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Ed Kilgore linked today to a Tim Noah piece about the misuse of the word “Christian,” and I was all ready to throw in my own two cents about this until I clicked the link and read Tim’s first paragraph:

In November I introduced a periodic blog feature called “Language Cop” to “keep track of unacceptable words and catchphrases that enter the political dialogue.” In that column I exiled the terms “optics” and “inflection point.” Earlier this month I inveighed against “pivot,” and last week I suggested this euphemism be replaced with a new term, “shake,” in deference to America’s first multiplatform gaffe. Today I banish “Christian ”—not the word itself, but a specific, erroneous usage.

Hold on there, pardner. Here’s what I want to know: why do so many people get so upset about particular new pieces of jargon that enter widespread use? There’s nothing wrong with optics or inflection point or pivot. They’re perfectly good descriptive words. “Optics” doesn’t mean quite the same thing as “appearances” and “inflection point” definitely doesn’t mean the same thing as “significant developments.” That makes them genuinely useful. “Pivot” seems fine too. All three of these terms seem like they’re both nicely descriptive and full of meaning. When someone says “optics,” for example, I know that they’re talking not just about general appearances, but about how something plays in the media and how it plays with public opinion. Using the word optics also suggests that you’re referring to a highly-planned operation managed by media pros, not just some random event on the street.

Anyway, if Tim Noah can be a language cop, then I can be a language cop cop. And I hereby declare all these words just fine. Anyone want to fight about it?

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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