March 12, 2009

Rachel Maddow Attacked By Fart-Obsessed Interviewer

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Salon called it “the weirdest Rachel Maddow interview ever,” and while we at Mother Jones can neither confirm nor deny that statement, it’s sure a hell of a lot weirder than our own Clara Jeffery’s recent conversation with the breakout cable news star. Plus, Clara actually talked less than the person she was interviewing, something Vanity Fair‘s George Wayne couldn’t manage in his bonkers Q&A. The piece just made the rounds of the Mother Jones e-mail circle, and here’s a sampling of comments:

Jen Phillips: Our interview is so much better, even if it doesn’t mention eproctophilia.

Mike Mechanic: Foul.

Me: Is this guy from 1923?

Dave Gilson: Has anyone ever really uttered the phrase, “listen to this saucy pedant”?

Nicole McClelland: I cannot believe VF printed two of this asinine interviewer’s words to Maddow’s every one. How is it possible they let him go on about eating ass for not one, but two complete sentences?

As you can see, this interview raises more questions than it answers. Here’s another one: Does saying “darling” a lot make up for using the term “dyke-stache”? Twice? If only there was an upcoming opportunity to ask Ms. Maddow how she felt about all this, at an event benefitting a non-profit magazine, for which there was an exclusive reception that still has some tickets available.

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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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