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Although Mother Jones has racked up dozens of accolades—including three National Magazine awards—in its first quarter century of muckraking, we have yet to see the early days of the magazine immortalized on the silver screen (as director Cameron Crowe did so righteously for Rolling Stone last year). But this is not to say the magazine hasn’t enjoyed a rich, if fleeting, media life all its own. Herewith, a window into Mother Jones’ 15 minutes of fame.

 

Tourist Season
Carl Hiaasen. Warner Books, 1986.
In this rollicking page-turner, newspaperman-cum-revolutionary Skip Wiley forms Las Noches de Diciembre, a ragtag band of ecoterrorists who plot to make Miami murder capital U.S.A.—and thus rid the Floridian subcontinent of the twin scourges of tourists and developers. Despite several successful hunting trips, not everything goes according to plan. “Crazy fucker,” gripes a fellow Diciembrista of Wiley. “All this work and what do we have to show for it? Nada. Remember all the publicity he promised? NBC! Geraldo Rivera! Mother Jones! Ha!”

The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe
Lily Tomlin, 1984.
As part of her peerless one-woman show, Tomlin played “Lyn,” a crunchy Californian struggling to reconcile her ’60s values with her ’80s disposable income. As she meditates on the trauma of being “politically conscious and upwardly mobile at the same time,” Lyn takes a swipe at the magazine that convinced her to live in a geodesic dome: “I like their politics,” she says, “but we never should have bought a home advertised in Mother Jones.

Scooby Doo
Warner Bros., 2002.
Issues of Mother Jones have served as “set dressing” (think extra as it applies to inanimate objects) in blockbusters ranging from Twister to The Hurricane. But we at the magazine are proudest of our cinematic association with another gang of muckrakers—the cast of Scooby Doo. A film remake of the ’70s cartoon (replete with a Mother Jones cameo) is slated for 2002.

Greed
Fox, 2000.
Mother Jones got in early on the millionaire quiz-show explosion, appearing in the form of a question on Fox’s aptly named “Greed.” “If you walk out of a shop holding a Mother Jones,” the question posed, “what have you just bought?”
(a) baby formula
(b) inexpensive wine
(c) organic pear
(d) frozen pie
(e) counterculture magazine
Shena, a loyal subscriber, proved it pays to read Mother Jones. For her correct answer, she pocketed $75,000.

Top Secret!
Paramount Pictures, 1984.
Okay, so the film doesn’t actually give Mother Jones any credit, but the funniest bit in this campy spy thriller (produced by the same folks who brought you Airplane!) is ripped from the pages of our 1977 exposé of the extra-flammable Ford Pinto (see “Pinto Madness“). Evil East German soldiers, pursuing freedom fighter Val Kilmer in a truck, skid to a halt behind the infamous subcompact. The vehicles barely kiss, but the Pinto’s gas tank nonetheless kabooms the Germans back to the Carter administration.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist 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 need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist 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 need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

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