July 14, 2009

Dear Nixon, Love Elvis

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Elvis Presley may have been the king, but he wasn’t much of a letter writer. In a 1970 missive to Richard Nixon in which he asked to be made a special agent in the budding War on Drugs, his sentences run together with the reckless abandon of a semi-literate speed freak. Plus, he also appears to really like Nixon, a hazy choice at best.

A few choice quotes from Elvis’s letter to Nixon:

“The drug culture, the hippie elements, the SDS, Black Panthers, etc. do not consider me as their enemy or as they call it the establishment. I call it American and I love it. Sir, I can and will be of any service that I can to help the country out. I have no concern or motives other than helping the country out…”

“Sir, I am staying at the Washington Hotel, Room 505-506-507…I am registered under the name Jon Burrow. I will be here for as long as long [sic] as it takes to get the credential of a Federal Agent. I have done an in-depth study of drug abuse and Communist brainwashing techniques and I am right in the middle of the whole thing where I can and will do the most good…”

“I was nominated this coming year one of America’s Ten Most Outstanding Young Men…I am sending you the short autobiography about myself so you can better understand this…”

P.S. “I believe that Sir, were one of the Top Ten Outstanding Men of America also.”

See the full Elvis letter here [pdf], or read a transcript here.

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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.

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