The Diddly Awards

The Cruel Summer Award for relaxing with a vengeance

Illustration: Peter Hoey

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Rep. John Sweeney (R-N.Y.) crashed an Alpha Delta Phi frat bash at Union College in his district and let the students take videos and pictures of him in full party mode. A Sweeney staffer defended his decision: “As a committed representative of the people throughout the area where he lives and works, he enjoyed the discussion he shared with the students,” she wrote, adding that Sweeney “was impressed with the energy and enthusiasm the students displayed—particularly on a Friday evening.”

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) replied to critics who argued that immigrants performed a great deal of America’s farm labor: “I say let the prisoners pick the fruits.”

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) justified a trip to Santa Barbara paid for by the Fetzer Institute to “foster awareness of the power of love and forgiveness” on the grounds that such “spiritual self-reflection” was part of her “official duties.”

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) proposed bill S.B. 2577, making it easier for a home-state company to import “certain golf club driver heads with plasma welded face plate.” Kerry offered a number of other obscure protectionist bills, including S.B. 2578, which would protect “certain golf club driver heads with rhombus shaped center face”—a club that cries out to be named “The Kerry.”

Senator George Allen (R-Va.) told U.S. News & World Report: “I cut my own grass,” and then, deciding to pump up the Bushian machismo, added that he uses a John Deere 155 lawn tractor while listening to NASCAR with headphones.

Winner! Jo Ann Emerson, who replied to a constituent’s letter about excess oil company profits by concluding: “Please feel free to contact me with other matters that are of importance to you. I am honored to serve as your Representative in the U.S. Congress. I think you’re an asshole.”

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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.

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