Mother Jones’ Portlandia Cameo

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


When I was growing up in the Portland suburbs, the city was pretty much like it is now: a bunch of hyperliterate nerds wearing flannel and Doc Martens, riding their bicycles to go read in coffeeshops because it was too freaking cold/rainy/depressing to do anything else. The city is still largely the same: when I visited for Christmas, I ate lunch in a cafe across from the city’s public library, and there were more people there than at Macy’s. After that I went to Powell’s, the city’s Jurassic Park-sized independent bookstore, which had a checkout line an hour-long. So yeah, it would be fair to say Portlanders like to read.

The new IFC television series Portlandia gets the city’s reading addiction right, and a recent promo even mentioned Mother Jones. In the clip below, two Portlanders start checking each other’s literary chops. It starts off easy, with the softball question: “Did you read that thing in the New Yorker last month about golf being an analogy for marriage?” Then it starts to get tougher, name-dropping McSweeney’s and Mother Jones. “Did you read that thing in Mother Jones about eco-chairs and eco-ways to sit?”

I’m glad the show’s writers associate Mother Jones with environmental coverage, because we do make it a priority. But eco-ways to sit? Okay, okay, we get it, you think we’re a bunch of hippies. Well, I’ll have you know I went to Starbucks this morning, and I felt only the briefest flash of guilt when I realized I’d forgotten my reusable ceramic travel cup. But then again, I am typing this blog post on a biodegradable corn-plastic computer powered by the sun during the day and gases from organic compost at night.

After the Mother Jones mention, the “did you read?” questions fly fast and heavy. SpinWall Street Journal? BoingBoing? Oh yeah? What about Willamette WeekSF Weekly? The Seattle Stranger? It’s well worth 113 seconds. Portlandia starts January 21, but I don’t know if I’ll have time to watch it. I might be busy reading.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

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