October 26, 2016

In Era of Trump, Competition for Stupidest Man Alive Heats Up

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In the same category of cluelessness as “Keep the government out of my Medicare,” one of my favorite dumb whinges comes from people who complain that the mainstream media isn’t covering something—and then illustrate that “something” by linking to a piece in the New York Times. Stephen Moore, in a brave attempt to keep his title of Stupidest Man Alive in the era of Trump, provides us with this classic of the genre today:

Every news outlet in America had a big headline about the Obamacare premium increases. It was plastered everywhere and blathered about endlessly on cable news. You could stay unaware of this only by hiding in a nearby fallout shelter like Kimmy Schmidt and not coming out for a week. As for the Washington Post, well:

In fairness, this is yesterday’s edition. The Post actually covered it before anyone else. I guess Moore somehow missed it.

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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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