Debra Dickerson Awesome on the Colbert Report (Again)

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Debra Dickerson on ColbertAs promised, Mother Jones‘ own Debra Dickerson dropped by Stephen Colbert’s show last night, and, as usual, held her own against the onslaught of satire. Two important things came out of her appearance, I think: a) the entrance into the lexicon of “sphincter-like” as probably the best description of Bill Clinton’s recent purple-faced anti-Obama sputtering (let’s hope it catches on) and b) the fact that she may be one of a handful of people in the universe who can actually beat Mr. Colbert at his own game, getting some actual content in there with the laugh lines and even having the last word. Plus Colbert’s line about “I couldn’t get away with that with my hair” seemed a little dumb, didn’t it? Anyway, by the end he put his head down on his desk in an apparent acknowledgement of defeat.

To read all of Debra’s writing for motherjones.com, click here.

You can’t embed video from the Comedy Central website, but here’s a direct link to the segment, although it opens a new window and you have to watch a Navy Seals ad to get to it.

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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 canā€™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.

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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 wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

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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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