directed at a hashtag meme that had taken off on Twitter:

When you’ve been dealt a bad hand, you can still play the race card. At least that’s the strategy liberals subscribe to. After Mitt Romney cracked a birth certificate joke earlier today, the Left experienced nothing short of a major meltdown. Bereft of any rational thought, they decided to birth a ludicrous hashtag game, #FutureMittJokes.

Actually, Twitchers, there’s no need to blame liberals for spotlighting the presidential candidate’s racial blindspot with some pointed tweets: You can just blame us. #FutureMittJokes was the brainchild of MoJo‘s Adam Serwer, who spontaneously tweeted:

He got it warmed up with:

From there, it just sort of took off. With writers from:

The American Prospect:

Wired:

Gawker:

Here’s my personal favorite, because it sounds like the kind of joke I could really hear Romney saying:

So, yeah, we built that. (We can take no credit, however, for American Bridge, a liberal-connected super PAC, taking the ball and sticking one of their campaign plugs on the hashtag’s search page as a “sponsored tweet.” Way to piggyback on a good thing, dudes.)

Apparently, this is all outrageous! and shocking! to conservatives—who, as quick as they were to condemn Rep. Todd Akin’s luddite notions of female assault and reproduction earlier this week, quietly dismissed Romney’s birther shoutout as a cute, banal, not-at-all-racially-coded joke. Apparently the only thing that’s more offensive than racial pandering is being accused of racial pandering. “Those are fighting tweets, sir!”

But, whoops, a couple folks didn’t get the memo and tried to highjack the hashtag and use it to dump some anti-Obama barbs:

 

“Pretty sure that’s a win, right there,” the Twitchy’s anonymous blogger wrote of the attempted highjacking. Hmm… Depends on what your definition of “win” is.

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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.

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