How is the “Blo & Go” Like the “Suck Kut”?

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Earlier this year, the Washington Post‘s Robin Givhan brought us the story of the Blo & Go, an ingenious hair-drying invention of Laurie Coleman, a former model and wife of the Minnesota Republican senator Norm Coleman. Here’s what the recently resurfaced Post piece has to say about the genesis of “Blo & Go”:

Against the backdrop of this kind of marketing savvy, it is hard to believe that the name Blo & Go was not chosen to, at the very least, amuse. This, after all, is a world in which the term “wide stance” churns up easy chuckles.

Coleman’s voice registers shock — and dismay– that anyone would make such a connection. “I didn’t think of that,” she says. And then she goes further to point out that the name wasn’t even her idea. It came out of a committee. It was all in the brainstorming, during which “Freedom Styler” was rejected. And so it went: You get your hair blown out. You need a blowout. You get blown . . . out. And then you go. Bingo: “Blo & Go!”

Givhan (a Pulitzer winner) also extracted the line, “The whole key to this is the suction” from Coleman, whose husband is in a tough reelection fight this year against Al Franken. All of this reminded me of another classic suction-based hair care device. Who else remembers the Suck Kut?

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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