January 8, 2016

How Much Do People Hate Ted Cruz? A Lot.

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I think that everyone—literally everyone—knows that Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen and thus eligible to become president. The whole issue is a complete crock. And yet, ever since Donald Trump brought it up, you can hardly swing a dead cat without running into someone jabbering about it. Even John McCain and Nancy Pelosi have gotten into the act. What’s going on? Here are some possibilities:

  • We are all bored. We are so bored that we’ll literally talk about anything. This is the true genius of Donald Trump: he recognizes how bored we all are and is willing to find stimulating topics for us to chatter about.
  • Everyone loathes Ted Cruz. They loathe him so much that they’re willing to discuss this ridiculous meme as a way of hurting him, even though they know perfectly well it’s ridiculous.
  • We can’t help ourselves. It’s the “someone is wrong on the internet” syndrome: when Trump suggests Cruz doesn’t qualify for president, we have to explicate it. We have to research it. We have to find constitutional experts who like being on TV to cite endless case law. In the end, we have to explain why it’s wrong. It’s what we do. This has lately earned the moniker “Voxsplaining,” which is a little unfair—it’s not as if Vox invented this phenomenon—but only a little.
  • We remain under the misguided notion that anything Donald Trump says is automatically newsworthy because he’s the Republican front-runner.

That’s all I could come up with. Are there other possible explanations?

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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