If a Golden Globe Falls in the Forest and Nobody’s There to Watch It…

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mojo-photo-goldenglobes.JPG…Are they more likely to give them to deserving shows? Answer: kind of. Honestly, I’m being a bad journalist here since I didn’t actually see any televised reading of the winners; apparently Nancy O’Dell and Billy Bush chuckled their way through a list of winners on NBC and the E! network featured a half-hour reading at some point. When I was flipping through the channels last night, my Comcast program guide showed a “Golden Globes Pre-Show” leading directly into a “Golden Globes Aftershow,” giving the impression that the event had been compressed into a single point like a black hole. And when Time Magazine headlines their article: “The Golden Globes – Who Cares?” you know things are bad.

Perhaps the voters had a bit of a “screw it, nobody’s watching anyway” attitude, since at least some of their TV awards went to relatively surprising and deserving programs: AMC’s smoky “Mad Men” won best dramatic TV series, with their lead Jon Hamm wining the actor award; Ricky Gervais’ “Extras,” which came to a strange and bitter end last year, won for best comedy series. Why David Duchovny won for best actor in a comedy series is anybody’s guess, although name recognition always helps. Tina Fey’s acting win for “30 Rock” was the only award for broadcast television the whole night. On the movie side, “Atonement” and Daniel Day Lewis both won and both look like Oscar locks, Cate Blanchett won for her Bob Dylan impression, and best director went to Julian Schnabel for “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” his harrowing and uplifting portrayal of a French stroke victim who, unable to move anything but his left eyelid, dictates his memoirs by blinking in code. I know, oof, but seriously, go see it.

Above photo from Gothamist

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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.

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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?

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