September 27, 2016

Someone Please Explain What the Hell Is Going on With This Mary J. Blige, Hillary Clinton Interview

The awkward singing. The staring.


On Monday, Apple Music announced that the first episode of Mary J. Blige’s new show, The 411—an apparent reference to her 1992 debut album, What’s the 411?—will feature an exclusive sit-down with Hillary Clinton. A quick teaser of the interview was released on social media, where it created far more confusion than the excitement Apple likely intended.

As she sat with the Democratic presidential nominee in an intimate living room setting, Blige looked regal like the queen she is. She belts out Bruce Springsteen’s classic “American Skin (41 Shots),” while Clinton stares back intensely. Awkward, dramatic music plays in the background; cheap slow-mo effects abound.

Reactions to the clips were less than kind:

Done cringing? Now relive the masterpiece that is “Real Love” below and remember that both Blige and Clinton are too good for whatever just happened.

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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.

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