December 13, 2010

From Filibernie to Twitterbuster: The Digital Sit-in of the Tax Deal

Flickr user origamidon

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


A few days after Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) became the world’s biggest Twitter trend with his 8.5-hour filibuster of the Obama/GOP tax deal, the #filibernie has morphed into a loosely-defined “digital sit-in”  promoted under the new hash tag #Twitterbuster. A few sample tweets:

@imwithbernie: okay twittetarians…it’s now or never. show the #filibernie support. #twitterbuster = digital sit-in, RT #twitterbuster

@normavela: If you support Bernie Sanders’s opposition to tax cuts for the wealthiest, tweet & retweet #filibernie #twitterbuster

@SoundPolitic: I called my Senators to stand with Bernie Sanders. Took about 15 minutes. I KNOW you’ve got the time too! #filibernie #twitterbuster

@Heidiko44: Robin Hood was right #filibernie #twitterbuster

Beyond the obvious outrage over giving tax breaks to the rich during a budget crisis, the twitterverse’s fascination with Sanders’ speech might have something to do with mashing up two vastly different types of media. There’s something delightfully jarring about promoting the definition of long-form oration, the filibuster, on a  platform constrained to 140 characters. One of Friday’s most popular tweets attempted to sum up the entire address: “@SenatorSanders spoke for 8.5 hours in defense of 98% of Americans.”

For highlights from the monster speech that started it all, check out my summary here.

UPDATE: On Monday night, Sanders appeared on Countdown With Keith Olbermann and was attacked by Stephen Colbert, who proposed that instead of taxing the rich, we support the poor by purchasing and eating their children. Below the jump Rachel Maddow recaps his speech and makes the case that the Beltway media exhibited a bias in its spotty coverage of the event.

Update #2: On Tuesday, Twitter user @imwithbernie launched an eponymous website, imwithbernie.com, that allows users to easily highlight and tweet any part of the transcript of Sanders 72,000-word oratory.

Last updated on 12/14/10 at 1:35 Pacific

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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

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

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate